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“No,” Laurel snaps, standing again with Lucy tucked tightly against her side. “You’re doing that yourself. Right now.”

People are definitely judging him now.

I can feel the shift happening around us, because public sympathy only lasts so long when you start yelling at the school gates and scaring the kids.

Tom notices too late when the moms pull their kids closer and whisper to each other with disapproving expressions on their faces, watching him closely.

Good.

Let them look.

Tom points at Laurel again, his face flushed and wet with either rain or sweat or both. “You think you know what’s going on? You have no idea what Maggie was like lately.”

Laurel goes deathly still. Then she says clearly, “At least I cared enough about her to file an actual missing person’s report.”

Silence crashes down.

Tom blinks. “What?”

“You never filed one,” she says more loudly. “You lied.”

Parents exchange startled looks.

Tom’s expression turns ugly. “I was handling it privately,” he hisses.

“That isn’t how missing people work!” Laurel shoots back.

“She runs!”

“She vanished over two weeks ago!”

He groans. “And now you’ve gone and got the cops all worked up!”

Tom’s eyes flick around at all the people watching, at Lucy clinging tightly to Laurel’s coat. At my hand still wrapped around his wrist.

Then he rips free hard enough to stumble backward. “Fine,” he spits. “You wanna do this? Fine.”

“Laurel,” I murmur.

Because she looks ready to follow him.

Thankfully, she catches herself.

Tom backs toward his truck breathing hard. “You didn’t see her lately, okay? You don’t know how she was acting.”

Then he climbs into the cab and peels out of the parking lot fast enough to spray gravel.

Everything seems suspended for a moment before everybody nearby suddenly remembers they have children to collect and places to be. People scatter awkwardly. Lucy still hasn’t loosened her grip on Laurel.

I look down at them both.

Laurel’s shaking. Probably anger. Shock isn't helping either. But her arms around Lucy stay still. Protective. Certain. And suddenly, I understand. For all her panic about being bad at this, Laurel’s instincts around that little girl are solid as concrete when it matters.

“You okay?” I ask.

Laurel lets out one brittle laugh. “Define okay.”

Lucy presses her face harder into Laurel’s side. “Daddy was loud.”