Henry had made a fuss when she’d tried to pry him from the tractor seat, and she could only pray that Linden had already left the store and hadn’t heard the commotion or witnessed the humiliating scene of her son rolling on the floor. There was a fine line, she decided, between a child’s inability to cope with his surroundings and just plain bad behavior. Every child has tantrums, she thought, so how does the parent of a child with autism know if the trigger is some inner turmoil or plain, old-fashioned defiance? She looked at Henry’s teary eyes and wanted, more than anything, to understand. She slipped the toy tractor the store owner had given her into his hands, knowing full well that he’d just wanted them to leave. Henry wiped his eyes and studied the little John Deere. Callie was not a fan of bribery, but at the moment it was the only thing that seemed to work. Besides, with Henry, she believed giving him something new to play with could just as easily be characterized as distraction.She opened the car door and the trapped heat rolled out.
