trace of the boy. No signs of abduction. Not even a footprint left by the rain.
The only fact he was able to establish was that Christopher had been outside waiting to be picked up from school. Christopher’s mother said the rain was terrible. There was no visibility. Fender benders everywhere. She said it almost felt like the weather was trying to keep her from getting to her son.
Dr. Karen Shelton: Why did you leave school, Christopher?
Christopher: I don’t know.
Dr. Karen Shelton: But you knew your mother was coming to pick you up. So, why did you leave school?
Christopher: I can’t remember.
Dr. Karen Shelton: Try.
Christopher: My head hurts.
By the end of the sixth day, the sheriff had this ache in his gut that someone in a car had simply grabbed the boy. He would keep searching, of course, but with no new leads, clues, or potential suspects, the case was threatening to go cold. And the last thing he wanted to do was give bad news to a good woman.
So, when word came in that Mary Katherine MacNeil found Christopher on the north side of the Mission Street Woods, no one in the sheriff’s department could believe it. How the hell did a seven-year-old wander all the way from Mill Grove Elementary School to the other side of those massive woods without being seen? The sheriff was too much of a city mouse to understand just how big 1,225 acres really was, but suffice it to say the woods made South Hills Village Mall seem like a hot dog cart by comparison. The locals joked that the woods were like New York’s Central Park (if Central Park were big). It seemed impossible. But somehow, that’s what happened.
It was a miracle.
When the sheriff rushed to the hospital to question the boy, he saw Mary Katherine MacNeil with her parents in the reception area. She was crying.
“Dad, I swear to God I was going to be home early when I saw the little boy. I would never drive after midnight! Don’t take my license! Please!”
The sheriff’s aunt, who’d raised him after his mother passed, had been something of a Bible-thumper herself. So, he took a little pity on the girl and approached with a big smile and a bigger handshake.
“Mr. and Mrs. MacNeil, I’m Sheriff Thompson. I can’t imagine how proud of your daughter you must be.”
Then, he looked at his clipboard to make the next part feel very official.
“My men told me Mary Katherine called the sheriff’s department at five minutes to midnight. Lucky it happened then. It was right before shift change. So, next parking ticket, you just bring it to my office, and I’ll tear it up personally. Your girl is a hero. The town is in your debt.”
The sheriff didn’t know if it was the clipboard. The handshake. Or the free parking ticket, which always felt like more than the $35 it actually was. But it did the trick. The mother beamed with pride, and the father patted his daughter’s shoulder as if she were the son he would have preferred. Mary Katherine looked down instead of relieved, which instantly told the sheriff that the girl was lying about being early. But after saving a little boy, she deserved to keep her license.
“Thank you, Mary Katherine,” he said, then added a little something to ease the girl’s guilt. “You did a real good thing. God knows that.”
Once he left the MacNeil family, the sheriff walked down the hall to check in on Christopher and his mother. When he looked at her holding her sleeping boy, he had the strangest thought. In the split second before his job kicked in, he realized that he had never seen anyone love more than that woman loved that little boy. He wondered what it would be like to be held like that instead of chastised by an aunt about what a burden he was. He wondered what it would feel like to be loved. Even a little bit. By her.
Dr. Karen Shelton: What made you walk into the woods, Christopher?
Christopher: I don’t know.
Dr. Karen Shelton: Do you remember anything about those six days?
Christopher: No.
The sheriff walked under a canopy of branches on his way to the clearing. The thick trees blocked out the light. Even in the daytime, he needed his flashlight. His feet snapped the twigs like wishbones at his mother’s Thanksgiving table. God rest her soul.
snap.
The sheriff turned around and saw a deer watching him from a distance. For a moment,