{"id":88,"date":"2026-11-14T16:50:54","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T16:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bestwishdrama.com\/?p=88"},"modified":"2026-11-14T16:50:57","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T16:50:57","slug":"i-stopped-a-man-from-leaving-with-a-crying-3-year-old-and-he-sued-me-for-250000-but-then-a-young-woman-stood-up-in-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bestwishdrama.com\/?p=88","title":{"rendered":"I Stopped a Man From Leaving With a Crying 3-Year-Old, and He Sued Me for $250,000, but Then a Young Woman Stood Up in Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yellow Stickers
\n<\/strong>\u201cHe\u2019s not my daddy! I want my mommy!\u201d
\n<\/span>The little girl couldn\u2019t have been more than three years old. She was crying so hard she could barely breathe, her small chest heaving, her face red and wet and twisted with a kind of fear I hadn\u2019t seen on a child in a long, long time. Both of her hands had reached out and grabbed the front of the blue vest I wore at work, and she was holding on to it with everything she had.
\nThe man carrying her tightened his arms around her and pulled her back against his chest. He was tall and lean, maybe thirty-five, in a gray hoodie and a ball cap pulled low, with a scruff of beard and eyes that never quite settled anywhere. He smiled at me, but the smile didn\u2019t go anywhere near those eyes.
\n\u201cShe\u2019s just tired,\u201d he told me. \u201cI\u2019m her father. Now please move.\u201d
\nMy name is Mavis Keller. I\u2019m sixty-seven years old, and on that Tuesday afternoon in March, I\u2019d been working as a greeter at a big-box store on Rogers Avenue in Fort Smith, Arkansas, for nine years. I stood beside the automatic doors in my blue vest and my comfortable shoes from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, five days a week, saying hello to everybody who came in and goodbye to everybody who left.
\n<\/span>Before that, I spent thirty-one years carrying mail for the United States Postal Service. I walked a route in the Park Hill neighborhood for most of those years, and I knew every dog and every porch and every widow who waited at her mailbox for me just to have somebody to talk to. When I retired at sixty, I thought I\u2019d enjoy the quiet. My husband, Lloyd, had died of a heart attack two years before, and our son lives in Denver and calls on Sundays. I lasted about four months in that empty house on North Thirty-Second Street before the silence started to swallow me.
\nSo I took a job welcoming customers. It wasn\u2019t glamorous, but I enjoyed it more than I can tell you. I liked the people. I liked the old men who came in every morning for coffee and a newspaper, and the young mothers with their carts full of diapers, and the teenagers who rolled their eyes at me and then said goodbye anyway.
\nI kept a roll of yellow smiley-face stickers in my vest pocket. I bought them myself at the Dollar General, five hundred to a roll. Whenever a child came through the door, I\u2019d crouch down as far as my knees would let me and offer one. Some of the children remembered me from week to week and came running in looking for their sticker before their mamas could even get a cart. One little boy named Tavion had a whole collection of them on his lunchbox.
\nMost days were predictable. That was what I liked about them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But one Tuesday afternoon in March, everything changed.<\/p>\n

It was a little after three o\u2019clock. It had been raining all day, a cold, gray spring rain, and the floor by the doors was slick with tracked-in water. I was standing near the automatic doors, wiping a puddle with a mop, when I noticed a man walking fast toward the exit with a little girl in his arms.<\/p>\n

She had curly brown hair pulled up in two puffs on top of her head and bright pink rain boots with little white hearts on them. She was wearing a purple raincoat with the hood down. And she was screaming.<\/p>\n

At first, I thought she was having an ordinary tantrum. Lord knows I\u2019ve seen a thousand of them in nine years at that door. Children get tired and hungry and overwhelmed in a big store, and they scream, and their parents carry them out red-faced and apologizing to everybody they pass.<\/p>\n

Then I heard what she was shouting.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not my daddy! I want my mommy! You\u2019re not my daddy!\u201d<\/p>\n

Something about her voice made me uneasy. It wasn\u2019t a tantrum voice. I raised a son and helped raise four grandchildren, and I know the difference. A tantrum is angry. This little girl wasn\u2019t angry. She was terrified.<\/p>\n

I set the mop against the wall and stepped closer and took out my roll of stickers. I peeled one off and held it out to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cHello, sweetheart,\u201d I said, as gently as I could. \u201cWould you like a smiley face?\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of reaching for the sticker, she grabbed my vest.<\/p>\n

The man gave me a strained smile. \u201cShe\u2019s going through a difficult phase,\u201d he said. \u201cExcuse us.\u201d And he tried to walk around me.<\/p>\n

Her fingers were knotted in the fabric of my vest, and when he moved, she held on and pulled me with them. I took one step with them, and then I planted my feet. I remained near the doorway, between him and the glass.<\/p>\n

\u201cSir,\u201d I said, \u201cshe\u2019s clearly frightened. Would you mind telling me her name?\u201d<\/p>\n

His expression changed. The smile went away completely, like somebody had turned off a light.<\/p>\n

\u201cGet out of my way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s her name?\u201d<\/p>\n

He hesitated. It was only about two seconds. But I was watching his face, and I saw it.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuinn,\u201d he said. \u201cHer name is Quinn. I\u2019m her father.\u201d<\/p>\n

I looked at the little girl. Her face was buried against my vest now, and I could feel her shaking through the fabric.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuinn, sweetheart,\u201d I said. \u201cIs this your daddy?\u201d<\/p>\n

She lifted her head and shook it frantically, back and forth, back and forth, so hard her curly puffs bounced.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo! He took me! He took me from Miss Corliss\u2019s!\u201d<\/p>\n

