4. Ryan
My mother texts me halfway through last period.
Mom: Tobias is at the house. Everything is fine. Don’t panic.
Naturally, I panic. My phone is under the desk before the teacher finishes turning back toward the board.
why is tobias at our house
Mom: Jane called me. Something came up and she needed someone to take him for about an hour until Ally gets out of school.
I stare at the screen. Jane called my mother. Jane O’Toole, who barely speaks to anyone unless Roman is standing beside her. Jane, who has spent years perfecting the art of being invisible inside her own life.
she called YOU?
Mom: Yes.
Mom: She also asked me not to mention it to Roman.
Well. That’s fucking interesting.
Mom: “Roman doesn’t need to know. It’s only an hour.”
I sit back in my chair. Across the room, Iz catches the movement, and his eyebrows lift. I shake my head once. Later. My phone buzzes again.
Mom: Before you spiral, Tobias is completely fine. He’s currently explaining to your father why the leprechaun trap Walter suggested is apparently “scientifically ridiculous.”
I bite back a laugh.
dad suggested a leprechaun trap?
Mom: Your father has become deeply invested.
what the fuck is happening in my house
Mom: I genuinely don’t know.
I look across the classroom toward Ally.
She’s taking notes. She hasn’t checked her phone, which means Jane probably hasn’t told her yet.
For half a second, I consider texting her.
Then I don’t. She’s going home with Becca after school because Becca needs to give her something from Cat — at least that’s the story anyone watching will see. She can come get Tobias afterward.
And maybe Jane calling my mother means absolutely nothing. A mother needed someone to watch her kid. That’s normal.
Except Jane doesn’t do normal. Not without Roman’s permission. Not without worrying what he’ll think. And she specifically told my mother not to tell him.
I look back at my phone.
One crack. Tiny. But there.
By the time Ally gets to my house, Tobias has turned the formal dining room into a fucking crime scene.
Green construction paper covers half the table.
There’s string tied between two chairs. A cereal box has been cut open and covered in aluminum foil.
Three gold coins sit beneath what appears to be a laundry basket held up by a wooden spoon.
My father is crouched beside it. My father. Walter Harrington. Communications director for a United States senator. A man who owns cuff links worth more than my car. Crouched on the floor beside a six-year-old, arguing about leprechaun trap mechanics.
“I’m telling you,” Dad says, pointing at the string, “the trigger is too sensitive. The second he touches the gold, this comes down.”
Tobias looks personally offended. “No, because you’re thinking like a person.”
Dad pauses. “Okay.”
“Leprechauns are smaller.”
“That’s a fair criticism.”
“And faster.”
“Also fair.”
“And tricky.”
“I’ve heard,” Dad says.
Tobias crawls around the chair and points at the spoon. “So you can’t make the trap easy to see, because he’ll know it’s a trap.”
Dad studies the laundry basket. “What if we disguise it?”
Tobias’s entire face lights up. “Like a rainbow.”
“Exactly.”
“But we need clouds.”
“Obviously.”
I lean against the doorway. “What are you two doing?”
Tobias whips around. “Ryan!”
Dad looks up. “We’re engineering.”
“You’re building a trap out of my mother’s laundry basket.”
“Temporary prototype.”
“Mom know?”
“Your mother supplied the basket.”
Of course she did.
Tobias scrambles to his feet and grabs my hand. “Come look. Walter had an idea, but it wasn’t very good at first.” Tobias drags me toward the table. “See, he thought we should put the gold here, but then the leprechaun could just reach under and take it.”
“Rookie mistake,” I say.
“That’s what I said.”
Dad looks at me. “I don’t remember asking either of you.”
Tobias points to another section. “So we’re moving the gold all the way back here, and then he has to go inside.”
My mother walks in carrying a plate. “Snacks.”
Tobias abandons engineering immediately. “What kind?”
“Apple slices, crackers, and cheese.”
“Do you have cookies?”
“I do.”
“Why aren’t those on the plate?”
Mom stops. Looks at him. Looks at the plate. “Because I made an error in judgment.”
Tobias nods gravely. “Yeah.”
Dad snorts. Mom points at him. “Don’t encourage him.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
Tobias climbs onto a chair. “Can I have two cookies?”
“You can have one now, and if you’re still hungry after you eat some actual food, you can have another.”
He considers that. “Can the first cookie count as actual food?”
“No.”
The doorbell rings, and he nearly launches out of his chair. “ALLY!” He runs.
Mom catches the back of his shirt before he makes it two steps. “Walk.”
“But it’s Ally.”
“And she’ll remain Ally for the four additional seconds it takes you to reach the door without cracking your skull open.”
He sighs with the burden of being oppressed. “Fine.” Then he speed-walks out of the room.
I look at Mom. “That was impressive.”
“I’ve been a mother longer than you’ve been a leprechaun engineer.”
