by Amy Faye
"Hello, I'm Dan Bryant, I'm calling on behalf of my wife, Sarah. She's got two daughters, Allison Jones and Chelsea Jones, both about four months, and they were picked up by Child Protective Services a few hours ago."
"Okay, sir, how can I help you?"
"Well, the long and short of it is that I want to make sure that this is as painless an experience for everyone as possible. So I need to know what I'm supposed to do to get my wife's daughters back."
"You're not their father?"
"I'm not their father, no. It was a recent marriage and I just..." The thought hadn't really hit him before this. He hadn't even given serious consideration to adoption. Was he supposed to adopt them? Was that the right thing to do? He shook off the distraction after an instant. "Adoption hadn't happened yet."
"Okay. So are you her legal representative?"
He was used to this, in his own way. There was a certain way that people in business get used to talking. Halfway between apologetic and insistent. Not just firm, but solid as iron. Not just polite, but almost supplicant. He worked his way into trying to sound just about as pleasant as possible.
"I'm real sorry, ma'am, but we're very short staffed here. My wife's lawyer is dealing with some other matters related to her case, and so I'm left here to make calls. If there's any decisions to be made, then I'm sure that eventually, we can get in touch about those."
"Okay, well, what is it that you wanted to know?"
"Like I said, I just needed to know what we were supposed to be doing to make this entire ordeal as quick and painless for both parties as possible."
There was a long moment while the woman clicked and clacked at the keyboard.
"We're showing reports that their mother... your wife is incarcerated. Is that correct?"
"I've spoken to my legal people, and they're pretty sure that isn't going to last long."
"Okay, well, until that is no longer the case, there's nothing you really can do."
"I understand that," he heard himself saying. He did understand it, but at the same time he rankled at what the woman was saying. "But I need to know what my next step is after that. We're working right now on getting her out. I'm confident that the charges will be dropped, but until then we're just trying to get things planned out."
"Well... at this point, I can tell you that the father's family has taken custody of the children."
Dan's eyes shut. "Okay, thank you."
"Good luck, have a great day."
"Yeah," he told her. He was distracted. Too distracted. He should have been more polite, more formal. But he was too far gone for that.
He punched the button to end the call and set the phone down. Then he picked it back up, dialed a number, and twenty minutes later he was sliding into a car, dressed in his proper clothes again and they were driving before he'd even managed to buckle his seat belt.
"Sir?"
"We're heading to Rob Green's place. I've got something to discuss with him."
The phone rang in his pocket again. He hated phones, but it was a part of his life. He answered unconsciously and waited for it to be something that he'd rather blow off.
"Mr. Bryant?"
"Linda. Good to hear from you."
"Sir, I've got some very good news for you."
"I'm glad to hear that. I've got some bad news, myself."
"Oh?"
"I'm on my way to Bob Greer's place. He's got the girls."
The other line was silent for a minute. "You're not about to do something very stupid, are you?"
"That depends," Dan said.
"I'll be there as soon as time permits," Linda said finally, without a long pause. He was getting tired of people who thought too hard about what they were going to say to him. It was much nicer when he could just tell someone something, and they decided what the smart thing to do was, right off the bat.
Dan hung up the phone and slipped it into his pocket. The road hummed under his feet and they drove on in silence. Dave was focused on the road beside him, brows furrowed, and didn't seem like he was in the mood to talk. That was good, because neither was Dan.
So he watched the sides of the road as they drove. Watched the city center give way to industrial buildings, and then give way to residential houses. Then those houses gave way to nicer houses, and those gave way to still nicer houses. And then, as abruptly as anything, they started to slow as they entered the right neighborhood.
This was a mistake, Dan knew. They should have been doing something else. Something that was maybe a little bit less stupid. A little bit less dangerous. But he didn't have a whole hell of a lot of choice.
"Thanks," Dan said. He stripped off his jacket and his tie. They were just going to get in the way, and besides that, he guessed that if Cole had been willing to come after him with a knife, there was going to be an assumption of bad blood.
Carrying a jacket just meant that he could conceal a gun, and he had no desire to have Rob Greer shoot him because he was worried that Dan was going to start it.
Then he slipped out and stepped up to the gate and pressed the button. He looked up at the camera. It gave a little wink as the lens adjusted itself at him, and then the whole system seemed to get lost in thought for a minute before they decided to let him in. The gate opened and stayed open behind him.
Dan started up the long drive as Dave drove past. He'd been to the house a couple of times, and there was a little area off to the left where you could park. Sure enough, Dave pulled off toward the left and into the horizon.
On the porch, sitting and drinking a glass of lemonade, was Bob Greer. He tilted his jaw from one side to the other and back again, like he was chewing on his thoughts. Somewhere behind him, Dan could hear another car pull up as he mounted the steps, pull through the open gate, and stopped in front of the house.
Linda stepped out first. A second door opened, and a second pair of feet stepped onto the gravel path. Dan turned for a moment to regard his wife, stepping out. He smiled at her before turning back to Rob Greer.
"You want to tell me what this is all about?"
