And he stood up really fast and he was talking loud but quiet at the same time, like how grown-ups do when something is wrong.
And he kept saying numbers. And I didn’t understand. Noah pressed his small fists against his eyes and then he just walked away.
He didn’t look back. He forgot I was sitting there. He said it so plainly.
He forgot I was sitting there. No anger in it. Just the raw, bewildered herd of a child who had been so excited to finally be chosen and then wasn’t.
I waited, Noah whispered. I waited for a really long time and then I got scared and I went to find him and I couldn’t and I didn’t know where I was and his voice shattered into another round of crying and Crystal didn’t think twice.
She pulled him in. She held this stranger’s child like he was her own, rubbing his back in slow circles, whispering, “I got you.
I got you. You’re okay.” Over and over until his breathing started to slow. She spent the next 20 minutes walking him through the restaurant, asking every staff member she could find.
A few remembered seeing a man come in with a small boy earlier in the evening, yes, the child in the Navy blazer.
But the man had stepped away from the table, and nobody had thought to check on the boy left sitting alone.
No one had noticed when he wandered off. And Noah, sweet, frightened Noah, could only remember two things about his father.
That his name was Daddy, and that he uh drove a really, really big black car.