My stomach tightened.<\/p>\n

The man shifted her higher in his arms, and her fingers came loose from my vest. \u201cShe\u2019s three years old,\u201d he said. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t understand what she\u2019s saying.\u201d Then he leaned toward me, so close I could smell the cigarettes on his breath, and his voice dropped to almost a whisper. \u201cMove, or I\u2019ll move you myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was frightened. I won\u2019t pretend I wasn\u2019t. I\u2019m five foot two and I\u2019ve got arthritis in both knees, and he was a foot taller than me and thirty years younger. But I didn\u2019t step away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to ask my manager to come over,\u201d I said. \u201cJust to make sure everything is all right.\u201d<\/p>\n

I pressed the button on the little radio clipped to my vest and called for a manager to the front entrance. A few moments later, Mr. Darby arrived.<\/p>\n

Chapter Two: Step Aside<\/p>\n

Kyle Darby was thirty-five, the assistant store manager, and he had been at our store for about a year. He was a nice enough young man. He had a wife and a new baby and a district manager breathing down his neck, and he was usually more concerned about customer complaints than anything else. When he came hurrying up the main aisle with his tie flapping, the first thing he looked at was the man, not the child.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs there a problem here?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

The man immediately pulled out his wallet with his free hand and showed him a driver\u2019s license. An Arkansas license, with his picture and a name I\u2019d learn later. Wade Harlan. Then, before Mr. Darby could even finish looking at it, he took out his phone and pulled up a photograph and held it out. It was a picture of himself in a hospital room, holding a newborn baby wrapped in a pink blanket.<\/p>\n

\u201cSee?\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s my daughter. The day she was born. This woman is harassing me. She grabbed my kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t grab anybody,\u201d I said. \u201cShe grabbed me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Darby examined the license and then the photograph. He looked at the man\u2019s face and then at the picture. Quinn was still crying, but quieter now, her face hidden in the man\u2019s shoulder, her little pink rain boots kicking slowly against his side.<\/p>\n

Then Mr. Darby turned toward me.<\/p>\n

\u201cMavis, step aside,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re embarrassing the store.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut she\u2019s saying he took her from someone else\u2019s house,\u201d I said. \u201cMiss Corliss\u2019s. She said he took her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMavis.\u201d His voice was sharp now. A couple of customers had stopped to stare. \u201cMove.\u201d<\/p>\n

I reluctantly stepped aside. I\u2019ll regret that step for the rest of my life, even knowing how it all turned out. I stood there with my back against the cold glass and watched the man carry Quinn through the automatic doors and out into the rain. She lifted her head off his shoulder as they went through, and she looked right at me. Her eyes were huge and brown and full of tears.<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t say anything. She just looked at me.<\/p>\n

But I couldn\u2019t ignore what I\u2019d heard. Thirty-one years carrying mail teaches you to notice things. You notice when a porch light stays on three nights in a row. You notice when the newspapers pile up. You notice when something isn\u2019t right.<\/p>\n

I followed him at a distance. Out the doors, into the rain, across the wet parking lot. I took out my phone, an old flip phone my son kept telling me to replace, and I held it up the way my granddaughter showed me.<\/p>\n

Before he drove away, I managed to photograph his face as he turned around to look back at the store. Then the little girl through the rear window of the car, a silver Nissan sedan, her small face pressed against the glass. Then his license plate, as he pulled out of the parking space. The pictures were blurry from the rain, but I could read every number.<\/p>\n

Then I called 911.<\/p>\n

I stood there in the parking lot in the rain with my blue vest getting soaked and told the dispatcher what had happened. A little girl, maybe three, curly hair, pink rain boots. A man who said he was her father. A little girl who said he wasn\u2019t. Miss Corliss\u2019s. A silver Nissan. I read her the plate number twice, slowly, the way I used to read addresses back to the dispatch office at the post office.<\/p>\n

The dispatcher asked which way he went. I told her north on Rogers Avenue, toward Interstate 540. She told me an officer would come take my statement and to stay where I was.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know whether I\u2019d misunderstood the situation. Maybe he really was her father. Maybe she really was just tired. Maybe I\u2019d made a terrible mistake and frightened a little girl even worse than she was already frightened. I only knew that a terrified child had begged me not to let that man take her away, and I hadn\u2019t been able to stop him.<\/p>\n

An officer came forty minutes later, a young man with a shaved head named Officer Delgado. He wrote down everything I said in a little notebook, and I sent the pictures from my phone to his email, which took me three tries. When he was done, he looked at me for a long moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou did the right thing, ma\u2019am,\u201d he said quietly. \u201cWhatever happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

The following morning, Mr. Darby called me into his office.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a little room in the back of the store, behind the employee break room, with a metal desk and a computer and a poster on the wall about safety in the workplace. He didn\u2019t ask me to sit down. He was standing behind his desk with a piece of paper in his hand, and his face was pale.<\/p>\n

The man had complained to corporate headquarters. He\u2019d called the customer service line the night before and said a store employee had physically blocked him from leaving, grabbed his daughter, followed him into the parking lot, taken pictures of him and his child without permission, and falsely reported him to the police. He said he was going to sue.<\/p>\n

\u201cCorporate called me at seven this morning,\u201d Mr. Darby said. He wouldn\u2019t look at me. \u201cThey pulled the security footage. You stood in front of the exit after I told you to move. You followed a customer to his car. You photographed a minor.\u201d He set the paper down on the desk. \u201cThat\u2019s three violations of company policy, Mavis. They\u2019re terminating you, effective immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

