Page 94 of Cut Off
“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.
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. Listento 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.
