A little girl at Walmart grabbed my tattooed arm and whispered, “Daddy’s trying to hurt Mommy.”

I’m sixty-three, my body mapped with scars and tattoos — souvenirs from Vietnam, highway life, and too many bar fights. I’ve seen the dark side of humanity, but nothing prepared me for the raw fear in a six-year-old’s eyes when she bolted across the cereal aisle and grabbed my arm.

“Please, mister,” she trembled against my denim. “Please pretend you’re my daddy. Don’t let him take me.”

I looked down at tangled brown hair and faint bruises on her thin arms. Then up: a man in his mid-thirties, sweating, flushed, scanning the shelves like a predator.

“Addison!” he barked. “Get over here!”