Chapter 26 #2
I don’t remember dialing. I just remember Gardner’s voice in my ear.
“Jonah.”
“They took him.” It is all I can get out. “They came to the house. They took him.”
“Who.”
“Cops. Four of them. An emergency temporary order from this morning. Gwen filed an emergency temporary custody petition, and a judge signed it.” The words come out of me like I’m being squeezed. “What the fuck.”
There’s a pause on the other end. The kind that a lawyer takes when she’s calculating which call to make first.
“Okay, Jonah. Stay with me. I’m pulling up the docket right now. Tell me what they said the grounds were.”
“Imminent risk.” I almost choke on it. “They said imminent fucking risk. To his safety. Olivia, I haven’t—”
“I know.”
“I haven’t done anything—”
“I know. Listen to me. I need you to think. The petition was filed last night. To get an emergency order signed at six a.m. and a hearing delayed, she needed evidence that scared a judge. What did she have? Think.”
“I don’t—” I’m pacing. I’m pacing in my front hallway in dress shoes. “I don’t know. I haven’t even seen her since—”
I stop pacing.
The hallway goes very quiet.
I see it. The porch. Her front porch. Two weeks ago. Me standing on the welcome mat, Eli in the car with Zoe. Gwen had her eyebrows up, like I was an inconvenience. Me saying—me saying the thing. If you kidnap my son again, I’ll end you.
I’d meant it as in court. I’d meant it as in legally. I’d meant it as in I’ll spend every last cent I have on lawyers until there’s nothing left of your case.
I hadn’t said any of that out loud. I’d said: I’ll end you.
“Olivia.”
“What?”
“At her house. After—after the school pickup thing. I went to her porch. To talk to her after the cops left.”
“Tell me you didn’t.”
“I told her if she kidnapped Eli again, I’d end her.”
The silence on the line is different now.
“Jonah.”
“It was on her porch.”
“Was there a Ring?”
“I don’t—I don’t know. Probably. Everyone has one. I have one. I—Olivia. I have one. I never thought—”
“Jonah.” Her voice has gone too calm, which is how I know things are very bad.
“I’m making calls. I am making calls right now.
Do not, under any circumstances, leave the house.
Do not call Gwen. Do not call anyone in her family.
Do not call Eli. Do not post anything. Do not text.
I’m calling you back in twenty minutes.”
“What are we—”
“Twenty minutes.”
She hangs up.
I stand in the hallway with the phone in my hand.
I look up.
The coffee table in the living room has the Death Star on it. Half built. Equatorial trench complete. The little plastic baggie of the next sub-assembly’s pieces sits open, three pieces laid out next to it in a neat row. Eli lays them out because Eli is a man who likes a plan.
And the kitchen. The island. Three stools. The one in the middle has a smear of dried syrup on the seat from the pancake war. I’ve been meaning to wipe it down.
I have to get out of this room.
I move, and don’t know where I’m going. I get to the front door and I open it. I step onto the porch, and the breezy April air hits my face. I sit down on the top step because my knees aren’t going to keep doing what knees are supposed to do.
I put my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands.
I’d said it. I had stood on her porch and looked her in the eye and said the words “I’ll end you” to the grandmother of my child, and she’d stood there and let me say it, gladly.
Then she’d closed the door, and I’d walked back to my car feeling like I’d done it all right, like I’d stood up for my kid, like I wasn’t the guy who let her get away with shit.
And the whole time, there was probably a little plastic eye on the doorframe above my head, recording every word, and she’d walked back inside and downloaded that clip and put it in a folder.
I’ll end you. I’d handed her the knife.
That she held onto it until the day of the hearing.
Jesus, I need Zoe’s arms wrapped around me, talking to me in that way she does that takes away some of the burn. My hand shakes, fighting off the urge to call her, just to listen to the sound of her voice.
I don’t hear my father come out. I just become aware, after some amount of time, that there’s a hand on the back of my neck. Heavy. Calloused. The hand of a man who spent forty years coaching teenagers and breaking up fights.
He doesn’t say anything.
The porch boards are cold through my dress pants. Somewhere down the street, a leaf blower starts up, because the world has the audacity to continue. Eli is holding Flash, looking out a window on his way to Boise.
My father doesn’t say anything for a long time. I’m grateful for it. What’s there to say?
I open my mouth. “I have to get him back.” My voice isn’t loud.
“Then we will.”
That’s it. He doesn’t tell me it’ll be okay. He doesn’t tell me how. He doesn’t even tell me he loves me, which would be too much right now.
I stay on the step. He stays beside me. His hand stays on my neck. I close my eyes and listen for my phone, which is in my pocket, which is going to ring in eighteen minutes.
I try to remember how to breathe like a person who hasn’t just lost his kid from his own porch.