I stood there in that little office in my blue vest. Nine years. Nine years of saying hello and goodbye and handing out yellow smiley faces.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Darby,\u201d I said. \u201cDid they find her? The little girl? Is she all right?\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked up at me then, finally. And something went across his face. Shame, I think.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he said. \u201cNobody told me.\u201d<\/p>\n

After nine years of greeting customers, I was fired for what I\u2019d done. I took off my blue vest and folded it and laid it on his desk. I took the roll of smiley-face stickers out of the pocket first, though. Those were mine. I bought them myself.<\/p>\n

Chapter Three: What the Police Said<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t sleep that night, or the next. I sat at my kitchen table on North Thirty-Second Street with a cup of coffee going cold in front of me and Lloyd\u2019s old radio playing gospel music low, and I thought about that little girl. Her pink rain boots. Her hands in my vest. The way she looked at me through the automatic doors.<\/p>\n

On Thursday afternoon, my phone rang. It was a woman who said she was a detective with the Fort Smith Police Department. Her name was Detective Renee Holloway, and she said she was calling about the report I made on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs she all right?\u201d I asked, before she could say anything else. \u201cThe little girl. Quinn. Is she all right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Detective Holloway was quiet for a second. \u201cMa\u2019am, I can\u2019t tell you very much,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s an open matter, and there\u2019s a minor involved. But I can tell you this. The child is safe. She\u2019s with her mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

I sat down hard in my kitchen chair. I put my hand over my mouth.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour call came in about four minutes after another call,\u201d the detective went on carefully. \u201cAnd your photographs helped us locate the vehicle. An Arkansas state trooper stopped it on Interstate 40 near the Oklahoma line about an hour later.\u201d She paused. \u201cI\u2019m not supposed to tell you that much. But I thought you ought to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWas he her father?\u201d I asked. \u201cWas he telling the truth about that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Another pause. \u201cI can\u2019t discuss that, ma\u2019am,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIs he in jail?\u201d<\/p>\n

The longest pause yet. \u201cNo, ma\u2019am,\u201d she said finally. \u201cNot at this time.\u201d I heard something in her voice. Frustration, maybe. \u201cIt\u2019s complicated. That\u2019s all I can say.\u201d<\/p>\n

When we hung up, I sat at my kitchen table for a long time. The child was safe. She was with her mother. That was all that mattered. I\u2019d lost my job, and I didn\u2019t know how I was going to explain it to my son, and I didn\u2019t know what I was going to do with my days now. But that little girl was home with her mama, and if I had to do it all over again, I\u2019d stand in that doorway every single time.<\/p>\n

I thought that was the end of it.<\/p>\n

It was the beginning.<\/p>\n

Chapter Four: The Envelope<\/p>\n

Three weeks later, a man knocked on my front door at seven in the morning.<\/p>\n

He was young and polite and wore a windbreaker, and he asked if I was Mavis Ellen Keller. When I said yes, he handed me a thick white envelope and said, \u201cMa\u2019am, you\u2019ve been served,\u201d and walked back to his car before I could say a word.<\/p>\n

I opened it at the kitchen table. Inside was a stack of papers, thirty-one pages, stapled at the corner. At the top of the first page, in big black letters, it said: IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF SEBASTIAN COUNTY, ARKANSAS. WADE A. HARLAN, PLAINTIFF, V. MAVIS E. KELLER, DEFENDANT.<\/p>\n

He was suing me.<\/p>\n

I read it three times. I didn\u2019t understand most of the words. Defamation. False imprisonment. Intentional infliction of emotional distress. Invasion of privacy. It said I had falsely and maliciously accused him of kidnapping his own daughter. It said I had physically restrained him from leaving a public place. It said I had taken unauthorized photographs of him and his child and given them to the police, causing him to be stopped on the interstate at gunpoint by an Arkansas state trooper in front of his daughter. It said he had suffered humiliation, emotional anguish, damage to his reputation, and lost wages.<\/p>\n

On the last page, there was a number. He was asking for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.<\/p>\n

I sat at Lloyd\u2019s kitchen table with those papers in my hands and I shook.<\/p>\n

Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I don\u2019t have two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I\u2019ve never had anything close to it. I have my postal pension, which is about eighteen hundred a month, and my Social Security, which is about thirteen hundred. I have this house, which Lloyd and I paid off in 2009 and which is worth maybe a hundred and ten thousand dollars on a good day. I had forty-one thousand dollars in a savings account at Arvest Bank, which was supposed to be for my funeral and for my grandkids\u2019 college.<\/p>\n

If I lost, they could take the house. They could take everything.<\/p>\n

I called my son in Denver. Ray\u2019s a pharmacist, and he works twelve-hour shifts, and I\u2019d never once in his life called him during the workday. He picked up on the first ring, scared.<\/p>\n

\u201cMama? What\u2019s wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n

I told him everything. The little girl. The doorway. Mr. Darby. The firing. The envelope. I hadn\u2019t told him any of it before, not even the firing. I\u2019d been too ashamed.<\/p>\n

He was quiet on the phone for a long time. Then he said, \u201cMama, you need a lawyer. Today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t afford a lawyer, Ray.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got three kids and a mortgage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMama,\u201d he said. \u201cYou stood in a doorway for a little girl you didn\u2019t know. I\u2019m going to stand in one for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chapter Five: Harold<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t let Ray pay for a lawyer. I didn\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n

