So Close

One minute she was there: playing by the open door of the dress shop. My mother and I were trying on clothes.We had instructed my then two year-old daughter, blonde hair gone curly from Floridian humidity, to "stay put." I was half-listening behind the louvered dressing room door.


A few seconds later, an instinctual warning tugged at my heart. I peeked out. She was gone.


"KATHERINE!" I shouted. I leaped to the door and searched up and down the sidewalk and out into the street with frenzied laser-beam eyes. I took in a cream-colored station wagon, sidling down the block, slowly, shark-like, as if cruising for prey. I saw my little daughter, trundling away, holding a strange woman's hand.


"STOP!" I bellowed. "THAT'S MY DAUGHTER!" I bounded up to the woman, heart hammering.


"Oh?" she said. "I was trying to help her find her mommy."


I knew and I didn't know how close we'd come. 


"I'm her mommy. I was in that shop," I pointed, trembling. "Right there."


I picked up my daughter and turned away. I knew. I didn't speak another word to the woman, not a single stuttered thank-you, not an accusation. I turned around once, saw the cream-colored station wagon cruise up to this stranger who had had my daughter's hand in hers. A door opened, the woman got in, the car drove off.


"What happened?" I asked Katherine. I shuddered with guilt.


"She gave me some taffy," Katherine answered. 


We had the talk about never EVER EVER going anywhere with anyone, about never EVER taking candy from strangers. But, the truth was, if my mother's watchful heart had skipped a single beat, she would have been gone.


How could a mother EVER live with that?


Hours later, a blurry slow motion image of the cream-colored station wagon driving slowly by re-played itself in my mind. A glint of sunshine obscured the driver's face. In the flood of feelings - terror and guilt and relief -  it hadn't occurred to me to call the police. I had been consumed with my daughter's safety. What about the other children? 


I'm haunted still.