My Daughter Sent Police at 2 A.M. Because I Moved Above a Diner With Three Girls Half My Age
The officer had one hand near his radio and the other on the flashlight when I opened the door in my robe.
“Ma’am,” he said gently, “are you Briar Whitcomb?”
Behind him, rain was falling sideways over the alley behind the diner. A patrol car sat with its lights blinking red and blue against the brick wall.
“Yes,” I said. “And unless you’re here for biscuits, I’m fine.”
He looked past me into the little apartment, where three girls in pajama pants were frozen in the hallway like raccoons caught in a porch light.
One was holding a wooden spoon.
One had face cream all over her cheeks.
And one whispered, “Bus Grandma, are we in trouble?”
That was when I knew my daughter had found me.
Kinley had been tracking my phone since supper. She thought her 71-year-old mother had been kidnapped, scammed, or left confused somewhere.
What she found was my phone sitting in a second-floor apartment above a greasy little diner near a community college, surrounded by three young women, a pile of laundry, and a pot of chili big enough to feed a football team.