The next Sunday, after church at First Baptist on Grand Avenue, I sat in the fellowship hall with a cup of coffee and a piece of pound cake I couldn\u2019t eat, and Harold Vaughn sat down across from me. Harold is seventy-nine and has been a member of our church for fifty years. He practiced law in Fort Smith for forty-six of them, mostly real estate and wills and the occasional lawsuit, and he retired seven years ago when his wife got sick. She died last spring.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d heard. Everybody at church had heard. Fort Smith is a city of ninety thousand people, but First Baptist is a small town of its own.<\/p>\n

\u201cMavis,\u201d he said. \u201cI hear you\u2019re in some trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

I nodded. I couldn\u2019t speak.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you have a lawyer?\u201d<\/p>\n

I shook my head.<\/p>\n

He set down his coffee cup. \u201cYou do now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHarold, I can\u2019t pay you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t ask you to,\u201d he said. \u201cI still have my license. I still have my books. I still have about twenty good hours a week left in me.\u201d He smiled a little. \u201cAnd I\u2019m bored out of my mind since Margaret passed. Bring me the papers tomorrow. Ten o\u2019clock. My kitchen table.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went through every page of that lawsuit at his kitchen table on Monday morning with his reading glasses on and a yellow legal pad beside him. He made notes. He asked me a hundred questions. What exactly did I say to the man? Did I ever touch him? Did I touch the child? Who touched whom first? How long was I standing in the doorway? Did I ever use the word kidnap?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cI never said kidnap. I never said that word one time. I told the 911 operator what the little girl said. That he wasn\u2019t her daddy. That he took her from Miss Corliss\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harold nodded slowly and wrote it down.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s the thing, Mavis,\u201d he said, when we were done. He took off his glasses. \u201cIn Arkansas, when you make a report to the police in good faith, it\u2019s generally protected. Privileged, we call it. You can\u2019t be sued for defamation just for calling 911 and telling them what you saw and heard. Not if you were honest about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen why is he suing me?\u201d<\/p>\n

Harold looked at the lawsuit for a long time. \u201cI don\u2019t know yet,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I\u2019ve seen a lot of lawsuits in forty-six years. And I\u2019ve learned that sometimes people don\u2019t sue to win. They sue to punish. They sue to scare somebody into silence.\u201d He tapped the last page with his pen. \u201cTwo hundred and fifty thousand dollars against a sixty-seven-year-old retired mail carrier. That\u2019s not a lawsuit. That\u2019s a message.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA message to who?\u201d<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t answer that. He just put his glasses back on.<\/p>\n

Harold filed a motion asking the judge to throw the case out, based on the privilege for reporting to police. The judge, a woman named Patricia Haskins who\u2019d been on the bench in Sebastian County for twelve years, read it carefully. In June, she denied it.<\/p>\n

Harold explained it to me at his kitchen table. Wade Harlan\u2019s lawyer had argued that it wasn\u2019t just about the 911 call. He claimed I had physically blocked his client in the store, grabbed his daughter, and refused to let him leave. That was false imprisonment, he said, and it didn\u2019t matter what I said to the police afterward. The judge said those were disputed facts, and a jury would have to decide them.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo there\u2019s going to be a trial,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s going to be a trial,\u201d Harold said. \u201cIn October.\u201d He looked at me over his glasses. \u201cMavis, I\u2019m going to be honest with you. Juries are unpredictable. The security footage shows you standing in front of that door after your manager told you to move. It shows the little girl holding on to you. But there\u2019s no sound on it. A jury could look at that and see a grandma protecting a child. Or they could see a busybody who wouldn\u2019t mind her own business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chapter Six: The Deposition<\/p>\n

In August, I was deposed.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a fancy word for being questioned under oath before a trial. It happened in a conference room at the law office of Wade Harlan\u2019s attorney, a big firm downtown on Garrison Avenue with glass walls and leather chairs. His lawyer was a man named Brent Talley, about fifty, with silver hair and a voice like warm syrup. He was very polite to me. That frightened me more than if he\u2019d been rude.<\/p>\n

Harold sat beside me the whole time. He\u2019d told me the night before to answer every question honestly, to keep my answers short, and to never guess.<\/p>\n

Mr. Talley asked me questions for three and a half hours.<\/p>\n

He asked me how long I\u2019d worked at the store. He asked me about my training. He asked me whether the store\u2019s policy permitted greeters to physically prevent customers from leaving. He asked me whether I\u2019d ever been trained in recognizing child abduction. He asked me whether I knew Mr. Harlan, whether I\u2019d ever seen him before, whether I knew the little girl.<\/p>\n

Then he asked me whether it was possible that a three-year-old child might say \u201cyou\u2019re not my daddy\u201d because she was angry at her father for making her leave the store.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything\u2019s possible,\u201d I said. \u201cBut I raised a son and helped raise four grandchildren. I know the difference between a mad child and a scared one. That child was scared.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you\u2019re not a child psychologist, Mrs. Keller.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, sir,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m a grandmother.\u201d<\/p>\n

He smiled. Harold put his hand on my arm under the table.<\/p>\n

Wade Harlan was there too. He sat at the end of the long table beside his lawyer, in a pressed shirt and a tie this time, clean-shaven, with his hair cut short. He looked like a different man than the one in the gray hoodie. He looked like a Sunday school teacher. He never said a word the whole three and a half hours. He just watched me.<\/p>\n

When it was over, and we were packing up to leave, he stood up and walked around the end of the table toward me. Harold stepped between us without a word.<\/p>\n

Wade Harlan stopped. He looked at me past Harold\u2019s shoulder. And he smiled that same smile from the store, the one that didn\u2019t go anywhere near his eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should have minded your own business, Mrs. Keller,\u201d he said quietly. \u201cYou\u2019d still have a job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then he walked out.<\/p>\n

