“Any of them students of your dad’s?”
I had picked my words carefully, but it didn’t matter. Any hope I’d had that the rumors hadn’t reached Leo disappeared with his smirk.
“Is that her name?” he asked, his voice suddenly small and a little angry.
I didn’t want to assume we were talking about the same thing, so I asked, “Whose name?”
“No one’s.” It seemed my son had the same idea.
The sigh that slipped out rattled my chest. I was so freaking exhausted. “I know it’s hard, Leo, but you’ve got to tell me.”
“It’s nothing, Mom. Kids say stupid sh—stuff all the time.”
I rose from my chair and sat on the edge of his hospital bed. This close, I felt the heat radiating off him. Sam and I used to joke that our son was part terrier because he always ran a little hot.
Used to. Without realizing it, I had settled into thinking of my marriage as belonging to the past. That wasn’t acceptable. None of this was.
I realized suddenly how hard it must be for Leo, attending the school where his father taught. In the best of times, there would be the expectation of good grades and even better behavior. And in times like this, when rumors suggested his dad was sleeping with a student . . .
I took Leo’s hand and squeezed. I could have encouraged him to share details of the rumors he had obviously heard, but did I really need to know more? Did I need to know the color of her hair, or if they had been spotted together outside class, or what acts my husband had allegedly asked her to perform, especially if the price for knowing was my son’s pain? He couldn’t give me a name, and anything else he could give me would just hurt us both.
“It’s okay, Leo,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me.”
Relief flooded his face. Then I handed him his new phone and relief shifted to confusion.
“What’s this?” he asked. “Where’s my phone?”
“We need to use these until we find Dad.” I forced aside the doubt that it could end any other way.
“But how will Dad call us?” The hope in his voice shattered my heart.
“He’ll find a way,” I said. “You can’t call him, though, okay? Actually, don’t call anyone for a while.”
He scowled. “Why not?”
I hesitated, but I couldn’t keep this from him. Not if I wanted him to be safe, which was what I wanted above all else. So I told him that someone had stolen his dad’s phone. I didn’t mention the texts. I told him about the audio surveillance of our home, skipping over mention of the camera found in the master bedroom. Then I described the social media posts Perla had discovered.
“JL?” He grabbed his new phone, then realized it wasn’t his old one. He set it down in frustration. “What did he look like?”
I described him, Leo nodding more with each descriptor before finally saying, “I’m pretty sure that’s the guy who hit me.”
“Do you know him?”
He scrunched his nose in distaste. “I’ve seen him around, but I don’t really know him. He’s an idiot.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. He just is.”
“I’m going to need more than that.”
Leo sighed. “After he hit me, he said something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I was out.”
It was my turn to sigh. “Then how do you know he said something?”
“A couple of the guys said he was talking shit.” He winced. “Sorry.”
Swearing was pretty far down the list of stuff I currently gave a shit about.
“Trash talk?”
“Nah. It was personal stuff, like about his girlfriend.”
I guessed it was related to the posts, but still I asked, “What about his girlfriend?”
“I don’t know. I was unconscious, remember?”
I did remember. I would always remember.
Though it turned my stomach, I had to ask, “You didn’t post those, right?”
“Of course not.” Though he had to understand my need to ask, the question offended him. With his answer, I knew the fabricated posts had been meant to provoke. They were likely the reason my son was laid up with a concussion and injured knee.
Leo’s eyes suddenly glittered, urgency sharpening his pitch. “Dad wasn’t at the game?”
“I haven’t seen him since yesterday.”
“You’re sure, right? You would’ve seen him if he was there, right?”
I remembered the crowd, not so large that I hadn’t scanned it thoroughly at least twice. It had been dusk when I had arrived, but it hadn’t been so dark that I couldn’t see clearly. Still, I considered the question carefully.
“I probably would’ve seen him.” I was no longer certain enough of anything to speak in absolutes.
When he answered, Leo’s voice held equal parts excitement and confusion. “If Dad wasn’t there, then why did I see his car?”
Though it had been only a day since Sam had disappeared, the world today bore little resemblance to the one of twenty-four hours before. Now, even the mechanics of breathing required thought. So it took a moment to process my son’s statement.
“You saw your dad’s car?”
“It was definitely his car,” Leo said. “It had that stupid bumper sticker.”
Teach children how to think, not what to think.
“How many people have that bumper sticker?” My son spoke with a certainty that unnerved me, especially given that Sam wasn’t the last person seen driving his Camry.
“Does he know we’re here?” Leo asked. “If he was at the game, then he might’ve seen what happened on the field. You should call him, tell him I’m okay.”
His voice rang with so much hope that I had to turn away. I couldn’t make that call, and a second later, Leo realized this too.
“Oh. Right.”
Thinking of Sam made me glance down at my phone. I had missed a call, which didn’t make sense. No one had this number.
Before I could check my voicemail, the doctor walked in. At the intrusion, Audrey stirred in the chair, her eyes blinking open beneath her bangs.
“Can we go home now?” she asked, her words slurred with sleep. Then: “Where’s Daddy?”
The doctor focused on the first question, saying that everything was fine and that we could go home, though I knew we couldn’t. She gave discharge instructions, which weren’t complicated but which I memorized with a zeal born from a desire to control one small part of our lives.
As soon as she was gone, I checked my voicemail. It was Perla. Of course.
Her message was brief: “Some woman has been calling your old phone. She seems pretty desperate to talk to you, but she didn’t give her name. Just a number.”
She recited it quickly before hanging up.
Reluctant to call back from my new phone, I figured I would get the kids to the car and then look for a pay phone. I figured it would take only a few minutes before I could return the mystery woman’s call.
I was wrong.
On the way to the car, I texted Zoe my new number and told her we were on our way to the house. Then I scooped up a sleepy Audrey. We walked in silence away from the hospital and toward our car. What else we were walking toward, I couldn’t guess. I needed a plan, one that kept my children safe. One that brought Sam home.