Chapter 26
The Chaos
JONAH
For a custody hearing, you wear a tie.
Not a casual tie. Not a “fun” tie. A boring, navy, I-am-a-responsible-adult tie that says nothing about you except that you’ve been told, by a woman with a law degree, that this is the correct noose to wear in front of a family court judge who’ll decide whether your kid gets to keep living in your house.
I’m tying mine in the mirror by the front door because Eli’s using the upstairs mirror with his own Disaster Tie Situation going on, and my mother’s been tasked to solve it.
I can hear her up there, patient, saying things like “over, under, through,” while my father stands behind her offering color commentary.
“Tom, you’re not helping,” Mom says. “I’m narrating,” Dad says. “Stop narrating,” Mom says.
I exhale. My tie is crooked. I yank it apart and start over.
Gardner—my lawyer, five feet two inches of pure aggression in a pencil skirt—wants us at the courthouse a full thirty minutes early so she can do what she calls “last looks.” That’s lawyer speak for “make sure none of you boneheads have a stain on your shirt or a story you forgot to memorize.” I’ve been rehearsing my talking points for two weeks.
Eli’s been rehearsing his answers for two weeks.
God, I wish I could talk to Zoe right now. She’d know how to calm me. She’d know how to make me feel like it’s all going to work out.
She left two days ago to stay at her parents’ house, and I think about her every damn waking moment.
But it’s better this way—at least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
She’ll move on and follow her dreams without looking back, so that’s how this has to be.
Eli’s been okay, calling her a lot, and he enjoys his time with Maddie.
He’s sad, but he’s strong. Maddie’s great.
She’s not Zoe, but she’s great.
Those are worries for another day because none of it will matter if I don’t get to keep my kid.
I get the tie right on the third try. I look at myself in the mirror. The man looking back is shaved, combed, dressed up, and looks, frankly, like he’s not slept in a week, which is accurate. There are two gray hairs at my temple that were not there a three weeks ago. I salute them.
The bang on the door is so loud I almost jump out of my dress shoes.
Three quick raps, hard, the kind of knock that carries weight.
My phone’s on the entry table. I pick it up, swipe to Ring, and the live feed pops up.
Two cops on my porch. Uniforms, hats, full kit. And then, when I scroll the camera angle, two more cops, down by the curb, standing by their cruiser. Hands at their belts.
There are four cops at my house.
I’ve been hit in the face by a slap shot.
I’ve been cross-checked into a board hard enough to see Jesus.
I have, in my life, taken some hard knocks, and none of them have felt like this.
My stomach drops out of my body, all the way down.
For one second, I’m genuinely worried I’m going to puke into the umbrella stand.
“Jonah?” It’s Mom’s voice from upstairs. “Was that the door?”
“Got it,” I call back, and the voice that comes out of me is somehow normal.
I look at the Ring feed one more time. I glance at the second car at the curb. I think, very clearly, they brought back-up, and then I think, for whom, and the answer is so obvious it makes me want to lay down on the floor.
I open the door.
“Mr. Holt.” It’s Officer Stevens, and if I thought his face was hard when he came to tell me about Rosie, that was nothing. Today it’s set in stone. It’s the face of a man who’s been told to come do a thing he doesn’t want to do, and has decided to do it clean and quick.
“Officer.” I keep one hand on the door. “What’s going on?”
“Sir, we’re here to execute an emergency temporary custody order. Issued by the family court at six forty-five this morning. Petitioner is Gwen Anders.”
The world behind him goes sideways.
“What?”
“Emergency temporary custody, sir. The child, Eli Anders. We’ll need you to bring him out, please.”
“No.” It comes out of me before I’ve decided to say it. “No, no, no, hold on. We have a hearing. We have a hearing today. In two hours. That’s the whole point of today, that’s—”
“This is separate, sir. This is an emergency petition. The judge granted it this morning.”
“On what grounds?” My hand on the door shakes, and I clamp down on it. “On what fucking grounds?”
Stevens doesn’t flinch. He has the same face on. “Emergency petitions are granted when the court has reason to believe the child’s safety may be at imminent risk, sir. We don’t have the underlying paperwork. We just have the order.”
The words, “child’s safety may be at imminent risk” go into my ear and ricochet around inside my skull like a puck in an empty rink.
I can’t make sense of them in any way that maps onto my life.
Eli is upstairs with my mother, getting his hair flattened with water.
Eli has eaten two bowls of cereal this morning.
