“Good. Really good. We’re in school now. Tyler’s playing baseball. Mason’s in art class. Lily’s talking again—she even laughed yesterday. And I…” She paused. “I got my learner’s permit. I’m learning to drive the right way this time. Not the running-for-my-life way.”
“I wanted to thank you again. For stopping. For helping. For not thinking I was crazy.” She took a breath. “You could have just called the police and kept riding. But you didn’t. You listened. You believed me. You saved us.”
“Madison, you saved yourselves. I just helped.”
“No,” she said firmly. “You did more than help. You showed me that there are good people in the world. That not all men are like my stepdad. That someone would stop for a scared kid on a dark highway.”
She paused. “My grandma says you’re our guardian angel. But I think you’re just a really good person who happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
“I think I was exactly where I was supposed to be,” I said.
We still talk. Madison and her siblings are thriving with their grandmother. Madison wants to be a social worker now—she wants to help kids like her. Tyler and Mason are both in therapy, healing from their trauma. Lily drew a picture of seven bikers with angel wings. It hangs in their grandmother’s living room.
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