My 8-year-old adopted granddaughter was left at home while my son and his wife took their biological son on vacation.
She called me at 2:00 a.m. crying.
“Why, Grandpa?”
I booked last-minute tickets.
And within twelve hours, I was on my way to confront them.
I had been asleep for maybe forty minutes.
Not the light kind of sleep that drifts in and out.
This was the deep, heavy kind that only comes after a week that has drained you completely.
At sixty-three, rest doesn’t come easily anymore.
It arrives in pieces.
Like something that could disappear at any moment.
But for those forty minutes, I had finally slipped under.
Then my phone lit up the nightstand like a flare in the dark.
The glow cut across my bedroom in Decatur.
For a second, I just stared at it.
My body reacted before my mind caught up.
Thirty-one years as a family attorney had taught me to fear late-night calls.
Nothing good ever comes after midnight.
I grabbed my glasses.
Then I looked at the screen.
Skyla.
My granddaughter.
I answered before the second ring.
“Skyla, sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
