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“My dad said I need to stay close to you until my mom comes back. He’s afraid a bad person will hurt me.”
While my mom zips the back of my white gown, I stare at the little girl before me.
So innocent.
So loved.
So beautiful.
Her dad is right. There are bad people who do bad things to children.
However, we are at a private venue surrounded by family and close friends. Whether it’s right or not, this is the perfect example of allowing kids to roam freely until corralled at the last possible minute—there’s an assumption that someone is watching them.
Her dad is feeling extra protective today because Winston Jeffries preyed on little girls running around at family events, like weddings, between 1892 and 1901. Nearly a decade of kidnapping. Nearly a decade of long hair hanging from trees in churchyards. Just the hair.
The bodies were never found.
Jeffries was convicted of thirty-seven counts of first-degree murder and hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky, on February 10, 1902 without a single body discovered.
He took the location of the bodies to his grave.
“A bad person, huh?”
The young girl nods, her long, dark curls and pink ribbons bouncing with each tip of her chin.
Her father’s not worried about a mysterious “bad person.” He’s worried his bride might flee at the last second.
This girl has been sent here to keep an eye on me.
But why scare her? Why not just tell her I need help getting dressed? Why send her to deliver the one message that would make me want to kick off my heels, toss aside my veil, and run until my heart gives out?
“Mom, will you give us a minute?” I ask.
She straightens the skirt of my gown. “Sure. I need to check on your dad anyway.”
When it’s just the young girl and me, I bend down so we’re at eye level. “Do you trust me?”
She nods slowly, eyes wide.
“I think your dad is scared. Will you help him not to be so scared?”
Another slow nod.
“It means you have to be brave too. You have to do something really brave and trust me that it’s for the best. Can you do that?”
“I think so,” she whispers.
I riffle through my mom’s bag. She packed everything we could possibly need for any hiccup. My fingers curl around the orange-handled scissors, and I turn back to the girl. “Are you sure you’re brave?”
She stares at the scissors and nods.