Eli slept in his bed under his glow stars all night.
There is no risk in this house. There is, in fact, less risk in this house than in any house Eli’s ever lived in, and I will say that under oath.
I will say it in any room. I will say it to anybody.
“There’s been a mistake.” I don’t recognize my voice.
“Officer—Stevens—listen to me. There’s been a mistake.
We’re getting ready right now to go to a hearing.
About custody. I have a lawyer. I have—she has been working on this for weeks.
I’ve done everything. I’ve done every single thing the court asked me to do. There’s no—he’s not—I have not—”
“Sir.”
“Call my lawyer. Her name is Olivia Gardner—”
“Mr. Holt.” His voice is gentle and absolutely immovable. “I understand. You have every right to take this up with your attorney. Right now, we are legally required to take the child. We don’t have discretion on this. We have an order.”
The tears come up without permission. I am a thirty-year-old man in a navy tie, and I’m standing in my doorway crying in front of four cops.
“Please,” I hear myself say. “Please. Just—give me a second. Let me call her. Let me just call my lawyer—”
“You can call her once we’ve left, sir.”
I’m breaking. I feel it happening in real time, like ice fracturing across a frozen pond, the cracks shooting out from the center. I put both hands on the doorframe because I cannot trust my legs to do their job.
“Jonah.”
Mom’s voice. Behind me. Calm in the way she gets calm when things are on fire.
She comes up on my left, her hand finding my back, light, steadying. She looks at Stevens. She looks at the order in his hand. Her face does a brief, terrible flicker—and then resets.
“What do you need,” she says to Stevens. Not a question. A logistical request.
“Ma’am, we need the child. He can bring personal items—a backpack, a favorite toy. We’re not going to rush him. But we do need to leave within the next ten minutes.”
“Okay,” she says. “Okay. I’m going to go pack him a bag. Jonah—” Her hand on my back, firm. “Jonah. Look at me.”
I look at her.
“I’m going upstairs,” she says, slow and clear. “I’m going to pack his backpack. I’m going to bring him down. You’re going to hug him, and you are going to tell him this is temporary. Can you do that?”
I can’t do that. I nod anyway.
She squeezes once and goes.
I stand in the doorway with Officer Stevens looking at me, and his partner looking at the porch boards, and the two cops at the curb looking at nothing in particular.
I breathe in, and I breathe out, and I think Gwen, you absolute…
absolute… absolute… and I can’t finish the sentence because there isn’t a word for it.
Dad comes down the stairs first. Then my mother. Then Eli.
Eli’s in his hearing clothes. Khakis. Button-down shirt. The tie my mother fixed. His hair is, against all odds, lying flat. He’s holding Flash like he does when things are bad. His face, when he sees the cops, does something I’d pay any amount of money to never see on his face again.
“Buddy.” I drop to my knees on the entryway floor. I open my arms. “Hey. Hey, come here.”
He comes. He comes hard, and slams into my chest, and I get my arms all the way around him, and put my face into his hair and breathe him in, that little-boy smell of kid shampoo and the dryer sheet his shirt was folded with.
I am about to lose my son to a goddamn cop car.
“You’re going to go stay with Grandma Gwen for a little bit,” I say into his hair, and the voice that comes out is wrecked. “Just for a little bit, okay. I’m going to fix this, buddy. I’m going to fix this.”
He doesn’t say anything. He just makes a small sound into my shirt.
“You hear me?” I push him back, just far enough to see his face, and my own is dripping, which is a thing he shouldn’t have to see, but here we are. “I am going to fix this. Okay? I am going to fix this. Look at me. I am going to come and get you. Do you believe me?”
He looks at me with those eyes that are Rosie’s eyes, and he nods, once, and the nod is the bravest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay. Okay.”
I have to physically peel my hands off him.
Mom puts the backpack in his hand, the one she packed in ninety seconds. I don’t want to know what’s in it; I know Mom knows everything he needs, including some things he hasn’t asked for yet but will need by tomorrow.
“Bye, sweetheart,” Mom says to him, low. “We love you. We’re going to talk on the phone, okay? Your dad’s going to call you.”
“Okay,” Eli says. Tiny voice.
My mother’s sobbing without sound, hand to her mouth. My father has his arm around her. Nobody’s doing a good job pretending this is fine.
Stevens holds the door. Eli walks past him. The door closes. The cruiser doors open and close. The cruiser pulls away from my curb with my kid in the back seat. I stand at the window of my own house and watch it go.