I brought a baseball bat to confront the biker who’d been harassing my daughter. I left his driveway twenty minutes later crying so hard I couldn’t drive.

a shaken daughter, and a stranger who slipped away without asking for thanks. I drove home with the bat still in the trunk and a different understanding of what it means to protect someone—less about swinging, more about seeing, staying, and believing them the first time they say, “I’m not okay.”