I never get a call from my 5-year-old granddaughter \u2014 so when she whispered that her mom was \u201cpretending she\u2019s not scared,\u201d I froze. That night I raced through red lights to their house, panic pounding in my chest.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi Grandma \u2026 can you take me to sleep at your house tonight?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I asked where her mom was. Lila said she was hiding in the bathroom and \u201cpretending.\u201d Then the call dropped.<\/p>\n
I tried calling again. No answer. I texted. Nothing. My heart raced. I grabbed my keys and drove. I sped through intersections, barely registering the lights. I told myself, \u201cCall again,\u201d but silence. \u201cI\u2019m coming over,\u201d I texted.<\/p>\n
My mind raced \u2014 had something happened to Emma? Was Lila hiding from someone? I knew something was very wrong. The full story continues next page\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I never get a call from my 5-year-old granddaughter \u2014 so when she whispered that her mom was \u201cpretending she\u2019s not scared,\u201d I froze. That […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5959,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5960,"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5958\/revisions\/5960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepatswalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}