Chapter 3 - Seventeen Calls
When Patricia returned to the restaurant, Claire looked behind her.
“Where’s Mia?”
“Her mother picked her up.”
Claire frowned.
“Elena came here?”
“She met us near the entrance.”
Daniel heard the answer.
“She didn’t text me.”
“Perhaps she called,” Patricia said. “Your phone is still in my bag.”
She handed it to him.
Daniel saw two missed calls from Elena.
He called her back.
She answered from the construction site.
“Is Mia having fun?”
Daniel looked at his mother.
Patricia reached for her water glass.
“I thought she was with you.”
The noise around the table seemed to disappear.
“What do you mean?” Elena asked.
“Mom said you picked her up.”
“I’m forty minutes away.”
Daniel stood so quickly that his chair struck the floor.
“Where is she?”
Everyone turned toward Patricia.
She maintained an expression of mild confusion.
“I may have misunderstood.”
Daniel’s voice sharpened.
“Where is Mia?”
Patricia sighed.
“She was having a tantrum. I took her somewhere quiet.”
“Where?”
“The garage.”
Claire stood.
“You left her there?”
“Only briefly.”
Daniel grabbed his jacket.
“Which level?”
Patricia did not answer.
“Which level?”
“I don’t remember.”
Daniel ran toward the restaurant entrance.
Elena was already leaving the construction site.
She opened the tracking application on her phone. Mia’s device appeared inside the parking structure attached to Bellamy’s restaurant.
The location had not moved.
Elena called Mia.
No answer.
She called again.
Still nothing.
She drove while speaking with emergency services.
Inside the garage, Mia had called everyone she knew.
She called Patricia seventeen times because Grandma had promised to return.
She called Daniel four times.
She called Claire three times.
She called Elena twice.
Each time the line went unanswered, Mia became more afraid.
She tried to leave the place where Patricia had told her to wait, but every direction looked the same. Cars entered and exited. Footsteps echoed from different levels.
A man walked past and asked where her parents were.
Mia remembered warnings about strangers.
She hid behind a concrete column until he left.
Later, she heard a car alarm and began to cry.
Her emergency phone slipped from her hand and cracked against the floor. The screen still worked, but the sound became unreliable.
She sat beside the stairwell door and hugged her backpack.
She repeated the words Patricia had used.
Wait here.
Do not move.
Do not embarrass me again.
At three thirty, Daniel reached the garage.
He searched level one.
Then level two.
He called Mia’s name until his voice echoed.
He asked security for help. The guard contacted the shopping center office and began reviewing cameras.
Patricia followed ten minutes later, not because she was worried but because the relatives had insisted.
“This is becoming absurd,” she complained. “She could have walked back to the restaurant.”
“You told her to wait,” Claire said.
“She never listens to me.”
“You punish her when she doesn’t.”
Patricia turned on Claire.
“You are enjoying this.”
Claire stared at her mother.
“No. I’m finally seeing it.”
At four twenty, Elena arrived.
She found Daniel near the elevator.
His face was gray.
“We haven’t found her.”
Elena held up her phone.
“She’s still inside the structure.”
“The location isn’t precise enough.”
“Then we search every level.”
Patricia approached them.
“Elena, before you become hysterical, Mia was perfectly safe when I left her.”
Elena looked at her.
“When did you leave her?”
Patricia crossed her arms.
“I don’t know. Maybe twenty minutes ago.”
Claire spoke from behind her.
“It was more than two hours.”
Patricia’s eyes flashed.
“Be quiet.”
Elena stepped closer.
“You left my child alone for two hours?”
“She was acting spoiled.”
Daniel put both hands against the wall as though trying to keep himself upright.
Security staff spread across the garage.
At five twelve, a guard found Mia’s backpack near the fourth-floor stairwell.
It was empty.
The discovery broke Elena’s control.
“Mia!”
She ran through rows of vehicles, calling her daughter’s name.
Daniel followed.
Patricia remained beside the elevator.
At five thirty, the security office located Mia on a camera recording. The footage showed her leaving the stairwell area after a loud group of teenagers entered the garage. She had moved down a ramp and disappeared behind a line of parked vehicles.
The last clear image showed her crying.
Elena watched the recording once.
Then she walked away before she collapsed.
Daniel reached for her.
She stepped back.
“You promised me.”
“I know.”
“You promised she would stay with you.”
“I thought my mother was taking her to the restroom.”
“You always think the version that requires you to do nothing.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
Elena returned to the search.
At six sixteen, she heard a small sound beneath the humming ventilation system.
“Mommy?”
Elena froze.
“Mia?”
The voice came from between two parked vehicles near the lowest level.
Elena ran.
Mia was sitting against the wall with her knees pulled to her chest. A shopping center employee had given her a bottle of water and was trying to reassure her.
When Mia saw her mother, she stood and stumbled forward.
Elena dropped to her knees and pulled her into her arms.
Mia shook violently.
“I stayed where Grandma told me, but then people came, and I tried to find Daddy.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
“I wasn’t good.”
Elena held her face.
“Listen to me. You did nothing wrong.”
Daniel arrived seconds later.
He reached toward Mia.
She turned away and buried her face in Elena’s shoulder.
The rejection devastated him.
Patricia appeared at the end of the parking row.
“There she is,” she said. “You see? She’s fine.”
Elena slowly rose with Mia in her arms.
She had never hated anyone before.
In that moment, hatred would have been easier than the cold clarity settling inside her.
Patricia had endangered Mia.
Daniel had enabled it.
The family had hidden it.
Elena understood that apologies would not protect her daughter.
Consequences might.
May you like
She called the police.
Then she carried Mia back toward the restaurant.