Mr. Darby was deposed the following week. Harold went. I didn\u2019t. When Harold came back, he told me Mr. Darby had testified that he\u2019d told me three times to move. That I\u2019d refused twice. That the child had been holding on to my vest. That Mr. Harlan had shown a valid driver\u2019s license and a photograph of himself holding a newborn.<\/p>\n

\u201cWas he sorry?\u201d I asked. \u201cMr. Darby?\u201d<\/p>\n

Harold thought about it. \u201cHe looked like a man who hasn\u2019t slept well since March,\u201d he said. \u201cBut he told the truth. Every word of it. Even the parts that made him look bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chapter Seven: Miss Corliss<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t stop thinking about the little girl.<\/p>\n

All that summer, while Harold prepared for trial, I thought about her. I thought about her pink rain boots and her curly puffs and the way she looked at me through the glass. The detective had said she was safe, with her mother. But nobody would tell me anything else. Not the police. Not the prosecutor\u2019s office. Harold called both of them, and they both said it was a confidential matter involving a minor.<\/p>\n

So I did what I used to do on my mail route when something didn\u2019t sit right. I started asking around.<\/p>\n

Miss Corliss\u2019s. That was what Quinn had shouted. He took me from Miss Corliss\u2019s. I looked it up in the phone book and on the internet with my granddaughter\u2019s help on a video call. There was a Corliss Washington who ran a licensed home daycare on North O Street, about two miles from the store. Little Lambs Child Care. Ages six weeks to five years.<\/p>\n

I drove over there on a Tuesday afternoon in September. It was a little yellow house with a chain-link fence around the yard and a swing set and a sandbox and a plastic playhouse shaped like a castle. There were children playing in the yard. A woman about sixty, heavyset, with gray braids and a whistle on a lanyard, was sitting on the porch steps watching them.<\/p>\n

I stopped at the gate. She looked up at me. And her face changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re her,\u201d she said. \u201cThe lady from the store.\u201d<\/p>\n

I nodded.<\/p>\n

She got up off the steps slowly and came down to the gate. She looked at me for a long time. Then she opened the gate and let me in, and she sat me down on her porch swing while the children played in the yard, and she told me what she could.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe came on a Tuesday,\u201d she said. \u201cAbout two-thirty. In the rain. Knocked on my door and said he was her daddy, there to pick her up early for a doctor\u2019s appointment. He had a driver\u2019s license. He had his name on her birth certificate. He knew her birthday and her middle name.\u201d Corliss shook her head. \u201cI\u2019d never seen him before. Her mama always picks her up. But he had the papers. And she has his last name on my sign-in sheet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou let him take her,\u201d I said. Not accusing. Just understanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe screamed,\u201d Corliss said, and her voice broke. \u201cShe screamed when she saw him. She ran and hid behind my couch. He went back there and picked her up, and she was kicking and screaming, and I said wait, let me call her mama first. And he said he\u2019d already talked to her mama, it was fine, and he walked right out my door with her. I was on the phone with her mama before his car got to the corner.\u201d<\/p>\n

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer mama called the police. And then they told me another call had come in. From a lady at the store. With a license plate.\u201d She looked at me. \u201cThat was you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIs she all right?\u201d I asked. \u201cQuinn? Is she really all right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Corliss was quiet for a long time.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s alive,\u201d she said finally. \u201cShe\u2019s with her mama. That\u2019s all I can tell you. They don\u2019t come here anymore. Her mama took her out the next week and they moved. I don\u2019t know where. She won\u2019t tell anybody. She\u2019s scared to death.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cScared of what?\u201d<\/p>\n

Corliss looked out at the children in her yard. \u201cOf him,\u201d she said. \u201cShe\u2019s been scared of him for three years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before I left, I asked Corliss for a piece of paper. She brought me a sheet of construction paper from her craft table, yellow, and a crayon, because that was all she had handy. I sat on her porch swing and wrote a letter to a woman I\u2019d never met.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember exactly what I wrote. Something like this. Dear Quinn\u2019s mama. My name is Mavis Keller. I\u2019m the lady from the store. I just want you to know I think about your little girl every day. I\u2019m sorry I couldn\u2019t stop him at the door. I tried. I\u2019m being sued now, but don\u2019t you worry about that. That\u2019s my business, not yours. I just wanted you to know somebody was on Quinn\u2019s side. God bless you both.<\/p>\n

I folded it up and peeled a yellow smiley-face sticker off my roll and stuck it on the front to seal it. I gave it to Corliss.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you ever see her again,\u201d I said. \u201cOr if you ever have a way to get it to her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corliss took it. She held it against her chest. She didn\u2019t promise anything.<\/p>\n

Chapter Eight: The First Day of Trial<\/p>\n

The trial began on a Monday morning in the middle of October, in Courtroom 2 of the Sebastian County Courthouse on South Sixth Street. It\u2019s an old limestone building with tall windows and wooden pews in the gallery and a big brass seal of the State of Arkansas on the wall behind the judge\u2019s bench.<\/p>\n

I wore my church dress, navy blue with little white flowers. Ray flew in from Denver the night before and sat in the front row of the gallery behind me with his wife. Half of First Baptist came. They filled three pews. A few of my old regulars from the store came too, the coffee men and a young mother named Shaniqua whose son Tavion had a lunchbox covered in my stickers.<\/p>\n

