45. Jordyn
JORDYN
Monday morning. The light slants across the floorboards, illuminating dust motes dancing in the quiet.
Brody sits at the small kitchen table, his head bent in concentration.
He lines up his drawing pencils with the careful attention of a surgeon, ordering them by shade from charcoal grey to pale silver.
The soft scrape of wood on wood is the only sound.
No frantic search for a lost shoe. No last-minute gulp of coffee before rushing out the door.
We are home. The school suggested a day to let the dust settle after the bullying incident, and I agreed.
It should feel like a relief. A stolen day.
But the silence presses in on my ears, heavy and thick.
My coffee sits on the counter, untouched and cold.
My hands fidget with the frayed hem of my hoodie.
Wes’s words echo in my head—You’re not losing us—a solid, unmovable promise.
I hold onto it like a lifeline, but my own history fights back, whispering that every lifeline eventually frays. Every anchor eventually slips.
My phone buzzes on the counter. A sharp, ugly vibration that makes my shoulders tense. An unknown number. I let it go to voicemail. Two minutes later, it buzzes again. A different unknown number. I stare at the screen, my stomach twisting into a familiar knot. I answer.
“Hello?”
A woman’s voice, smooth and polished like river stone, slides into my ear. She’s from a family law practice. She mentions public records, the recent news article, and offers a “free, no-obligation consultation.” She never says his name. She hangs up just as another call comes through.
A man this time, his tone brisk and professional.
He uses words like “representation” and “parental rights.” He says it’s always wise to be prepared, “just in case.” A third call follows before he’s even finished his sentence.
My thumb hovers over the screen, the phone buzzing against my skin like a trapped hornet.
The world Kyle set in motion is already moving, a machine of polite voices and legal jargon churning forward.
It’s not just a threat anymore. It’s a process.
And it’s happening without my permission.
I kill the third call mid-buzz, my thumb jamming the power button until the screen goes black. The quiet that follows is sharp, brittle. I glance at Brody. He’s still lining up pencils, a world away. He’s fine. I’m the one who’s vibrating.
My laptop is already open. An email from the principal glows in my inbox, the subject a chipper, weaponized, Checking In.
The words are a corporate salad of concern.
“Ensure a supportive environment.” “Touch base regarding recent events.” A second email, from a parent I barely know.
Heard there was some drama. Hope you’re okay!
The exclamation points feel like tiny, prodding fingers.
A knock at the front door makes me flinch. My neighbor waves from the front porch, a proprietary smile on her face. I slide the door open just enough to block her view inside.
“Everything alright over there, hon?” She cranes her neck, her gaze darting around the doorframe. “Heard things have been a bit unsettled.”
I lean my weight against the door. “We’re fine.”
“Good. It’s just, with his father trying to get back in the picture… the timing is just so messy, isn’t it?”
The words hang between us, a cloud of sickly-sweet perfume. I watch her lips move, but I don’t hear anything else. The thought doesn’t come in a panic. It arrives quiet and sure, an old friend stepping out of the shadows.
My mind drops the leash. It doesn’t picture a courtroom.
It pictures the open road at three in the morning.
It sees a full tank of gas and two duffel bags in the back seat.
It counts the cash I have tucked in an old boot.
It traces a route west, through towns where our names mean nothing.
I can feel the worn steering wheel in my hands, the steady hum of the engine a lullaby of escape.
It’s a familiar reflex, a muscle memory carved into my bones.
You don’t fight a wildfire. You outrun it.
I close the laptop and slide it into its case. The motion is smooth, practiced. I've done this before. The zipper closes with a soft hiss.
"Just organizing," I murmur to the empty kitchen, though Brody is still at the table. The words taste like chalk in my mouth.
I move to the bedroom, my steps light on the floor.
The dresser drawers slide open without protest. I lift out our clothes—not all of them, just the essentials.
Brody's favorite sensory shirts, the ones without tags.
His weighted blanket. My worn jeans, the hoodie that still smells like home from three towns ago.
Each item gets folded carefully, edges aligned, corners sharp.
Everything fits into neat stacks on the bed.
The important papers come next. Birth certificates, medical records, Brody's IEP documentation.
They slide into a manila folder that's seen too many moves, the edges soft with wear.
My fingers trace the familiar path—social security cards, vaccination records, the custody papers that name only me.
Everything that proves we exist, that we belong to each other, condensed into a single folder that could disappear into a backpack without a trace.
