HeartStrings

by Savannah Kade

  "This is Officer Patel." Doctor Devanii introduced the surprise guest. "He's here to assist with the documentation."

  Shay tried not to seem upset; she wasn't the parent in the wrong, but she was struck with the sudden and gripping fear that they would take her son from her. He was medicated to the point of comatose and smelled like pot. Shay looked back and forth between them, trying not to look guilty of things she hadn't done.

  "Don't worry. Please." Officer Patel tried to assure her. "Dr. Devanii called me in to help with documentation. She mentioned that you had talked to her previously about prior issues with the boy's father. Do you wish to open a case?"

  Shay took a deep breath. Go time. "Yes."

  She'd never been more scared in her life.

  "Lay him down here." Dr. Devanii told her. Though the doctor was young, Shay trusted her. She'd been bringing the boys here for several years, since they'd moved into the tiny house. Each time, Dr. Devanii had checked the boys for any bruises, asked about any interactions with either parent, and more. All documented for Shay's records.

  Fortunately—or unfortunately?—there hadn't been any marks on either of the boys before. Shay was ultimately grateful.

  The doctor moved her hand, waving the officer over. "What do you smell?"

  "Weed. That's pretty strong." He shook his head, then turned to Shay. "When did you take possession of him?"

  She checked her phone. "About half an hour ago." She shrugged. "I think they were smoking in the car, but I can't prove it." Then she looked at her son, still peacefully sleeping. "And he slept through it, so he can't give you anything either."

  The officer nodded. "While the court will talk with him, he's not old enough to testify to facts."

  Shay considered also what the ramifications might be if her boys wanted to keep seeing their fathers. Why would they? Neither boy ever had anything nice to say about his dad. She took a deep breath and calmed herself, she didn't need to keep the boys from their dads. Not really. She simply needed sole custody. She needed to not have to hand them over every other weekend and holidays, held hostage by men who were known to be abusive.

  "Do we blood test him for the Benadryl?" She asked the doctor.

  "We can." The doctor nodded. "But it's expensive and it's not an illegal drug."

  "Still, it would prove that his father was medicating him for no reason." Shay protested, pushing down the thought of the money.

  "No. It would only prove that he was medicated. Maybe by the girlfriend. And it doesn’t prove there was no reason."

  As Shay started to protest, the doctor held up her hand. "But as the father is responsible, it's definitely a concern. It might also show if he was over-medicated." She sighed. "Which I suspect, given his lack of response."

  Dr. Devanii picked up one of Aaron's hands and it hung limply in her grip. She let go, letting his hand thump onto the bed, not a soft landing by any stretch. Aaron didn't react at all. "Don't worry, his breathing and heart rate are fine, but I would expect some reaction to that test on a normal dose. I also lifted his lids and checked for pupillary reactions. They're fine, but again, he should have reacted. He didn't."

  "Do the lab test." Shay was solid. If Brian had over-medicated him, she was going to sue him for the money to replace her damn savings. Then she turned to the officer, unable to watch as the doctor used a small butterfly needle to draw a vial of blood.

  "Officer Patel, Brian—his father—told me he gave my son Benadryl to make him sleep. This would have been in the morning on Sunday two weeks ago. He then promised not to do it again. He did it again this morning. He admitted to doing it. He admitted to doing it just to 'get the kid to sleep.' Does that help?" Her heart was pounding and she wondered if it would ever stop.

  "Honestly. I don't know." The officer looked rueful. His hands were tied by a system that believed in biological parentage. Shay no longer did. She loved her sons because they were hers. Their fathers didn't seem to have the genetics for it.

  "Will your ex-husband admit to that tactic? It's not an illegal drug. We don't arrest over marijuana either. But exposing a toddler to it can be problematic when trying to get or maintain even partial custody. Do you want me to test for it?"

  "Yes!" She turned back to the doctor. "Can you do that on the blood panel?"

  She nodded and made more notes into the computer.

  "I can also do a residue test. Do you want that?" The officer added.