Harold sat beside me at the defense table in a brown suit that must have been thirty years old. He had his yellow legal pad and his reading glasses and a stack of files tied with string. He patted my hand once when we sat down and said, \u201cBreathe, Mavis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across the aisle, at the plaintiff\u2019s table, sat Wade Harlan and Brent Talley. Wade Harlan was wearing a navy suit this time, with a white shirt and a red tie, and his hair was neatly combed. He looked like a man running for city council. He didn\u2019t look at me once.<\/p>\n

The morning was jury selection. Twelve people from all over Sebastian County, a schoolteacher and a truck driver and a retired nurse and a young man who worked at the Gerber plant, and others. Mr. Talley asked them whether they believed in personal responsibility. Harold asked them whether they had grandchildren.<\/p>\n

After lunch came opening statements. Mr. Talley went first.<\/p>\n

He stood in front of the jury box in his good suit and told them a story. A loving father, picking up his little daughter for a doctor\u2019s appointment. Stopping at a big-box store to buy her a snack. A tired, cranky toddler, throwing a tantrum like every toddler does. And a nosy store greeter who wouldn\u2019t mind her own business. Who blocked the door. Who grabbed his child. Who followed him into the parking lot and took pictures of him and his baby without permission, and then called the police and told them he was a kidnapper.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd because of Mrs. Keller,\u201d Mr. Talley said, \u201cmy client was pulled over on Interstate 40 by an Arkansas state trooper with his gun drawn. In front of his three-year-old daughter. He was handcuffed on the side of the highway. His daughter watched it. And she still has nightmares about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked at me. The whole jury looked at me.<\/p>\n

\u201cMrs. Keller is going to tell you she was just trying to help,\u201d he said. \u201cBut good intentions don\u2019t give anybody the right to destroy a father\u2019s reputation. That\u2019s what this case is about.\u201d<\/p>\n

He sat down. Wade Harlan was looking at his hands on the table. His shoulders were shaking a little, like he was trying not to cry.<\/p>\n

Harold stood up slowly. He buttoned his old brown jacket. He walked over to the jury box, and he started to talk.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t get very far.<\/p>\n

Because that was when a young woman in the back row of the gallery rose from her seat.<\/p>\n

Chapter Nine: Kendra<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t see her at first. I heard the courtroom go quiet behind me, a strange, sudden silence, and I heard Ray say \u201cMama,\u201d very softly, and I turned around in my chair.<\/p>\n

She was standing in the last pew, by the big wooden doors. She was maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven, small and slender, with brown skin and her hair pulled back in a tight bun. She was wearing a plain black dress and no jewelry. She was holding a manila folder against her chest with both arms, the way you\u2019d hold a shield.<\/p>\n

And pinned to the front of her dress, right over her heart, was a yellow smiley-face sticker.<\/p>\n

Judge Haskins looked up from her bench over her reading glasses. \u201cMa\u2019am,\u201d she said. \u201cThe court is in session. Please be seated.\u201d<\/p>\n

The young woman didn\u2019t sit. She stood there in the back of the courtroom, and I could see she was trembling all over, from her shoulders to her knees. She looked at the plaintiff\u2019s table. At Wade Harlan, who had turned around in his chair and gone completely white.<\/p>\n

Then she looked at me.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour Honor,\u201d she said. Her voice was small but it carried all the way to the front of that old room. \u201cMy name is Kendra Lowe. I\u2019m Quinn\u2019s mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

The courtroom erupted. People in the gallery turned in their seats and whispered. Somebody from First Baptist said \u201cLord Jesus\u201d out loud. Mr. Talley stood up so fast his chair fell over behind him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour Honor, I object,\u201d he said. \u201cThis person is not on any witness list. This is a deliberate disruption of\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Judge Haskins banged her gavel. Once. Twice. The courtroom went quiet.<\/p>\n

She looked at Kendra Lowe for a long time over her glasses. Then she looked at Mr. Talley. Then at Harold.<\/p>\n

\u201cCounsel,\u201d she said. \u201cApproach the bench. Both of you.\u201d She turned to the jury. \u201cLadies and gentlemen, we\u2019re going to take a short recess. Please go with the bailiff to the jury room. Don\u2019t discuss the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

The jury filed out. The bailiff, a big gray-haired man named Leon, walked to the back of the courtroom and stood beside Kendra Lowe. He didn\u2019t touch her. He just stood there, like he was guarding her.<\/p>\n

Harold and Mr. Talley went up to the bench. They talked with the judge for a long time in low voices. I couldn\u2019t hear any of it. I sat at the defense table with my hands folded and looked at the young woman in the back row with the smiley-face sticker on her dress.<\/p>\n

She was looking back at me. She was crying, silently. And she lifted one hand and touched the sticker. Like she was making sure I saw it.<\/p>\n

My sticker. From the letter. The one I wrote on yellow construction paper on Corliss Washington\u2019s porch swing.<\/p>\n

Wade Harlan was watching her too. He\u2019d turned all the way around in his chair. His face was gray. His hands were gripping the edge of the plaintiff\u2019s table so hard his knuckles were white.<\/p>\n

After fifteen minutes, Judge Haskins called a recess until the next morning. She asked Harold and Mr. Talley to come to her chambers. And she asked Kendra Lowe to come too.<\/p>\n

Chapter Ten: What Kendra Said<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t hear what was said in chambers. Harold told me later, at his kitchen table that night, with Ray beside me.<\/p>\n

Kendra Lowe had brought a manila folder. In it were three things. The first was a certified copy of a custody order from the Sebastian County Circuit Court, Domestic Relations Division, dated two years earlier. It gave Kendra sole legal and physical custody of Quinn Harlan Lowe. It gave Wade Harlan supervised visitation only, at a state-approved visitation center, two hours every other Saturday. And it said, in black and white, that he was not to remove the child from any school, daycare, or residence without the express written consent of the mother.<\/p>\n