"About? What's all about?"
Dan's scowl deepened. "You know full damn well."
"I'm not doing anything to you, except what I have to do to keep those girls safe. Their mother's unfit."
Dan's fist balled up and loosened. Don't lose your temper, old man. "You don't talk about her like that."
"Or, what? You going to put me six feet under like you did my son? I'm not going to let that happen, Dan. You're going to stay at a reasonable distance."
He shifted his weight and a thump sounded in his lap. His hand came up and he was holding an automatic pistol. He pointed it at Dan. "I don't want to hurt you, Danny. You're a good guy, most of the time. But you're in with the wrong crowd, here, and I know you've always had a temper, so you'll excuse me if I don't trust your discretion."
Dan's teeth pressed together and for an instant his anger flared and started all by itself to calculate the odds of getting killed before he got to Robert Greer and wrung his neck. He didn't have time to suppress the instinct before a noise made him whirl around to regard another person walking up, out from behind the house. Dan's fist balled up tighter.
Aside from the bandage on his nose, Dan thought, Cole Greer looked good, for a dead guy.
39
Sarah closed the car door and looked up. The house was familiar to her. For almost a year, she'd lived here. Every single day, she walked up. Usually more than that. Twice a day. Three times. Standing outside this place was more normal to her than standing outside her own house at this point.
Robert sat on the porch chairs. He liked sitting there, in the summer, as far as she could tell. He had a glass of lemonade, no doubt fresh-squeezed, and a gun.
"I don't want to hurt you, Danny," he said. He had the look of a man who wasn't afraid or worried about hurting anyone. She knew that to be the case; Robert was a man who made his decision in advance. He'd probably already decided to shoot
if the situation arose. Maybe he'd decided to shoot anyways. "You're a good guy, most of the time. But you're in with the wrong crowd, here, and I know you've always had a temper, so you'll excuse me if I don't trust your discretion."
A movement caught in the corner of Sarah's eye and she turned, pressing herself back against the car. Maybe he'd decided to shoot already, and decided that life would be easier with no witnesses to question why he'd fired on an unarmed, nonthreatening man.
Cole stepped into view and her face screwed up. The words caught in her throat before she could say them.
"You," Dan said. He took a step.
"Stay where you are," Rob said. He hefted the gun again, and Dan turned back to him.
"Cole?"
Cole looked at her with a pained expression. "Dad, you need to stop."
Robert stood up and the gun fell halfway down to his side so that it pointed at the ground.
"What the fuck are you doing here, you little..." He cut himself off before he could say something that would offend. As if that mattered any more, now that he'd apparently gone full psycho.
"Dad, it's fine."
"Shut your mouth, Cole."
Dan watched Robert Greer as he walked across the porch. It was a long strip of wood along the front, an old southern style. There was no hint of southern-ness in Robert Greer, though. Just the house.
"What is going on here?"
Sarah was surprised at the strength in her own voice. She didn't feel strong. She felt weak and afraid and uncertain. But she sounded almost like she knew what she was doing.
"I'm sorry," Cole said. He looked sorry, at least as sorry as he'd ever looked. "I just... I only ever wanted you to know. I'm sorry about how everything went down."
She waited for something to come from Dan, but he just looked up at the gun. At Robert. His shoulders were square and his fists were balled up tight.
"So what's it going to be, Bobby? You going to shoot me with my driver over there by your side entrance? An attorney standing right there so that someone trusted by the court can tell the whole story of how you shot an unarmed man?"
"How am I supposed to know if you're unarmed, you big son of a bitch? Must be a hundred places you could secrete a gun on your person, if you wanted to. You've got five pockets there, and four of them could have guns. You could have one down the leg of your trousers. You could have a piece stashed in the back of your waistband."
Dan didn't answer, just turned in a slow circle. "You satisfied?"
Cole started to move first, apparently deciding that he didn't have the stomach for killing any more. He took a slow step forward, and then another. And another. Until he fit himself into the space between Dan and his father. Dan's posture never changed, defiant and furious and all tightened up like a spring about to fire.
"Dad, just... just let it go, okay? Just this once."
"If you'd just done what you were supposed to do, you little shit-stain, things would have been fine. Hell, if you wrapped up with this little whore..."
Cole moved to the side. It wasn't entirely of his own volition, but when Dan took a step forward, there was nothing he could do to stop the big man. Rob raised the gun a little higher, but Dan had already stopped with one foot pressed into the first step on the stairs up to the porch.
"You ought to watch what you say about a man's wife, Bobby. I think you're giving the boy some mistaken impressions about how to speak to women."
"Fuck you, Bryant. I don't need you to tell me how to raise my son."
"They're real impressionable. Big guy like you, big name like yours? He probably looks up to you. Probably thinks he can emulate whatever you're doing. You think that's where things got started?"
Robert Greer pointed the pistol a little more firmly, like he'd made a decision. Sarah watched the whole thing unfolding with her eyes wide, wanting to do something to stop it, but unable.
