Lone child at Walmart

Late evening. Dark grey clouds. Lightly gleaming black tar of walmart parking lot.

Me, Divya, Niya and Amey are walking towards our car in skelter.
Amey running in front, Niya running behind him. Divya behind the kids with the walmart cart.
I am walking behind watching the kids and telling them not to run.

I open the car and get Kittu into the car. Niya gets into the car as well from the other side.
I open the trunk, Divya and me and start putting stuff in the car.

I see a chinese boy aged around 6 by himself by the side of the car in front of us.
(Car is facing our car)
He is touching the car and seems to be hiding himself from his parents.
From the way he is touching  the car, the car is his.

Missing children posters in walmart, and the general shadiness of walmarts flash through my mind.

I walk towards him, and asked him - Are you hiding? Are you hiding from your parents?
He shakes his head. But there was fear in his eyes and face now. He was scared. He seemed to have missed his parents for a while now.

Divya called me over. "You might get in trouble for talking to him.".
My tall unsmiling look can make me look a kidnapper I guess.
We looked around for some "officials" whom we can inform. Saw one guy, but he was just the
 cart gatherer. The cart gatherer walks over and pushes carts diagonally through the parking lot.

Divya went over to the kid. "Does your parents know you are here?  Your parents might be searching for you in walmart. Let us go there."

Divya and the boy walk over to walmart. I am standing behind the trunk of my car and watching them.

Divya comes back alone. I ask her: "What did you do?"
"I entrusted the boy to the Walmart official inside the store."
I: "Did he meet the parents?"
Divya: "No idea".

I walked to walmart. Spoke to an "Indian" walmart official, aged around 50.
"My wife just dropped a kid here. Did he find his parents?". He gave me a blank look.
His supervisor, a stout late thirties, responsible looking woman came over and enquired. "How can I help you?". I said: "My wife just dropped a kid here. Where is he now?". She said: "Oh, the parents found him." I said: "Ok.. " and I walked back. "Thank you for your concern",  I heard her say. I could not turn to look at her as I was a bit emotional.

Back to the car. We took our time digesting the incident.
Divya, busy with her phone, but in parallel: "He might have ran out thinking his parents will follow him. We should actually tell his parents so they know that he actually came out of walmart. Otherwise, they might think he was in Walmart all along."

The boy and his parents walked into the car in front of us. They did not have a cart with them The boy was smiling and cheerful. Mom and dad were both very worried and unsmiling.

Divya: "Good, we saw the boy with his parents. Now, we can be at peace. We should probably talk to them so we can tell them that he was standing by his car".Before we could get out of our car, they had already backed out their car and had started to leave. The boy was beaming. Close up.