When the bus reached the school and stopped along the curb, Sienna got off with the other kids, backpack still on her shoulder, moving like she was headed straight for the front doors.
But she didn’t go inside.
⸻
She stayed near the bus stop instead, checking her phone, glancing occasionally down the street like she was waiting for something specific.
Then an old, faded blue pickup truck pulled up to the curb.
⸻
Sienna didn’t hesitate for even a second. She opened the passenger door and climbed in like it was the most ordinary routine in the world.
For a moment, I genuinely couldn’t breathe.
⸻
My hand hovered over my phone, thumb resting near the screen. Should I call the police right now? What would I even say — that my fourteen-year-old daughter got into a pickup truck outside her own school, calm and unhurried, like she’d done it every single day that week?
Maybe I was overreacting completely.
But she was supposed to be at school. She had been supposed to be at school for five straight days, and instead, she was climbing into a stranger’s truck without a single second of hesitation.
⸻
My hands were shaking as I pulled out and followed at a careful distance, staying two cars back the way I’d seen people do in movies, feeling absurd and terrified in equal measure.
I kept telling myself I’d call the police the moment they turned anywhere that didn’t make sense.
⸻
The truck drove steadily across town for almost twenty minutes, eventually pulling into the parking lot of Bellhaven Regional Hospital.
I sat frozen in my own car for a moment, watching Sienna climb out of the passenger side and walk toward the entrance beside the driver, and that’s when I finally got a clear look at exactly who’d been picking her up all week.
⸻
Roy. My ex-husband’s older brother.
⸻