  Shay nodded frantically. What she wouldn't give to have someone here. Strong arms to support her while she supported her small child. No, not someone. Craig.

  But he wasn't really the type, was he?

  And she didn't need anyone. She straightened her spine and watched as the officer pulled out a stick with a detector on the end and inserted a small cloth he pulled out of a single pack foil. He rubbed it across her unresponsive son's clothing and skin, then put the cloth into some kind of evidence baggie which he labeled. When all the tests had been done, and her statement taken both for the medical record and for an official police record, it was starting to get dark.

  "Do you want to stay until he wakes up?" The doctor put her hand on Shay's shoulder.

  "You're so kind, opening the office on a Sunday, and bringing in an officer. I need to be home to meet my other son. Will Aaron wake up on his own?" What if he didn't? Worry was starting to set in about something new.

  "He should." She rattled off times to expect certain changes. If and when Shay should call the doctor's cell number again. Shay thanked them both and hauled her son back out the door, the toddler blissfully unaware of the war that had just ignited over him.

  She had Aaron back in his own bed, the timer set to check on him, right as Jason showed up with Owen. Owen looked sour, but Jason hardly spoke at the exchange. Crouching down, Shay ignored her ex and hugged her son, managing to bring him inside with no words spoken to a man she'd once believe she loved with all her heart. After she closed the door, she turned to her son. "What's wrong, sweetie?"

  Owen was close to tears, and so was Shay. She couldn't take another trauma today.

  In a very tiny voice, he told her, "He broke my book."

  "Broke it?"

  A nod. A loose tear running down a cheek. A whisper. "He tore out the pages and told me it was for pussies."

  The last word was almost inaudible, but Shay recognized it. One of Jason's favorites. Right up there with "fag" and "queer" and "bitch" and a few others, none of them favorable. Her only consolation was that he'd been nice to her when they were dating. What she hadn't known then, was that if a man was nice to her, but not anyone else, that he wasn't a nice man. Jason was not a nice man. He wasn't even neutral. He was a cold-hearted, bigoted son of a bitch. Shay could not tell her son that.

  "Which book?" she asked.

  "The library book." He whispered back.

  "No worries. I'll take care of it." She smiled at him, hugged him and wished she could make it all okay. But she couldn't. That book was going to cost her an arm and a leg in replacement fees. Another trip to talk to the librarian. Shay had considered getting her son an e-reader, but once again opted not to. He couldn't have nice things because his dad ruined them.

  "I was in the middle of it. What will I read tonight?" Owen was angry. Pissed as hell. Not at being called a pussy. He simply didn't buy into his dad's bullshit. But he was mad about destroyed property, kicked puppies, and general meanness. Whatever gene his father lacked had the opposite mutation in Owen. Much to Jason's irritation, his son was sensitive. "The library is already closed."

  "I'll tell you what. I'll buy an online copy of it and you can read it on my computer until you finish or until we get another book from the library, maybe tomorrow." Ouch. Ouch to the money of now needing to buy something she had gotten for free in the first place. Ouch to Owen reading on her computer. Ouch to all of it.

  She set him up on her screen while she sewed at the kitchen table. Around nine p.m. he declared himself ready to go to sleep and
by nine-thirty he was out cold. Unlike Aaron who'd woken up just a little while before and was finally coming out of the room and saying he was hungry.

  Shay was never going to get to sleep. Her exes weren't even here and they still managed to steal from her—her sleep, her peace of mind, even the man she loved.

  Scratch that. She didn't love Craig. She loved the idea of Craig.

  And even the idea of him didn't work in reality. So Shay set Aaron in front of the TV with some cereal and managed to catch a few winks on the couch. She'd managed by herself when he was a baby and never slept, and Owen had been just a toddler. She'd do fine now.

  The next morning, she shuffled her grumpy bunch off to school and to Head Start. Then she hit the library where she tried to explain that yes, his father had ripped the book and could there please be some reduction on the sixty-dollar replacement fee?

