That was when my phone rang.
It was Cassius. I picked it up, hoping it wasn't him calling to ask to buy Makayla something ridiculous.
"Hello?"
"Deira," he said, and my heart dropped. His voice sounded panicked.
"What is it? What's wrong?" I stood up instinctively.
"I... Makayla, she..."
"Cassius, what's wrong?" I asked again. I was imagining the worst, all the possible terrible things, and I needed to know which it was.
"I can't find Makayla," he said.
"Where are you?" I asked in a panic.
"Still at the park," he replied. I hung up the phone, my coat already halfway on as I rushed out the door.
I sped over to the park, barely paying attention to the lights or other cars on the road. It was a miracle that I made it in one piece. All I could hear in my head on the way over were Cassius's words on a loop: "I can't find Makayla."
I parked and got out, and Cassius immediately saw me and came over.
"What happened?" I asked. My eyes scanned the playground. It was small, there was really no way you could lose track of a child on it, but I had to check. Maybe Cassius just had bad parental instincts, and had missed something, like checking the slides, or the swings. Or maybe he just wasn't used to looking for her, so she had blended in with the other kids. But no, she was nowhere to be found.
"I just took my eyes off her for a second," he said.
"You what?" I turned on him, unable to believe what I was hearing.
"It was really just... I got a phone call that I had to take. It was a foreign client, I've been trying to get them on the phone for ages, the timing never works, and I..."
I turned away from him. His explanation was irrelevant at the moment. The only important thing was that he'd stopped watching Makayla, and she'd disappeared. I tried not to jump to the worst possible conclusion, but I couldn't help but think how easy it would be to grab a kid. What if someone realized Makayla had a rich dad and wanted to cash in on that?
"Call the police," I told him, interrupting whatever excuse he was sputtering. "I'm going to go look from the other side."
He immediately took out his phone. I walked around the whole playground, willing myself to see Makayla's blond head pop out from around some piece of playground equipment. Every moment that passed where that didn't happen was increasing my panic.
The police arrived quickly, and Cassius explained the situation to them. By that point, other parents in the park had noticed, and some of them were offering to help look. One of the police officers went across the street to check with the people working in the nearby shops.
Cassius looked terrified.
"I'm going to walk around the block," he said. "Maybe she just wandered off down the street." I didn't care what he did.
"Fine," I said without looking at him. The other police officer was arranging the parents who had offered to help, instructing them on the best way to form search groups around the park. I went with one of the groups, where one of the moms gave me a sympathetic look and squeezed my hand.
"We'll find her, dear," the mom said. I wanted to believe her.
The time stretched on. I was sure it had been hours, but the clock on my phone told me it had only been about 20 minutes since the police had arrived.
I looked up, and realized one of the police officers was motioning us over. I practically ran over to him.
"Ma'am," said the police officer, "we actually think we've found something." He took me into the convenience store at the corner where they'd gotten the owner to check their security cameras. One of them pointed across the street at the row of stores opposite. They ran the tape back about 40 minutes, and showed me the footage. A small blond girl entered the frame and went into the toy store across the road. I gasped in relief.
"That's her. That's Makayla," I said. The officer nodded. "We reviewed the rest of the footage and she doesn't appear to have come back out."
I was already halfway to the door by the time his sentence finished. I rushed past Cassius, who had just come back from the park.
"Deira, what is it?" he asked, but I didn't bother to answer. I hurriedly crossed the street and entered the toy store. It only took a moment of looking around before I saw Makayla standing at a display near the front, watching a group of animatronic puppies walk around a table.