Chapter 4 - The Decatur Safehouse
When I walked up the driveway of my house in Decatur at 2:45 that afternoon, the sun was casting long, heavy shadows through the oak trees. My dog, a twelve-year-old beagle named Barnaby, was sitting on the porch beside Joseph Wright, who was currently reading a paperback thriller with his feet propped up on a cooler.
The front door of my house opened before I reached the steps, and Skyla came out.
She wasn't wearing her usual bright colors. She was in an oversized gray sweatshirt that belonged to her brother, her hair uncombed, her eyes swollen and rimmed with red. She stopped at the top of the concrete steps, her small fingers clutching the railing as if the world might slide away from her if she let go.
I dropped my suitcase on the grass, walked up the steps, and knelt down in front of her. At sixty-three, my knees gave a loud, protesting pop, but I didn't care. I reached out and pulled her into my arms.
She didn't cry this time. She just clung to my neck with a frantic, terrifying strength, her small body shaking against my suit jacket. She smelled of cinnamon oatmeal and the specific, cold scent of an empty house.
"I'm here," I whispered into her hair. "I'm right here, baby. You're safe."
Joseph stood up from his cooler, his paperback book slipped into his back pocket. He looked at me over her shoulder, his jaw set in a hard, straight line. "Marcus Vance’s office called twenty minutes ago, Steven. Two DFCS workers are on their way over with the emergency placement paperwork. They need your signature."
"Thank you, Joseph," I said, keeping my arm around Skyla as I stood up.
"Anthony called my cell three times," Joseph added, his voice dropping into a low growl. "He was screaming about me calling the police. I told him if he called my line again, I’d drive down to Orlando and show him what an old mechanic does to an engine that doesn't run right."
"Did he say when they're coming back?"
"Natalie was in the background shouting about non-refundable tickets. They aren't leaving until Tuesday night, Steven. They're going to try to finish the vacation."
A cold, dark satisfaction settled into my stomach. "Good," I said, guiding Skyla into the cool, quiet interior of my living room. "Let them stay. Every hour they spend in that park is another nail in their legal coffin."
The living room of my house had been arranged the same way since my wife, Eleanor, passed away nine years ago. It was a room full of old books, heavy green velvet curtains, and framed photographs of a family that no longer existed in the form they were taken. There was a photo of Anthony at twelve, holding a baseball bat, looking up at me with that desperate need for approval that I had never quite known how to satisfy.
I looked from that photo to Skyla, who had curled herself into a small ball on Eleanor’s old wingback chair, Barnaby immediately resting his heavy, graying head on her sneakers.
"Grandpa?" she said, her voice small against the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall.
"Yes, sweetheart?"
"Am I going to have to go back to the house?"
I walked over to my desk, picked up the legal pad Clara had left there for me, and sat down opposite her. "No, Skyla. You're staying right here with me. From now on, this is your home."
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"But what about my things? My drawings? My blue blanket?"
"We'll get them," I said, drawing a clean, straight line down the center of the yellow paper—the beginning of a custody petition. "We'll get everything that belongs to you. Every single piece."
