“Not now.”
“DOG.”
“This is serious.”
“BAD DOG.”
I pointed at him. “Silence.”
He shuffled his wings but complied.
My fingers moved quickly across the screen.
Cris first. She answered on the second ring. “Hey?—”
“This little girl who visits me regularly is missing.”
“What?”
“She slipped out during nap time. The tracker in her necklace stopped working.”
There was a short pause. Then Cris’s voice shifted into the same focused tone my brain had already adopted. “I’ll start calling people. I have family in the Southern Adirondacks. Send me your address.”
Next, I called Dr. Ellie. That conversation took thirty seconds. She knew my stories of Bobbi well enough to understand exactly how concerning this situation was. Within minutes, she had already reached out to several contacts in the community.
The information spread quickly.
Within an hour, the small circle of people I trusted had turned into an organized search effort.
Text messages bombarded my phone from people checking the parks, the trails, the stores, the playground near the elementary school.
Mei moved down the hallway, making calls of her own.
I stepped outside to scan the street while replying to another message.
My phone rang again.
I answered without looking at the screen.
“Yes.”
“Oh good,” my mother said. “You answered. I lost my itinerary,” she continued cheerfully. “The one I printed out before the cruise. Could you text it to me?”
My brain stalled for half a second. “Mom.”
“Yes?”
“It’s in your email.”
“I know, but I don’t want to dig through all that right now,” she said. “Couldn’t you just write it out for me again? You’re so much better at that logistical stuff.”
A few days ago, I would have done it without hesitation. I would have opened the email, copied the information, and sent it, because that was the role I had always played.
Fix the problem. Soften the inconvenience. Make things easier.
My therapist’s words surfaced quietly in my mind:Boundaries. Safe people. You are allowed to say no.
I looked down the street where neighbors were beginning to gather.
