I walked past the registers and sat down on a vinyl bench in the quiet corner of the driver lounge.
The receipt was still flat in my hand, the pink wax letters catching the fluorescent light of the ceiling.
A yellowed piece of paper was pinned to the corkboard across from me, showing two missing child alerts from the neighboring counties, but none of the photographs matched the quiet girl in the pink shirt.
I looked down at the name written in crayon.
Sarah.
If the mother was back in Georgia searching for her, she had no idea her daughter was sitting in a service plaza off Route Forty-One.
David walked into the lounge, holding two cups of coffee, his bad knee causing him to lean slightly to the left.
“We should get back on the road before the five o’clock shift change,” he said, setting one cup on the plastic table.
I did not touch the cup, my fingers tightening around the scrap of paper.
The folded receipt felt like a block of ice against my palm as I stared at the crayon letters.
