I want to tell you what I saw first, and then I want to tell you what I did about it, because the order matters for understanding why I would do exactly the same thing again. It was 4:17 PM on a Tuesday afternoon in March. I was in the Trader Joe's parking lot in the Highland Park neighborhood of Dallas, putting four bags of groceries into the back of my SUV. The car parked next to me — a maroon Toyota 4Runner, one space over — had its driver's side window down, the engine off. A woman
was sitting in the driver's seat with her phone pressed to her ear, crying so hard her body was shaking. That alone did not make me do anything. I want to be clear about that. People cry in parking lots. That is, on its own, none of my business. What made me do something was what I saw when I turned to close my trunk and glanced into the 4Runner's back seat. A small boy, maybe three years old, was strapped into a car seat directly behind her. He was awake. He was quiet. He was holding his right hand up to his face, rubbing a red welt that went across his left cheekbone from his ear to the bridge of his nose.