Another car pulled into the lot. Stacy’s ex. I’d seen him once leaving her place. But he never came when he was supposed to—on Sundays, his day with the kids.
We heard him outside with the police, talking at the door.
“It’s okay, guys. Open up. It’s me. It’s your dad. It’s okay. Michael, Allie, A. J.” He said their names slowly and separately, like a new teacher would, like he was worried about mispronouncing them. “Open the door now.” Nothing. Then: “Your mom knows I’m here. She’s on her way. C’mon guys. Open up.”
Wes called over to the hospital and told them to tell Stacy to come home immediately. Then he called downstairs. We could hear the phone ringing below and their father saying from outside: “Don’t answer that phone!” And Wes breathed out, “C’mon.” And Mandy said, “Everyone is so serious now,” and we shushed her and she started to cry but softly, mewling.
The phone stopped ringing.
“A. J.” Wes gripped the receiver with two hands. “A. J., listen to me. Your mom is on her way home. Don’t open the door, all right? No, I know it’s your dad but listen. Tell him not to, A. J. Tell him—”
But they opened up.
Wes yanked open our door and his feet went down those stairs fast as a drumroll. “You guys know there’s a protective order prohibiting this man from removing those kids from the premises without their mother’s consent. You know that, right?”
“I’m not taking them,” the ex said. “They are.” He pointed to people we couldn’t see. We leaned over the railing. A man and a woman in street clothes were squatting down next to the kids, all three crying now, A. J. the loudest. He was trying to say Mumma but his lips wouldn’t come together for the m’s.
“Who are they?” Jeb whispered.
“DSS,” William said.
“No disrespect,” Wes said, “but you are making a terrible mistake here. Stacy is coming right back. If anyone’s at fault, it’s me. She asked me to watch them and I had to run up to my place for another pack of cigarettes. There has never been a better mom. She loves those kids to pieces. She nurtures them and listens to them and— Look, here she is.” He ran toward Stacy’s car, just pulling in, and said loudly, “Stace, I was just telling them how I had to run up for another pack—”
It all got terribly tangled after that with Stacy sprinting toward her kids and the cops restraining her and the kids howling and hitting the DSS people to get to their mother and her ex suddenly losing it, calling her a fuck-hole and spitting in her face except that it hit the neck of the smaller cop, which he really didn’t like and he let go of Stacy and shoved her ex up against one of the poles that held up the porch we were standing on and we felt the whole flimsy structure shake as he knocked him around. The cop knew he’d gotten on the wrong side of things and needed to make himself feel better.
Through it all Wes kept talking, as if a certain combination of words spoken in the right tone could make it all better for everyone. But the cops took the ex away and the children were buckled into the back of the DSS car. Stacy tried to run after it but Wes held her back. He yelled up for me to throw him his keys and got her in his truck, and they raced out of the lot to catch up with her kids.
William was still looking in the direction of the car with the kids in it, even though the building next door blocked the view of the street.
“Go home to your family, William,” I said.
“I will,” he said in a voice I hadn’t heard before, solemn as a priest.
He went down the stairs and across the lot. He didn’t have on the heels he normally wore with that outfit so the hem dragged a bit through the mud puddles.
Jeb ran the tips of his fingers along my temple and into my hair. He smelled like Vermont and everything I would miss about it later.
Mandy was still watching Wes through the little window next to the sink. “I found him, Mumma,” she was chanting to the glass. “The biggest heart on earth.”
Jeb followed me back to my room. He laughed at the grove of books and stepped up onto my bed in his boots.
I sat on my desk and watched him.
“Let’s start at the very beginning.” He put his finger on the first mark of the timeline: 200,000 BC, the appearance of Y-chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve.
My room smelled of woodsmoke. Wes and Stacy were chasing a car with her kids in it through the city. Mandy and I would wait up for him all night. And someday soon I’d sit at this desk and try to freeze it all in place with words.