"You think maybe he decided that he could mistreat women because of his daddy? I never gave it a whole lot of thought, because it wasn't none of my business, but you ever think that's maybe why Carrie left? I wonder. I bet you dollars to donuts I could make the case, though. Bet you anything."
"Go fuck yourself," Bob said, and then his whole body started to tense up in the instant before he pulled the trigger. The second stretched out forever as everything started to go insane at once.
Sarah watched with a twisting feeling in her gut. She wanted to turn away, to duck behind some kind of cover. To dive out of the way of a stray bullet. Her body held rock steady.
Dan, though, didn't seem to have that problem. He was already moving, loading up his weight on his high foot and leaping into he air. The gun exploded, a loud bark that continued to ring in Sarah's ears for longer than she could possibly imagine. Her body hurt, her ears hurt, and she wanted it to stop.
Her eyes forced themselves shut to try to hold out the noise as much as possible, to try to hide her from the flash. It was mild, barely visible, but in the fullness of the instant she felt like it all seared into her. And then there was a thump. And another thump. And another.
She opened her eyes, screwed up, to find her husband standing over Robert Greer's body, staring down at it. His wrist sat at a funny angle and the gun was across the porch, on the other side, out of reach of either of them.
Dan's breath came hard and fast, and then he reached down and picked up Bob Greer, who suddenly seemed to age twenty years in the space of a few moments. He looked tired, now. Old. And more than anything he looked afraid.
From behind her, Sarah could hear a voice. "Hello, operator? There's been an attempted murder. I don't think we need an ambulance, no." She gave the address from memory. Sarah slumped down the side and screwed her eyes shut.
Cole Greer made the mirror image of her, his head buried in his hands. A little while later, the cops showed up, and the Greers were cuffed and put into the back of a pair of patrol cars. It was full dark before they were able to leave, all the questions answered and the paperwork done.
Inside the house, the girls were safe and sound, fussing in a pair of cribs. She loaded them into their carriers and then loaded those carriers into the back seat of the SUV.
Sarah slumped into the back of Dan's car. He slid in beside her, Dave sitting silently at the front. Eventually, maybe they would tell him what had happened. She had to tell someone. But he was giving them time until they decided to explain the whole thing, and frankly Sarah could have kissed him for that.
Sarah finally spoke as they started to get onto the road. She'd answered a few questions, but it was hard. Shock was getting to her, and the whole thing was a blur even though in the moment it had felt like it lasted forever.
"He shot at you," she said. Like it had just occurred to her.
"He did," Dan said.
"And you jumped at him."
"It wasn't my proudest moment," he said. He looked as deflated and tired as she felt.
"I was afraid for a minute there," she admitted. She had every reason to be afraid, but it still felt like an embarrassing admission.
"I kept thinking about what happened if he decided to turn that gun on you," he said. "Over and over in my head. And I couldn't stand it."
"You were trying to protect me?" The idea seemed foreign and strange to her.
"I had to."
"Why's that? I'm just some woman."
He looked at her and leaned forward until he rested his head against hers. "I have to confess something, and you have to promise not to laugh."
She wasn't in a laughing mood. "I promise. What's the problem?"
"I think I love you. And I think I love your girls."
Sarah didn't know what to say. So she said nothing. Her lips did the talking instead, pressing against his. They had a lot of time to figure out what this was going to mean, but she knew one thing. She was already looking at the next twenty years more fondly than she'd looked at the last twenty.
"I love you too, you big idiot."
Epilogue
Dan's hand hurt, and it hurt bad. Fingernails digging into his skin, sharp and driven in with enough force to nearly break the skin. If he'd noticed it at all, he would have guessed that it would leave a mark that would last for days or weeks.
But he didn't notice. He was too distracted for that. There was something more important going on, and he wasn't going to let anything take his attention from that. From her.
Sarah let out a series of long breaths. He could tell she was trying to make them deep and slow, but they weren't. She sucked in a shallow breath, held it for an instant, and then let it back out again. Dangerously close to hyperventilating. She let out a scream of pain and effort.
"Push, push, push," the doctor said. Sarah's fingers dug in harder, and he squeezed right back, tightening there with her. His entire body felt tense, like any minute now he, too, was going to start pushing a baby out.
Sarah let out another scream, this one more ferocious than the last. Her face screwed up with effort, and her hair matted to her forehead. The cloth separating him from the area below her waist wasn't high enough to hide what the nurses were doing, and what they were doing was reaching for something. Grabbing. Pulling, however gently.
His wife took another breath, as deep as she could. The nurses continued their mantra. "Push, push, push."
And she did. Sarah let out a last long, hard grunt, one that extended on for several seconds, and then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.
Her head hit the pillow behind her and she was taking her breaths in deeper now, if not any slower. "It's a boy," the nurse said. She stood up, and in her arms was a newborn, covered in amniotic fluid and blood. She handed him over to Dan, who looked down at his son for the first time, and felt a swell of pride.
Jason cried and tried to wriggle out of his dad's arms. Dan didn't let him go. The boy looked up at him as if he were going to argue, and then saw his father's face smiling down on him.
The baby boy smiled back.
