After listening carefully, the officer looked at him and said, “You don’t realize how lucky that child was—or how vital your report is. We’re already investigating a woman who fled a foster facility with her two-year-old son. Sounds like this might be that child.
It’s a difficult case. If you hadn’t stopped when you did… he wouldn’t have survived the night.”
John nodded silently, the boy’s eyes still vivid in his mind.
The next morning, he called the hospital.
The nurse said the child was stable and that Child Protection services were already involved.
John hung up and sat in silence. The world, he thought, was often too fast, too indifferent. And sometimes, it took nothing more than someone willing to stop, to notice, to change the course of another’s life.
That evening, at home, Barbara lay quietly at his feet. John stood by the window, staring into the dark, empty sky. Something had shifted inside him.
And deep down, he knew he was meant to be there that night. It hadn’t been a chance.
