Page 191 of Joker

She’s standing near the little reading corner by the back wall with Bunny in one hand and a stuffed unicorn in the other, looking confused and a little alarmed by the sheer volume of my reaction.

She wasn’t taken. She just wandered.

I’m across the room in two seconds flat. I drop to my knees hard enough to feel it and grab her so fast I almost knock the breath out of her.

“Don’t do that,” I gasp, voice breaking around the words. “Don’t ever…Lexi, baby, don’t ever do that to me.”

She stiffens in my arms for half a second, startled. Then she wraps her little arms around my neck. “I found a horsey,” she says, small and uncertain.

And that’s it.

That’s what cracks the first piece of me. Not because she did anything wrong. Because she’s little. Because she’s innocent. Because she should be allowed to wander six feet away from me in a stupid children’s store without my whole body reacting like I’m one blink away from losing her forever.

I pull back enough to cup her face with both hands and force my breathing down into something that won’t scare her more.

“You stay where Mommy can see you, okay?” I say, voice shaking so badly I’m not sure how understandable I am. “Always. You don’t walk away without telling me. Ever.”

Her eyes get big. “Okay.”

I nod too fast and kiss her forehead because if I don’t put my mouth on my child right now just to reassure myself she is physically, actually still here, I might start screaming and never stop.

Mac appears a second later, moving fast enough to tell me she was scared too. She takes one look at my face, then Lexi’s, then exhales hard. “Jesus Christ.”

I nod once, still crouched there, still holding Lexi too tightly. “She just wandered.”

Mac crouches beside us, one hand settling briefly on my shoulder. “Okay.” But her tone says what mine already knows.

That wasn’t okay. Not really. Not after everything. Not when my nervous system is already held together with paper clips and prayer.

I’m just starting to stand when my phone buzzes in my back pocket.

The sound slices straight through me. Every instinct I have goes instantly feral.

Mac sees it happen in real time. Her expression hardens immediately. “Who is it?”

I don’t know yet.

My fingers are shaking so badly I almost drop the phone getting it out.

Unknown number.

No caller ID.

My stomach drops straight through the floor. I know. Before I even open it, I know.

Mac reads enough in my face to move closer without a word, one hand already drifting subtly toward the inside of her property jacket where I know she’s carrying.

I unlock the screen. And there it is. A picture message. No text. Just a photo.

My breath leaves my body in one violent, soundless rush. Because it’s us. Me and Lexi. Right now. Inside the store.

Taken from somewhere behind the racks. The angle is too close. Too intimate. Too recent.

I can see the exact shirt I’m wearing. Lexi’s little pink shoes. The back of my own head bent toward her just seconds before I realized she was gone.

And under the photo, finally, are four words.

Turn around, little bird.