In the back seat, her six-year-old daughter Mila sat too still.
The kind of stillness that didn’t belong to children—no swinging legs, no humming, no fingers tapping the window. Just her small hands folded neatly in her lap, eyes fixed on the road ahead as if she’d already memorized where they were going.
“Sweetheart?” her mother said gently, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.
Mila didn’t answer right away. A passing streetlight slid across her face, turning her expression briefly gold, then shadow.
“I saw it again,” Mila finally whispered.
Her mother’s grip tightened slightly on the steering wheel. “Saw what again?”
Mila’s gaze didn’t move. “The man by the trees. The one who follows us but doesn’t walk.”
