When my seven-year-old son vanished at the mall, I was inconsolable. A blonde woman comforted me, and hours later, my son was found. A decade later, while recounting the story to a friend, my son went pale. “Mom, that’s not what happened,” he said. “That woman took me
. She and a man carried me to their car and kept me there, arguing. She returned to distract you, but her boyfriend changed his mind and let me go.” I was stunned. My son had hidden the truth to spare me pain. The woman I thought was kind had been part of his abduction. My entire memory of that day—and her—shattered in an instant.
