Searching For- Your Daddy Ditched Me Again In- Instant

Then she turned off the GPS.

Lena turned off the phone.

The snow thickened. The road narrowed. The GPS fell silent, the screen showing a blank gray void where the map should be. For a terrifying, liberating second, Lena was nowhere. No route. No destination. No man-shaped hole to drive around. Searching for- Your Daddy Ditched Me Again in-

Your Daddy Ditched Me Again, she thought. And for the first time, the sentence didn't end with a question mark. It ended with a period. Then she turned off the GPS

She was parked outside a dilapidated truck stop off I-80, the neon sign for “Pete’s 24-Hour Diner” buzzing a frantic, blue halo into the snowy dark. Her son, Eli, was asleep in the back seat, his small hand still clutching the toy tractor his father had mailed for his fifth birthday three months ago. The same father who was supposed to meet them here an hour ago. The road narrowed

Her phone buzzed. Not a call. A text.

When Eli woke up, she’d tell him they were going on a new adventure. Just the two of them.