The police scanner crackled to life.

A 12-year-old girl home alone, a knock on the door, a stranger. When he received no response, he went to the garage door. Opened it.

I stood over the scanner listening to the dispatch cop send out the call to the officers on patrol. My co-worker, who also has a young daughter, joined me.

The voice burst over the scanner, or perhaps it only seemed that way because my mother’s instincts were exploding. Dispatch explained to the patrols already rushing to the home that the girl had called her father and he called the police. I imagined the father, how his heart must have hammered in his chest, how his gut churned. Did he run to his car as he called police? Did he fumble his keys, throw the car into drive and rush headlong to a house that his family had always known only as a safe haven as his imagination played out the worst? I was projecting, of course I was, as my co-worker and I whispered to the police scanner hurry, hurry.

They did.

Police arrived within moments, discovered the garage door open and immediately began canvassing the area. They put out the call to Marshfield, Pembroke, Kingston too. The girl, so young and yet so mature, had been composed enough, more so than most adults could have been, to provide a description of the man – long hair, mid-20s, wearing boots, not sneakers – and his car, an older red sedan with white stripes. The investigation is ongoing.

That day, the girl went to stay with an older friend. That night, I gathered my own children around the table and reminded them to lock the doors and windows when they are home. To call 9-1-1 if someone or something made them uncomfortable, that the police would call me. I told them to stay calm, like that girl, to gather as much information if something should happen, but to do it from behind a locked door. I assured them we live in one of the safest corners of the world, free from war and pestilence, mostly free from crime.

Mostly, but not always.

– Amy MacKinnon