I don't call it packing. It's just... preparation. Getting organized. Being ready.
The bathroom yields travel-sized bottles of shampoo, a toothbrush holder that's designed to collapse. Brody's medications go into a small zip-lock bag, each bottle labeled in my careful handwriting. The routine is mechanical, muscle memory guiding my hands while my mind stays carefully blank.
Back in the living room, I assess what stays and what goes.
The couch we bought secondhand—stays. The coffee table with the wobbly leg—stays.
But Brody's favorite books, the ones he reads when he's overwhelmed, those go into a small box.
His noise-canceling headphones. The fidget cube Tate gave him at the station.
My hands pause on that last item. The plastic is worn smooth where Brody's fingers have worried it, a testament to how much comfort it's brought him. I drop it into the box anyway.
"Mom?"
Brody's voice drifts from the kitchen, soft and careful. I freeze, a stack of his drawings halfway into a folder.
"What are you doing?"
I don't turn around. "Just tidying up, buddy. Making sure everything has a place."
The sound of his chair scraping against the floor tells me he's standing. His footsteps are light, deliberate. He appears in the doorway, his brown eyes taking in the neat stacks, the organized chaos of a life being compressed into portable pieces.
He watches me for a long moment, his head tilted slightly to one side. "Are we moving again?"
The question lands like a stone in still water, sending ripples through the careful calm I've built. His voice is so small, so matter-of-fact. He's asking because he recognizes the signs. Because he's seen this dance before.
"I don't want to leave the firemen."
The words stick in my throat like broken glass. Something in my chest tightens, a knot pulling itself tighter with each breath. My hands pause on the stack of Brody's drawings, fingers trembling against the paper edges.
"Just getting ready, buddy."
My voice comes out steady enough. Practiced. The same tone I use when I tell him everything's fine while I'm calculating how much gas money we have left, or when I smile through parent-teacher conferences where they use words like "challenging" and "difficult to manage."
But my hands don't stop moving. They can't. They fold his favorite shirt—the soft grey one without tags—and place it in the neat stack.
They slide his medical records into the manila folder that's traveled with us through four different towns, five different schools, countless fresh starts that turned into dead ends.
Brody steps closer, his bare feet silent on the hardwood. He watches my hands with that intense focus he gets when he's trying to decode something that doesn't quite make sense. His head tilts, processing.
"The drawings don't need to be organized," he says, matter-of-fact. "They're already in order by date."
I know. I helped him organize them that way two weeks ago, when we still believed this place might stick.
When the fire station felt like sanctuary and Tate's gentle voice was becoming as familiar as my own.
When Wes's protective anger seemed like armor instead of something I'd have to leave behind.
"I know, sweetheart. I'm just... making sure everything has its place."
The lie tastes like copper pennies. Like the metallic tang that floods your mouth right before you throw up. Because the truth sits underneath it, heavy and undeniable as gravity: I'm already halfway out the door.
My mind has already traced the route. Highway 34 west to the interstate, then north until the landscape changes and our faces mean nothing to anyone.
I've already counted the cash in my emergency fund—enough for gas and a deposit somewhere new.
Enough to disappear before Kyle's lawyers can serve papers, before the school board can ask uncomfortable questions, before the men I've let myself care about realize that loving us comes with a price they never signed up to pay.
"Are we leaving Tate and Wes and Dean?"
His voice is smaller now, careful. He's learned to read the signs—the way I move when I'm preparing to run, the particular kind of quiet that settles over me when I'm calculating escape routes.
He's ten years old and he already knows that people leave.
That places don't last. That the only constant in his world is me, and sometimes even I feel like I'm made of smoke.
I fold his weighted blanket, the one that helps him sleep in new places. My fingers smooth the fabric with unnecessary precision.
"We might need to visit some new places soon."
Another lie wrapped in truth. We won't visit anywhere. We'll land somewhere and I'll find work and he'll start another new school and we'll build another fragile life that I'll be ready to abandon the moment it gets complicated. The moment someone decides we're too much work. Too much risk.
The fidget cube sits on the coffee table, worn smooth by Brody's anxious fingers. Tate gave it to him during that first visit to the station, when my son's face had lit up like Christmas morning. When I'd felt something dangerous bloom in my chest—hope.
I pick it up and drop it into the box with his other comfort items. I don't know what else to do.