  She managed a pity rate of fifty percent. Next she marched into the office of the lawyer she'd chosen three years ago when she first thought she'd had enough money. An hour later, when the woman was finally ready to see her, she said, "I'm ready."

  Chapter 17

  Craig sat in the comfy chair across the big mahogany desk from the woman who took his case. "This is all confidential, right?"

  The lawyer worked for HeartBeats, Inc.—the label that owned all of Wilder's music and produced all their albums and such. Brenda, their personal manager and co-owner had recommended the woman, but he couldn't have this getting back to anyone at work.

  The woman on the other side of the desk had her hair scraped back into a severe bun. Her clothing was boxy, and she intimidated just by sitting there. Not really the soothing presence he was hoping for as he swallowed his tongue.

  The last weeks had been eye-opening. It turned out he was a good father—if the puppies were anything to measure by. He thought they were, since they kept trying to be little terrors and he handled it with some level of grace.

  The night he'd cried by their crate in the room, he'd woken to late daylight, painful whines, a puffy face, and half a comforter. The other half looked like it had been cherry-bombed. The fluff that made it into the crate had been peed on and then played with.

  He'd gotten angry but held himself in check. Despite the destruction, they'd just been doing puppy things. He could buy another comforter. Not another first one, but he told himself it had been getting old anyway.

  After cleaning the mess and purchasing a new bed set, he sat down and found the chapters in the dog book on 'chewing' and 'destruction.' At which point he learned not to have fluffy things near puppies. No shit, Sherlock, he'd thought. Lesson learned. He'd slept in his own bed the next night—poorly because of the whining. Then the third night, things finally calmed down.

  He followed the book religiously and was generous with playtime and exercise. And Scarlett and Gunnar—names plucked from a TV show—had both learned how to sit and how to come when called. For his part, Craig had learned how to tell their faces apart.

  He even trained Daniel to feed them appropriately and walk the pair without letting them tug the leashes too much. Together he and the nine-year-old worked with the small dogs on hand signals and vocal commands. Daniel was a disturbingly competent kid. He was full of good ideas, and even finished reading the training book before Craig did.

  It shouldn't have surprised Craig. After all, Daniel's mother Kelsey was uber-competent. Despite her claims that her old life was anything but, she lived and managed a drama-free home. Quite the opposite of Shay, he thought more than once.

  But Kelsey didn't intrigue him. Didn't tug at the back corners of his memory when she was gone. Good thing, too. JD would kill him.

  It was uber-competent Kelsey who got the only earful of what he was about to do. And she didn't get much. Instead, he'd sat her down and told her how good Daniel was with the dogs. Then he asked her a crazy question.

  "If something happens to me, I want Daniel to have the puppies. Is that okay?" He didn't know what he expected. Really just a yes or no answer, but that had been really stupid, he realized.

  "What's going to happen to you, Craig? Is something wrong?" She'd stared him in the eyes, tried to pop up and grab his shoulders only to be thwarted by the extra weight at her waistline.

  "Nothing is going to happen to me." He lied. "But I have these dogs and I couldn't stand it if they went back to the shelter. I'll leave a trust fund for them—"

  "You're going to leave a trust fund for your dogs? I'm their god-parent? Dog-parent?" She looked at him sideways.

  "Daniel would be. But obviously a lot of that would fall to you. Can you do it?" He stared her down hoping to prevent further questions.

  "Why?"

  Well crap. "Just yes or no, Kelsey. Please?"

  She sighed. "Yes. Of course. Now tell me what you're about to do!"

  "I'm not about to—"

  "Are you suicidal!?" This time she did jump up despite the prominent baby bump. They all knew she'd lost her brother that way and Craig immediately dispelled what was clearly a bone deep fear in her.

  "No. I'm not. I just have some business to take care of out of town and the flying is . . . I just want to be sure."

