Chapter 1 — Four Whole Days

The small voice on the emergency line trembled so badly that Eric almost missed the next sentence. “But now it’s been four whole days.”

He sat up straighter and adjusted his headset. He had talked to frightened children before, but something about this girl was different.

She wasn’t sobbing or screaming for help. She sounded worn out — as if nearly all her fear had already been spent. “What’s your name?” Eric asked. “Ella.” “And how old are you, Ella?” “Seven.”

He kept his voice calm while another dispatcher started tracing the call. “Ella, are you there by yourself right now?”

After a long pause, she answered quietly. “Yes.”

Chapter 2 — The Girl Who Waited

She told him her father, Andrew, had gone out to pick up her medicine and some groceries, and that he’d promised he would only be gone thirty minutes.

Ella remembered watching his old pickup back down the driveway while the rain tapped against the front window.

She’d stood by the curtain with Buddy, her stuffed puppy, tucked under one arm, waiting near the door because she wanted to surprise him when he came back.

Then the sky went darker. The rain came down harder. Thirty minutes became an hour, and the hour slid into a whole night.

She fell asleep on the couch with the porch light still glowing, and when she woke it was still glowing, and Andrew’s truck still wasn’t in the driveway.

She waited through another full day, because her father had always come back before.

By the third day, hunger had started to ache in her stomach.