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“Did someone take him? Oh God!”
“Ma’am, he’s safe. Your son locked the doors and wouldn’t let his dad back in the vehicle. He’s very smart for a five-year-old. Your—Mr. Golding wasn’t very impressed with your son and he started yelling and threatening to break the window. Your son held strong and the clerk inside called the police. Your son unlocked the door for us. He’s with one of the other officers.”
“I want to see him.”
“Mr. Golding failed his breathalyzer test, ma’am. We had to call family services.”
I feel her hand on my shoulder, and it’s the only thing keeping me on my feet.
“Twice in one day,” a familiar female voice says from beside me.
My sobs are nearly uncontrollable when I turn to face Mrs. Brunello, but she doesn’t pause to speak to me directly as she walks past.
I watch in horror as the caseworker goes and speaks with another one of the officers. It doesn’t take her long to get the full story. Each time the officer speaks, she turns to look at me, the judgment in her eyes growing exponentially. By the time she has all the information, she has nothing but disgust for me.
Her walk back to me is slow, torturous, but I still haven’t seen Ryder yet and nothing else matters.
“You told me Ryder hasn’t been seeing his father,” she says the second she’s within earshot.
It feels like an attack, each word pelting against my skin as she speaks them.
“He hasn’t,” I say honestly.
“Are you sure? Because it seems your mother allowed Mr. Golding to pick his son up this evening and take him for ice cream.”
Make that twice I’ve been betrayed tonight.
“Has she been letting him see Ryder?”
“Don’t you think that’s a question you should already know the answer to?” she challenges.
I would deny it, but I know my mother well enough to know that she would allow Travis to take our son. She has done nothing but voice her opinion on how sorry the man was for what he did, and how Travis has as much of a right to the child as I do.
“What happens now?”
“Thankfully, Ryder is smart enough to have put his foot down when he saw his dad drinking on the way to the store. Mr. Golding will be arrested again. He’ll have a second charge for DUI and another one for child endangerment.”
“And Ryder? What happens with Ryder? Can I take him home?”
She tilts her head like she seriously thinks I’m insane.
“No, he doesn’t get to go with you,” Mrs. Brunello says, shattering my entire world.
“What?” She can’t be serious. “I’m no danger to my child.”
“You left him with someone who was easily willing to hand him over to a non-custodial parent against a court order. Unless you think Mr. Golding broke into your mother’s home and kidnapped the child.”
God, how I wish that were true, but Travis has never gotten physically violent, not even when he’s been drinking.
“The child youth and family department will take custody of Ryder until a suitable foster placement can be found for him,” she says in a way that tells me she’s said those same words many times in the past.
“I’m not a bad mother,” I barely manage through my gasping sobs.
I lift my hands to cover my mouth in an effort to keep from screaming.
“That’s for a judge to decide,” Mrs. Brunello says before walking back to her car.
She gets in the driver’s seat and pulls around to the far side of the gas station, disappearing behind one of the patrol cars. I stretch up on the tips of my toes, trying to see Ryder, but he never appears. I want to tell him to be brave, that I’ll do anything it takes to get him back.
“Sunshine!”
I don’t bother looking in Travis’s direction as he screams my name.
“Call a lawyer for me!”
Over Travis’s ridiculous request, I hear something no mother wants to hear. My child is crying and screaming, calling for me. He has to be terrified. The cries silence and less than a minute later, I watch as Mrs. Brunello’s car leaves the parking area.
“I’ll need you to wait,” the cop says, placing her hand on my arm.
I stare down at it, wondering what my next move should be.
“I have to give her time to leave,” she says. “Please don’t do anything stupid.”
She must read the look in my eyes. As much as I want to claw and scream and scratch at her like a wild animal, I know it won’t help me in the long run. Ryder doesn’t need two parents behind bars.
“Take this,” she says, holding out a piece of paper to me.
“What is it?”
“It’s a list of attorneys that take DUI cases.”
My upper lip turns up in a sneer. “That piece of shit is on his own. I’d never help someone who put my child in danger.”