  So he'd told the lawyer to draw that up legally. She'd pulled up a standard document and let him talk her through any changes for his heirs to not be human. To name a minor—Daniel—in charge of the dogs and Kelsey as the legal adult. Craig wasn't even certain if "Kelsey" was her legal name or a nickname, but he wasn't going to get into that now. He'd signed the printed document and left it in the lawyer's hands to file before getting down to the real meat of his business. "I need to confess to a murder."

  That at least got her attention. "A murder? There's no statute of limitations on murder. You know that?"

  Craig nodded. He'd looked that up online. It would never expire on him. So he thought he might do better getting out in front of it rather than letting it catch up to him later. It would destroy the band either way, but at this stage of the game, they might be able to replace him if he spent the rest of his life in jail. He would just be that guy that was on the first two albums.

  His heart was beating heavily; he had no idea how this was going to turn out. Despite the fact that he was literally beginning to sweat, the lawyer stayed cool. Craig wondered if people confessed odd shit to her all day long. Maybe she dressed that way to discourage it. Too late.

  His throat was closing. Why had he done this? He'd never told anyone—anyone—what he'd done. Why now? Why this sudden need to unburden himself? It wasn't like the dogs cared what he'd done. They loved him anyway.

  It occurred to him maybe that was the key, as stupid as it was.

  The only creatures that had ever loved him unconditionally weren't even human. But he'd walked taller these past couple weeks. He was more certain of himself. And more convinced he needed to become the man he could be rather than the grown up remnants of the kid he'd been.

  "When was this murder?"

  Looking up into the corner of the room, he realized he should have thought this through a little better. He back calculated out loud, using the year he'd run away for good to figure out when it would have happened.

  "Can I get you a drink? And what month of that year?" She asked as though ten-plus-year-old murders were taken with tea most afternoons at three.

  "A Dr. Pepper if you have it." He answered in what might be the most bizarre conversation he'd ever had. "June."

  He'd run away two springs before. Right before finals in his high school classes. He'd thought he was hot shit, but he was out of money and on the street, just like every other kid, before he knew what he was doing. He'd sung on street corners to supplement the crappy savings he'd started with. But being mugged and beaten up for even those meager amounts had driven him to worse things.

  A knock at the door signaled a disturbingly classy service of an iced tea and his Dr. Pepper. Then the kid disappeared and the questions continued. "Where?"

  "Santa Monica Boulevard
."

  She frowned. "Where?"

  "Hollywood. California."

  "So, not even in this state?" She looked at him over the rims of frameless glasses. Given her calculating stare, Craig figured she didn't even need them. He shook his head.

  "Whom did you murder?"

  "I don't know his name." His guts rolled and he thought he might puke despite the fizz settling in his stomach. He'd been horribly ill prepared for his own confession.

  "So tell me how this happened. Where, time of day, circumstances." She waved her hand at him to go on.

  "It was about three a.m. when I met him. We were in the old Dixie hotel. I’m not even sure if it's still there. I didn't give him my real name." Craig paused. He couldn't tell all of it. "Everything was normal until he was supposed to pay me. He pulled a gun and pistol whipped me with it."

  She still didn't flinch and Craig respected that. It wasn't an easy story to tell and probably not easy to hear either. Not without judging him. But she didn't. "Do you have any scars from that?"

  The question surprised him, his hand automatically flying to his hairline. He nodded but didn't speak. Only once in every few blue moons did he even touch the remnants of one of the worst moments of his life. But he now turned his head to the side and pulled back the hair he always wore shaggy as though that would hide the whole year and a half and not just the scar.

  She looked at it clinically and made a few notes before nodding for him to keep going.

  "When he turned, I jumped him. I grabbed the gun away." He shrugged awkwardly, struggled for the words. Maybe he should have practiced the story. "I thought I was going to die and I just got mad. I didn't care that he was going to shoot me. I just wasn't going to die like that . . ." He stopped as though waiting for her approval.

  She nodded, her expression finally turning softer, finally understanding. Craig thought maybe it was easier for people to talk to the stiff old broad than the comforting mother type.

  His voice was quiet, as though the softness lessened what he'd done. "I hit him with it. Over and over."