“I thought you were going to change into dry clothes,” Ben said when he found Jade rummaging through the Christmas pageant costumes in the storage closet downstairs.
“I will. Soon.” In a pile of shepherds’ garb, Jade spotted a splash of color that might have been one of her daughter’s barrettes. Tossing costumes haphazardly aside, she reached down to find it was only a fake jewel from a wiseman’s crown.
Ben’s voice was both firm and gentle. “You need to change your clothes and get warmed up. Then we can look around the church more.”
“She is really good at hide-and-seek.” Jade spoke the words as if she were trying to convince Ben of what they both knew was a lie. She couldn’t stop herself. “At the daycare, she’s always going around hiding in cabinets and drawers. Once she even crawled into the toy chest and fell asleep beneath all the dress-up clothes. She’s here. I know that she’s got to be here.”
Ben touched her gently on the shoulder. “I’ve already searched this whole closet myself. Twice.”
Something about Ben’s touch shook her to her core. Or maybe it was the way her feet had finally started to thaw and were now screaming with pain. Her whole body began to tremble.
“She’s got to be here,” she repeated, her voice weak and almost as shaky as her core.
Ben rubbed her gently on the shoulder, and she turned to him as tears streamed hot down her face. “Do you promise that you’re going to do everything you can to get my daughter back to me?” The inherent confession in her question, the admission that she knew her daughter was in danger, brought on another round of trembling and a sob that nearly worked its way out of her clenched throat.
Ben reached out and touched her chin, tilting her face up until she was staring straight at him. Wiping a tear away gently with his calloused thumb, he nodded. “I promise. Now let’s go get you warmed up.”