My stepkids told me they only answer to their biological parents. So that same night, I changed the locks, canceled every privilege in my name, and called their real dad to come pick them up. Nobody argued. Not even my wife.

He said, “My name’s Hector. I work the night register at the gas station on Route 9. There’s a girl here. She’s soaking wet. She’s been crying for about 20 minutes. She asked to borrow my phone, and she said yours was the only number she knew by heart.”

Then there was a rustling sound, and a different voice came on the line.

Small. Shaking.

“Wade, it’s Paige. Please don’t hang up.”

I sat straight up.

Nora was already beside me.

Paige said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know who else to call. My phone doesn’t work. Dad’s not answering. Colby’s not answering. I’ve been outside for two hours. I can’t feel my hands.”

I asked her what happened.

The story came out in pieces between sobs.

Russ and his girlfriend,

Gina, had gone to a casino two hours away for the night.

They’d left Paige to babysit Gina’s two little boys.

Around 8:00, the boys’ father came and picked them up.

Paige walked out to the dumpster with a trash bag, and the apartment door swung shut behind her.

Locked.

Her phone was inside, and even if it hadn’t been, there was no service on it anymore.

She knocked on neighbors’ doors.

Nobody answered.

So she walked a mile and a half in the rain to the only place with lights on.

Paige said, “I sat on the curb outside the apartment for two hours before I walked here. And the whole time, all I could think about was Ivy. I kept thinking, this is what it felt like.

This is what we did to her.”

And then she broke down so hard that Hector had to take the phone back.

Every part of me wanted to jump in the car, but there was a protective order petition with my name on it.

If I showed up alone, and that girl was mine to rescue in the middle of the night, Russ’s lawyer would twist it into something ugly before sunrise.

So I called Harriet.

At 10:30 on a Saturday night, she picked up on the first ring.

She said, “Go, but don’t go alone. Bring Nora and call the sheriff’s non-emergency line and ask them to meet you there for a welfare check. You want a uniform standing next to you the whole time. Don’t touch her.

Let her mother do everything.”

We were at the gas station in 18 minutes.

A deputy was already there.

Deputy Klein. Young, tall, kind eyes.

Paige was sitting on an upside-down milk crate inside by the coffee machine, wrapped in a gas station blanket Hector had pulled off the shelf and refused to let her pay for.

She looked so small.

She looked like Ivy.

When Nora walked in, Paige stood up and fell into her mother’s arms and cried the way little kids cry.

Then she looked over Nora’s shoulder and saw me standing back by the door with the deputy.

And she said, in front of all of us, “He never touched me.”

Deputy Klein took out his notepad.

Paige kept going.

She couldn’t stop.

“Wade never grabbed me.

He never touched me. Dad wrote that statement. He typed it out and told me to sign it. He said nothing would happen to Wade. He’d just lose his weekend thing with Ivy for a while and get scared. He said it was just how court works. He said everybody lies in court. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Deputy Klein wrote down every word.

Before we left, I tried to pay Hector for the blanket.

He shook his head and said, “I’ve got a granddaughter that age. Just get her home.”

In the car, Paige sat in the back next to her mom with the blanket pulled up to her chin.

I drove.

Nobody talked for the first few miles.

The wipers were the only sound.

Then, from the back seat, very quietly, Paige said, “Is Ivy okay?”

I looked at her in the rearview mirror.

I said, “She’s okay. She thinks it was her fault. She thinks she got in trouble for letting the door close.”

Paige made a sound like something tearing.

She said, “It wasn’t her fault. It was mine. I was the one who said we should just go. Colby wanted to wait till you got home. I said, ‘Dad said tonight.’ I said she’d be fine for a couple hours. She was watching cartoons. She waved at us.”

She was quiet for a second.

Then she said, “Can I tell her I’m sorry? Not now. Whenever I’m allowed.”

I said, “When this is over, you can tell her yourself. She’ll forgive you before you finish the sentence. That’s the kind of kid she is.”