Chapter 3 - The Man Who Walked Out On Us
It was a silver sedan I'd never seen before. But the man who climbed out of the driver's side — I knew every line of that face. I'd woken up next to it for nine years.
Dylan. My husband. Caleb's father. The man who had vanished from our lives fourteen months ago without a word, without a forwarding address, without one reason that a normal person could understand.
He looked mostly the same. A little thinner in the cheeks. Better clothes than I remembered him owning. A haircut that cost money.
A woman got out of the passenger side. She didn't so much as glance at me. Her eyes went straight to Sharon.
"You weren't supposed to let this happen," Dylan said.
Not to me. To his mother.
Sharon pressed her back against the doorframe like she wanted the house to swallow her. "She found the clothes, Dylan. She was standing at your bin holding his jacket. What was I supposed to do?"
"You were supposed to keep her off this street." His voice was flat and even, with no give in it at all. The voice of a man reading from a script he'd practiced in the car.
I stepped in between them.
"Where is Caleb?"
Dylan finally turned and looked at me. His jaw flexed. "He's safe."
"That's not an answer." My voice came out steadier than my hands. "Where is my son? Say the words."
"He's with us. He's been with us the whole time." He tipped his head toward the woman without introducing her. "He's fine, Erin. He's happy."
Happy. The word hit me like something thrown at my head.
"He's been gone almost a month," I said. "I've been out of my mind. There are officers who know my son's name because I've called them so many times. Denise has been crying on her porch every night. And you stood back and let me believe—" My throat locked up. I forced the sentence through it. "You let me believe he was dead in a ditch somewhere."
"Nothing happened to him." Dylan's voice didn't move. "I took my son. That's all. I took my own son."
"You took him off the sidewalk without telling me. No warning. No court order. No—"
"I have a court order." He reached into his jacket and held out a folded stack of paper. "Temporary emergency custody. Signed three weeks ago."
I stared at it. "That's not possible."
"It's very possible. When a mother is found emotionally unfit to—"
"I am not unfit."
"—and when the father brings the court evidence of instability and neglect—"
"*What* evidence? What are you talking about?"
The woman beside him spoke for the first time. Her voice was low and clipped, every word placed exactly where she wanted it.
"There were reports filed. Neighbors. Caleb's school. Concerns about the environment in that home."
I turned and looked at her — really looked. She was younger than me by ten years, easy. Blazer, blowout, a slim folder tucked under one arm like a shield.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Alyssa. I'm Dylan's fiancée."
The word fiancée went through me like ice water down my spine.
"You filed reports on me."
She didn't blink. "We brought legitimate concerns to the right people. The court agreed there was enough there to act on."
"There is nothing there. I have never once—"
"Erin." Dylan put a hand up, palm out, like he was calming a dog. "This doesn't have to turn into a screaming match on my mother's porch. Caleb's safe. He's in a good school district now. He's adjusting."
"Adjusting." I repeated it back at him like it was a word in another language. "He is ten years old. He walked out my front door to have dinner with his grandmother and he never came back. Do you have the first idea what these weeks did to me?"
Dylan looked at the ground.
Behind me, Sharon made a small sound — half a sob, half a word that never finished forming.
"I want to see him," I said. "Tonight. Not tomorrow. Tonight."
"That's not how the order works," Alyssa said. "The terms specify—"
"I don't care what the terms specify. He's my son and I am seeing him today."
Dylan raised his hand again. "Give us a couple of days to—"
"No." I took one step toward him, close enough to see him lean back. "You don't get a couple of days. You disappeared with my child for a month and you do not get to stand here and negotiate with me. I see Caleb tonight, or I call Detective Barlow from this porch and you can explain the folder in your girlfriend's arm to him instead."
Something moved behind Dylan's eyes. Not guilt. Something more careful than guilt — a man recalculating.
He glanced at Alyssa. She gave him the smallest nod.
"Tomorrow morning," he said. "Ten o'clock. One hour."
One hour.
I looked down at the jacket still crushed in my hands. The crooked patch. The seam I'd closed up myself.
"I'll be there at nine-fifty," I said. "And Dylan — if my son has one bruise, one bad dream, one single reason to flinch when he looks at me — that piece of paper won't be worth anything. Are we clear?"
He didn't answer.
But Alyssa's folder shifted under her arm.
May you like
And behind me, Sharon finally broke and started to cry out loud, both hands over her face.
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