The second was a copy of an order of protection, issued fourteen months before, after Wade Harlan showed up at Kendra\u2019s apartment at two in the morning and kicked in her door. It protected Kendra and Quinn both. It had expired eleven days before he walked into Little Lambs Child Care. Kendra had filed to renew it. The hearing hadn\u2019t been scheduled yet.<\/p>\n

The third was a stack of text messages, printed out. From Wade Harlan to Kendra Lowe. Hundreds of them, going back two years. Harold wouldn\u2019t tell me what most of them said. He only told me about one, sent three days before the day at the store.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll never see her again. I\u2019ll take her somewhere you\u2019ll never find her.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was taking her to Oklahoma,\u201d Harold said quietly. \u201cAnd then on west. The trooper found a duffel bag in the trunk with her clothes in it. And two thousand dollars in cash. And a birth certificate.\u201d He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. \u201cIf you hadn\u2019t called in that license plate, Mavis, he\u2019d have been across the state line before anybody knew which way he went.\u201d<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t speak. Ray put his arm around me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen why didn\u2019t they charge him?\u201d Ray asked. \u201cWhy wasn\u2019t he in jail?\u201d<\/p>\n

Harold sighed. \u201cBecause the protective order had lapsed,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause he\u2019s on the birth certificate, and the custody order hadn\u2019t been entered in the state crime computer yet. A clerk\u2019s error. Because he told the trooper he had permission. And because Kendra wouldn\u2019t testify.\u201d He looked at me. \u201cShe was afraid. He\u2019d threatened her. Said if she ever went to court against him, he\u2019d find her and finish it. So the prosecutor\u2019s office said they couldn\u2019t make the case without her. And they let him go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then he sued me,\u201d I said slowly.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then he sued you,\u201d Harold said. \u201cFor two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. In a public courtroom. Where he knew she\u2019d hear about it.\u201d He shook his head. \u201cI think he was trying to send her a message, Mavis. Look what happens to people who get in my way. Even a sixty-seven-year-old grandma who hands out stickers.\u201d<\/p>\n

I sat there at Harold\u2019s kitchen table and thought about Wade Harlan\u2019s face at the deposition. You should have minded your own business, Mrs. Keller.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo why did she come?\u201d I asked. \u201cIf she was so afraid. Why today?\u201d<\/p>\n

Harold reached into his briefcase. He took out something and laid it on the kitchen table in front of me.<\/p>\n

It was a piece of yellow construction paper, folded in half, soft and creased from being handled many, many times. The crayon writing on it was smudged. The yellow smiley-face sticker that sealed it was gone, and I knew exactly where it was.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe showed this to the judge,\u201d Harold said. \u201cShe said Corliss Washington found her at a women\u2019s shelter in Van Buren in August and gave it to her. She said she\u2019s read it every night since. She said she couldn\u2019t sleep, thinking about an old woman getting sued for standing in a doorway for her baby.\u201d He tapped the paper. \u201cShe said, if Mrs. Keller could stand up to him with nothing but a sticker, I can stand up to him with a folder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chapter Eleven: Afterward<\/p>\n

On Tuesday morning, before the jury came back in, Brent Talley stood up in Courtroom 2 and moved to dismiss the lawsuit. With prejudice, which Harold told me means it can never be filed again. He did it in a flat, tired voice, without looking at his client.<\/p>\n

Wade Harlan wasn\u2019t at the plaintiff\u2019s table. He hadn\u2019t come.<\/p>\n

Judge Haskins granted the motion. Then she looked at me over her glasses, from her bench, for a long moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cMrs. Keller,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t usually say anything personal from the bench. But I\u2019m going to make an exception.\u201d She took off her glasses. \u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was all. She banged her gavel and the case was over.<\/p>\n

Wade Harlan was arrested eleven days later, in a motel in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. Kendra Lowe walked into the Sebastian County Prosecuting Attorney\u2019s office the morning after the trial ended and said she was ready to testify. The prosecutor charged him with interference with court-ordered custody, a felony in Arkansas when the child is taken toward another state, and with violating the terms of his supervised visitation. A judge renewed the protective order, this time for ten years. He pleaded guilty in February. He\u2019s serving four years at the Department of Correction in Pine Bluff.<\/p>\n

The store called me in November.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t Mr. Darby. It was a woman from corporate in Bentonville, a vice president of something, with a very careful voice. She said they\u2019d learned about the outcome of the lawsuit. She said they\u2019d reviewed my termination. She said the company had concluded I\u2019d acted in a manner consistent with the values of the organization, even if not with the letter of its policies, and they\u2019d like to offer me my job back. With back pay, from March to November. Fourteen thousand, three hundred dollars.<\/p>\n

I thought about it for a long time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to come back,\u201d I said finally. \u201cBut I\u2019d like to ask for one thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s that, Mrs. Keller?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like you to change the policy,\u201d I said. \u201cSo the next greeter who sees a scared child can call a manager and the police without getting fired for it. I\u2019d like you to train them. What to look for. What a scared child sounds like.\u201d I paused. \u201cI\u2019d like it to have a name. So people remember.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was quiet on the line for a long time. Then she said she\u2019d see what she could do.<\/p>\n

Mr. Darby came to my house on the Saturday before I went back to work. He stood on my front porch in a windbreaker with his hands in his pockets, and he didn\u2019t ask to come in.<\/p>\n

