Four-year-old Addie held on to one very specific memory to this day, because it never made sense.
On a grey day in winter, while two of the girls played together in the sandbox in the park and the other just kept kicking their structures down, an unfamiliar man approached them silently. Out of nowhere, he lifted Heidi up off the ground and stared into her eyes, apparently having no ill intent, but looking oddly somber. The poor thing was too surprised to react.
It was only for a moment. He set her down back in the sand, looking as solemn as before, and briskly walked a few paces away to a large tree, where he knelt down to pick up a rock with a particularly pointed edge and proceeded to scratch a series of symbols crudely into the bark. That odd sadness still in his eyes as he walked away with no explanation.
Of course, the little curious one ran over to read what he’d written.
A year later, as all of the girls were adapting much more happily to their new home, the carved message that had remained there vanished under a series of deliberate, heavy scratches, but she still remembered what it had said.
7-12-84.
She still wonders what that meant.
She wonders what would’ve been different had it not been crossed out.
