An automated message came on. “All circuits are busy. Your call cannot be completed. Please try again.”
Panic rose in Joey. He dialed his mom’s cell phone number.
“All circuits are busy. Your call cannot be completed. Please try—”
He broke the connection and tried again. The same message came on. Working quickly, he flipped through his speed-dial numbers, calling his friends.
“All circuits are busy. Your call cannot be—”
It was a nightmare.
When Joey looked up, Jenny was walking around the back of the Suburban. He caught up with her. “Where are you going?”
“To see if those people need help.”
“I’ve got to go, Jenny. Chris is still waiting—”
An anguished cry interrupted Joey. Startled, he looked over at the woman standing beside a minivan one lane over in the street about thirty feet away. A tow truck had collided with the van’s rear, collapsing the van inward and spinning it halfway around. The van’s front tires rested on the median and the nose was burrowed into a tree.
“My baby!” she shrilled. “Has anyone seen my baby? Help me!”
Jenny broke into a run. Joey was a half step behind her.
“Can we help?” Jenny asked the woman.
The woman looked like she was in her late twenties and was dressed in a fast-food restaurant’s uniform. Her hands shook.
“It’s my baby!” the woman cried. “I had the late shift tonight. I belted her in the backseat! I always belt her in the backseat! It’s the safest place for an infant!”
Jenny took the woman by the shoulders. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll find your baby.” She looked over her shoulder at Joey. “Find the baby.”
Joey hadn’t even noticed he’d frozen. He hadn’t been around that many adults who were losing it. Seeing such raw emotion from the woman was overwhelming. Anger was one thing. Most people had no problem expressing anger, but fear—
“Joey, find the baby.”
“Sure.” Joey stepped into the minivan, banging his head against the roof and starting a new crescendo of pain. He played the flashlight over the child safety seat belted into the middle of the van’s bench.
No kid.
Then Joey realized that during the impact the child might have gotten knocked out of the seat. That wasn’t supposed to happen, but the child wasn’t in the seat now. And how would a kid look after she’d been bounced around the interior of a van? The thought hit Joey with staggering ferocity. For a moment he was sure he was going to throw up.
“Joey.”
He wanted to snap at Jenny, but he couldn’t. He didn’t trust his voice.
“Please find her,” the woman pleaded.
Reluctantly, desperately wanting to find the baby okay or not find her at all, Joey turned his attention back to the van. He shined the light under all the seats, checked the front to make sure she hadn’t been thrown in that direction, then climbed over the backseat to the rear compartment. He found baskets of laundry, a blanket, and a pair of collapsible lawn chairs. But no baby.
“She’s not here.” Joey turned around and stepped on a small baby rattle, crushing the toy underfoot. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see that.” The apology, coming at a time when a baby was missing, sounded inane but it was out of his mouth before he could stop himself.
“My baby!” the woman wailed.
The pain and panic in the woman’s voice almost broke Joey’s heart. He’d never heard his mom sound like that, and he was sure he never wanted to.
“Joey.” Jenny’s voice was choked and quiet but Joey somehow heard her even over the continuing blare of car horns and car alarms. “Look in the child seat again.”
Goose bumps suddenly erupted across the back of Joey’s neck, and it felt like an ice-cold fist closed around his heart. His breath locked in his lungs. He didn’t know what he was going to find in the child seat, but he was convinced that he didn’t want to find it. He suddenly realized the minivan’s front windshield was broken out.
Had the baby flown out the window? Was some body part still hanging in the seat? Which body part did he most not want it to be? God, not that! I would have seen that already, wouldn’t I? Babies are made of so many different parts. He knew because he had worked with Chris when Chris was learning to talk, touching toes and fingers and eyes and ears, teaching Chris the names of those parts.
The flashlight beam illuminated the safety seat.
There was no baby there, no baby parts.
Thank You, God. Joey felt tears burn the backs of his eyes.
Then he spotted the pink Winnie-the-Pooh jumper lying on the safety seat. It was strewn across the little chair, just as Sergeant Macintyre’s uniform had been in the Suburban. On the front of the little jumper, Pooh sat digging a paw into a honey pot as Eeyore, Piglet, Tigger, and Rabbit looked on. A disposable diaper, folded and creased as though it had just come from a package—a condition Joey remembered rarely seeing them in—lay inside the jumper. A pair of tiny socks spilled out of a pair of Blue’s Clues shoes.
“She’s gone,” Joey croaked. “She couldn’t have taken those clothes off.”
“No!” the woman screamed. She pushed free of Jenny and pulled Joey from the minivan. “My baby can’t be gone! She can’t be!”
Dazed, Joey stepped back from the van beside Jenny. She took his hand in hers, holding tight. As they stood there, other conversations drifted over them. More people were missing. More piles of clothes had been left behind.
Adults everywhere were losing it. Other people screamed for help, saying they couldn’t find their kids.
“What’s going on?” Jenny asked.
“I don’t know,” Joey said. “But I’ve got to get back to the base. I’ve got to find my mom and Chris.”
“How are you going to get there?”
“The car.” Joey looked at his mom’s car. The car was smashed, but nothing was leaking underneath. Maybe it was only body damage. He caught himself then, knowing that life had gotten strange,
