Small Acts
For Exercise

The Walking Dad

August 25, 2026 · Part 7 of 10 · 2 min

Warren stared at the text until the screen dimmed and locked itself. *Is this the walking dad?*

He typed back a single word — *Who's this?* — and the reply came almost instantly.

*Sorry! Wrong thread, meant to send to my sister lol. Ignore!! Everyone in the Cedar Hollow Community group is talking about the dad who walks his kids to school every morning even in the rain, someone posted a pic, it's really sweet 🥺*

He hadn't known about the photo. He didn't own the kind of phone that lived inside Facebook groups, hadn't thought to wonder who might have been watching from a car window on the Tuesday it poured, the Tuesday Junie had insisted on jumping every puddle while Micah held the umbrella crooked over both their heads and Warren carried both backpacks so their homework wouldn't get wet.

Someone had been watching. Someone had taken a picture. Somewhere, without his permission, without his knowledge, Warren Locke had become a story other people were telling about him — a nice one, a warm one, the kind he'd been too proud and too scared to tell himself.

He should have felt relieved. Instead his stomach turned over, because a nice story was still a story, and stories got passed around, and eventually they reached people who knew things — like the fact that his last paycheck had bounced at the corner store, like the fact that his car sat on a lot behind the credit union with a boot on it, like the fact that Junie hadn't eaten a full lunch in a week.

If the town knew the pretty version, how long until it found the whole one?

Yolanda read the messages over his shoulder, quiet for a long moment.

"Maybe that's not the worst thing," she said finally.

"You didn't grow up here," Warren said. "You don't know how this town does pity."

"I know how you're doing it right now," Yolanda said. "Alone, at midnight, scared of the wrong thing."

Before he could answer, the doorbell rang — nine forty at night, no car in the driveway that wasn't theirs anymore, nobody they were expecting.

Warren opened the door to find Ms. Sorrell standing on the porch, out of school clothes, holding a folded piece of paper in both hands like it was something fragile.

"I need to show you something," she said. "Before it goes any further than it already has."

Continue the story Part 8: The Drawing →

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