I follow Tobias into the front hall. He already has the door open, and Ally barely gets one foot inside before he throws himself at her. “Ally! Walter and me made a trap, but his first design was bad.”
Her eyes immediately find mine over Tobias’s head. I smile. She smiles back. Small. Private. Then she looks down at her brother. “You’ve been here an hour and you’re already insulting the host?”
“Walter said it was fair.”
Dad calls from the dining room, “It was.”
Ally laughs. Fuck, I love that sound. She shuts the door, and Tobias grabs her hand. “Come see.”
“Okay, okay.”
He pulls her toward the dining room, and she passes close enough to me that her fingers brush mine. Barely anything. Still enough. “Hi,” she murmurs.
“Hi.”
Tobias looks back. “Come on.”
“We’re coming.”
He drags her inside. Mom smiles when she sees her. “Hi, sweetheart.”
“Hi. Thank you for taking him. Mom texted me after school. I didn’t even know she’d called you.”
“It wasn’t a problem.”
“She said something came up.”
“That’s all she told me too.” Ally’s eyes move to Mom’s, and there’s a pause. Mom doesn’t dance around it. “She asked me not to tell your father.”
Ally goes still. “She did?”
“Yes.”
“What exactly did she say?”
I almost smile. Same question I asked. Mom notices too — her eyes flick briefly toward me. “That Roman didn’t need to know because it was only an hour.”
Ally looks toward Tobias, who’s explaining something to Dad again. “That’s weird.” Ally thinks about it. “She doesn’t do things Dad doesn’t know about.”
Mom leans against the table. “Has she ever called someone else to watch Tobias?”
“Not without telling him.”
“Maybe she didn’t have a choice today,” I say.
“Maybe.” But Ally doesn’t sound convinced. Neither am I.
Tobias looks up. “Mom said Cassandra was safe.”
The entire room goes quiet. Not because Tobias understands what he just said. Because the rest of us do.
Ally looks at him. “What?”
He keeps working on the string. “When she was on the phone. She said she needed somebody safe until you got out of school.”
Mom’s face changes. “She said that?”
“Yeah.” He glances up. “You’re safe.”
Mom doesn’t answer immediately. Then she smiles. “Yeah, buddy. You’re safe here.”
“Okay.” And that’s it for him. Back to the leprechaun.
Ally looks at me. One crack. Maybe two.
Arthur arrives twenty minutes later. He wasn’t supposed to — Dad called him after Mom told us what Jane said. Now we’re in the study while Tobias is in the kitchen with my mother, decorating the trap with approximately six pounds of glitter.
Ally sits beside me on the couch. Dad takes the chair across from us. Arthur stays standing for a minute, reading something Dad handed him. “Jane asking Cassandra to watch Tobias is useful context,” he says eventually, “but I don’t want anyone turning it into more than it is.”
Ally nods. “I know.”
“If she is beginning to make decisions independently of Roman, that’s good. If she’s beginning to recognize that Tobias needs people outside their home whom she considers safe, that’s also good.”
“But?” I ask.
Arthur looks at me. “But Jane is still his mother.”
I already know where this is going. I still fucking hate it.
Arthur sits. “Let’s separate Ally from Tobias for a minute.
” He looks at Ally. “You are eighteen. Legally, you can leave Roman’s house whenever you want.
” She nods. “He cannot force you to marry Tremblay. He cannot force you to live with him. If you decided tonight that you were staying with the Harringtons, you could.”
“But Tobias can’t.”
“No.” Her fingers tighten around mine. “Tobias is six. Roman and Jane are his legal parents. Right now there is no custody order, no guardianship order, and no court finding that removes him from their care.”
“What if Mom lets me take him?”
“That’s different.” Hope moves across Ally’s face, and Arthur immediately tempers it. “But I would want that consent documented, and even then Roman remains Tobias’s father. Jane cannot simply erase his parental rights.”
“What happens if Ally leaves with Tobias anyway?” I ask.
Dad’s jaw tightens. Arthur looks between us. “Roman reports him missing.”
Ally goes very still. “He’d do that.”
“Yes,” I say.
Arthur nods. “He could also claim Ally is withholding his minor child. He could ask law enforcement to return Tobias. Depending on what happened and where she took him, he could attempt to make the situation significantly uglier.”
“Kidnapping,” Ally says quietly.
“That’s the word Roman might use.”
I fucking hate the way she looks when he says it. I turn toward her. “You taking your brother somewhere safe isn’t fucking kidnapping.”
“I know.”
“No, look at me.” She does. “We’re not letting him turn you into the criminal in this.”
Her eyes stay on mine. “Okay.”
I look back at Arthur. “So we need custody.”
“We need a legal mechanism that allows Tobias to leave with Ally and prevents Roman from simply demanding his return.”
“What gets us that?”