The woman leaned against the car, bent at the waist, hands resting on her knees. She’d stopped vomiting, but a malodourous puddle pooled on the concrete between her feet.
Three boys who shared the woman’s blond hair and blue eyes stood beside her, helpless and wide eyed, the youngest with tears streaking his face. Must be her sons.
The oldest boy rested a hand on his mother’s back, and Piper’s heart softened. He had not yet learned that when women puked, you held their hair back, but he’d make a wonderful boyfriend someday.
The woman looked at Piper with a thousand-yard stare and pulled her cell phone from her back pocket. “I left him.”
Ah. Divorce. Infidelity. Possibly domestic abuse. She’d seen it all before in her long law enforcement career.
Piper ripped a paper towel from the roll and stooped to mop up the pile of vomit in the driveway. “Your husband?”
“My son,” the woman said softly. “I left my son at a truck stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.”
Piper stopped cleaning. “You didwhat?”
“I left my son at a truck stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike,” her neighbor repeated in a hollow voice. “Accidentally,” she added as an afterthought.
“You’re sure?” Piper knew the question was stupid the moment she uttered it, but she couldn’t help herself. How exactly did a person manage to leave a child at atruck stop?
“He isn’t here, is he?” The woman sounded argumentative.
“I see three boys,” Piper conceded as she rose to stand. “Is there ... another one?”
“Yes. Yes, there is.” Her neighbor wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “And Iforgothim.”
“Where?”
“Big Jim’s Travel Plaza,” the woman repeated in a robotic voice. She sounded like a slightly deranged Alexa.
“Have you called the police?” Piper asked.
The woman shook her head. Then she bent at the waist and threw up again.
Piper stepped quickly out of the vomit-shrapnel radius. Her neighbor was obviously in shock.
“I’ll call the police,” she said firmly.
She pried the woman’s cell phone from her hand and called the truck stop, then dialed 911 with her own phone, while also texting a friend who worked for the Virginia Highway Patrol.
Meanwhile her neighbor had begun to babble incoherently, muttering the name of the truck stop under her breath, and something about blankets. With both phones held to her ears, Piper used her elbows to guide her neighbor toward the front porch. She instructed one boy to clean up the vomit and told another to get his mom a glass of water.
Then Piper turned to the oldest son, who sat beside his mother on the porch, helplessly rubbing his hand across her back in tiny circles.
“Where’s your dad?” she asked.
The boy looked startled by the question. “He was in Kansas. Or maybe Oklahoma. I’m not sure. He’s supposed to fly home tonight.”
“Do you have a phone? Can you reach him?”
The boy shook his head. “I tried. But I think he’s in the air.”
“What’s your mom’s name?”
“Kiersten,” the boy said. “Kiersten Cleaver. And my brother is Johnny.”
“Hold on,” Piper said to the 911 dispatcher on the other end of the line. Then she knelt in front of Kiersten and looked her directlyin the eye. “Kiersten, can you spell your son’s first, middle, and last name for me.”
Kiersten nodded. “J-o-h-n C-o-l-i-n C-l-e-a-v-e-r.”
