The first time Adeline said the man was going to die, her mother assumed she had misunderstood.
“Mommy, stop the car.”
Kendra kept one hand on the steering wheel and reached toward the center console with the other, lowering the radio.
“What was that, sweetheart?”
“He’s going to die.”
The little girl’s voice was so different that Kendra immediately looked into the rearview mirror.
Only seconds earlier, Adeline had been singing badly and enthusiastically with an old country song, her white sneakers flashing tiny pink lights every time she kicked them against the back of the passenger seat. She had spent the entire Saturday calling herself Princess Adeline and refusing to remove the cheap plastic tiara her grandmother had bought at a discount store outside Lexington.
The tiara sat crooked now.
Her pink princess dress, decorated with tiny silver stars, was bunched beneath the seat belt.
But the child underneath it had gone completely still.
Adeline was staring through the passenger-side window.
Not toward the road.
Toward the wooded slope beyond the highway guardrail.
“Who’s going to die?” Kendra asked.
“The motorcycle man.”
Kendra looked ahead.
The two-lane Kentucky highway curved through rolling woodland and scattered farmland. It was late afternoon, warm enough that sunlight shimmered above the pavement. There were no houses nearby. No businesses. No parked vehicles.
And certainly no motorcycle.
“Honey, I don’t see anybody.”
“He’s down there.”
Adeline lifted one small hand.
Pointed.
Kendra slowed instinctively.
“Where?”
“By the broken tree.”
Kendra glanced toward the wooded slope.
Tall grass.
Thick undergrowth.
A fallen section of old fence.
Several trees.
Nothing that looked remotely like a person.
“Are you sure you didn’t see a deer?”
Adeline looked at her mother.
Fear had entered her brown eyes.
Not imaginative fear.
Not the theatrical expression she used when pretending dragons lived under Grandma’s porch.
Real fear.
“Mommy.”
Her voice dropped almost to a whisper.
“Please.”
Kendra’s stomach tightened.
A pickup appeared in the rearview mirror.
She signaled.
Pulled onto the gravel shoulder.
The truck passed.
Adeline immediately reached for her seat-belt buckle.
“Wait.”
Kendra put the SUV in park.
“Do not get out.”
“But he needs me.”
Those words bothered her.
Not us.
Me.
Kendra turned in her seat.
“Adeline, listen to me. We don’t know what’s down there.”
“Yes, we do.”
“No, we don’t.”
“The motorcycle man.”
“How do you know there’s a motorcycle man?”
The little girl looked toward the woods again.
For a second she seemed confused by the question.
Then she answered as if explaining something obvious.
“The lady told me.”
Every protective instinct inside Kendra sharpened.
“What lady?”
Adeline pointed toward the trees.
“There.”
Kendra turned.
Nothing.
Only wind moving leaves.
When she looked back, Adeline’s expression had changed again.
The child frowned.
“She went down.”