\u201cMavis,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve thought about it every day since March. Watching you step aside. Watching her look at you through the doors.\u201d He swallowed. \u201cI\u2019ve got a daughter now. She\u2019s seven months old. And I keep thinking, what if it was her? What if somebody told a greeter to step aside?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou told the truth at your deposition,\u201d I said. \u201cHarold said so. Even the parts that made you look bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the least I could do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

I looked at him for a long moment. He was a young man who\u2019d made a mistake because he was scared of his boss, and he\u2019d been paying for it ever since.<\/p>\n

\u201cKyle,\u201d I said. \u201cCome in and have some coffee.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chapter Twelve: A Smiley Face<\/p>\n

I went back to work on the first Monday in December. Same store on Rogers Avenue. Same automatic doors. Same blue vest, with a new name tag that said MAVIS in white letters. Same roll of yellow smiley-face stickers in the pocket.<\/p>\n

The coffee men cheered when I came in. Shaniqua brought Tavion in after school, and he ran up to me with his lunchbox and showed me he\u2019d saved a space on it for a new sticker. Kyle Darby stood at the end of the main aisle and nodded at me, and I nodded back.<\/p>\n

And on the break room wall, in a frame, there was a new policy. Corporate had sent it out to every store in the region. If an associate observes a child in apparent distress who indicates the adult with them is not a parent or guardian, the associate shall immediately notify a manager and contact law enforcement. No associate shall be disciplined for a good-faith report under this policy. At the top, in bold letters, it had a name.<\/p>\n

THE KELLER PROTOCOL.<\/p>\n

I stood there in the break room and read it three times. Then I went back out to my door.<\/p>\n

Two weeks before Christmas, on a cold Saturday morning, a young woman came through the automatic doors holding a little girl by the hand.<\/p>\n

The little girl was wearing a red winter coat and a knit hat with a pom-pom on top, and on her feet, bright pink rain boots with little white hearts on them. A size bigger than the last ones. Her curly brown hair was pulled up in two puffs that stuck out from under her hat.<\/p>\n

She stopped right inside the doors. She looked up at me.<\/p>\n

I knew her before I knew I knew her. My hand went to my vest pocket.<\/p>\n

\u201cHello, sweetheart,\u201d I said. My voice wasn\u2019t steady. \u201cWould you like a smiley face?\u201d<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t take the sticker. Not at first. She stood there in her pink boots and looked up at my face for a long time, the way she\u2019d looked at me through the glass in March. Then she turned and looked up at her mama.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs that her?\u201d she asked. \u201cThe sticker lady?\u201d<\/p>\n

Kendra Lowe was standing behind her in a gray wool coat, with her hand over her mouth. She nodded.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s her, baby,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s the lady who wouldn\u2019t move.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quinn looked back at me. Then she let go of her mama\u2019s hand and walked up to me and grabbed the front of my blue vest with both hands, the way she did that day. But this time she wasn\u2019t crying. This time she was smiling, a big gap-toothed four-year-old smile.<\/p>\n

\u201cMommy says you stood in the door for me,\u201d she said. \u201cEven when the man said move.\u201d<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t answer her. I just nodded.<\/p>\n

Then Quinn did something I\u2019ll remember for the rest of my life. She reached into the pocket of her red coat and pulled out something small. A sheet of stickers. Not smiley faces. Gold stars, the kind teachers use. She peeled one off with her little fingers, carefully, her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth in concentration.<\/p>\n

And she reached up and stuck it to my blue vest, right over my heart, beside my name tag.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s for you,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause you were brave.\u201d<\/p>\n

I knelt down, as far as my knees would let me, right there in the doorway, with customers going in and out around us. And I peeled a yellow smiley face off my roll and stuck it on the front of her red coat.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s for you,\u201d I said. \u201cBecause you were brave first.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kendra was crying. I was crying. The coffee men at the front table had stopped talking and were watching us, and one of them took off his cap.<\/p>\n

Quinn hugged my neck, quick and hard, the way four-year-olds hug. Then she took her mama\u2019s hand again and pulled her toward the carts, chattering about Christmas presents and her new preschool and her new teacher, Miss Tamara, who has a hamster. At the end of the main aisle, she turned around and waved at me with her whole arm.<\/p>\n

I waved back.<\/p>\n

I still have that gold star. It\u2019s on my vest every day, right over my heart, beside my name tag. People ask me about it sometimes. The new greeters, mostly, young people just starting out. They see it and they ask what it\u2019s for.<\/p>\n

I tell them. I tell them about a little girl in pink rain boots and a man who said move. I tell them about a manager who said step aside, and about the step I took that I\u2019ll always wish I hadn\u2019t. I tell them about a young mother who stood up in the back of a courtroom with a folder held against her chest like a shield, when she was more frightened than anybody in that room.<\/p>\n

And then I tell them the only thing I really know for sure, after sixty-seven years and thirty-one on a mail route and nine at this door.<\/p>\n

When a child tells you she\u2019s scared, believe her. When somebody tells you to step aside, ask yourself who you\u2019re stepping aside for. And if you can\u2019t stop a thing from happening, at least write down the license plate.<\/p>\n

Then I hand them a roll of yellow smiley faces from my pocket, and I send them out to stand at the door.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yellow Stickers \u201cHe\u2019s not my daddy! I want my mommy!\u201d The little girl couldn\u2019t have been more than three years old. She was crying so hard she could barely breathe, … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestwishdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestwishdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestwishdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestwishdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestwishdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bestwishdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89,"href":"https:\/\/bestwishdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/89"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestwishdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestwishdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestwishdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestwishdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}