My mother came back from the beach laughing without my six-year-old daughter, saying she had “forgotten” her like a towel.

I found her behind the closed snack stand, curled between two trash bins, trembling and covered in sand and tears. When she saw me, she did not run toward me. She flinched.

“Mama,” she whispered. “Grandma said not to tell.”

I wrapped my jacket around her and saw the dark marks around her wrists. They were too even to look like a normal fall. My stomach twisted as she pulled her hands against her chest.

Then she pointed toward the service road behind the beach. Beachvacation packages

“A man took me over there. Aunt Chloe saw. Grandpa said I was ruining everything.”