Through His Eyes

XIX

"I know what I heard, Thomas," Mrs. Martin insisted as they left the parking lot after the show. "It was Tia, I swear it was. She was yelling for us."
Mr. Martin sighed sadly. "It couldn't be her," he said in monotone. "We had security check everywhere for her. She wasn't there."
"But she was," Mrs. Martin argued, her throat thick with unshed tears. "My baby was there."
Mr. Martin reached over and took his wife's hand in his. "It's gonna be okay."
Mrs. Martin snatched her hand away. "Don't comfort me like I'm a two-year-old, Thomas. I know what I heard and the fact that you're not believing me is really making me frustrated."
Mr. Martin took a deep breath to calm himself down. The last thing he wanted was another fight with his wife. "I did believe you. I had security look all over the backstage area after you told me you heard her, but they couldn't find her, okay?"
"But, Thomas-"
"End of discussion," Mr. Martin exploded making his wife lean away from him. "I'm not about to argue with you! She wasn't there, get over it!"
Huffing like the two-year-old she just scolded her husband for making her feel like, she crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm not gonna get over it," she mumbled under her breath.

"How many hours until Laredo?"
"About an hour and a half."
Tia felt a pair of hands knead through her hair as she opened her eyes. When had they loaded into the car? When did the show end? What time was it now?
"Good, you're awake," Dean whispered in her ear. "I got worried because you were supposed to wake up hours ago."
Tia frowned. She couldn't seem to remember much before she fell asleep. All she knew was that she threw a fit of some kind, but she didn't know what it was about or how it started.
"What happened?" Tia asked.
"You don't remember?" Dean questioned. Tia shook her head. "Oh, well, as soon as we got into our locker room you passed out on the couch. You must've been really tired."
Tia heard a snort from one of the others from the front seats. Maybe the fit she supposedly thought she threw was from a dream. "Oh, okay," she said with a yawn and she snuggled more into Dean's thigh. "I'm hungry."
"There's a restaurant coming up in about 20 minutes that we'll stop by to get dinner, okay?" Roman calls out.
"Alright," Tia replies.
Now that she was awake and her brain was on again, she felt like there was more to the story than Dean explained to her. Her tantrum couldn't have been in her imagination because she didn't have a dream. It was starting to come back to her. Dean had spotted her parents and swept her up into the locker room. She remembered Dean's frustration and how she called out to her parents. She even remembered the dull pain in her chest once she realized how much she missed them and how her life was before she was taken away from it. Dean had locked her in the bathroom for a couple of minutes before he came back and slapped a rag to her face. Then things started to get blurry. Wait a second. That cloth had a familiar pungent smell that Tia, no matter how hard she tried, couldn't put a finger on.
"You okay?" Dean asked her.
Tia screamed.