On his hip, Sam felt a gentle vibration.
He drew the phone out and read the caller.
Elliott.
Adeline’s eyes were closed again, probably for good for the night.
Sam gently peeled her hand from his chest, rose, and crept out of the room, swiping to answer the call as he closed the door.
Elliott was shouting in the background—and someone was screaming back at him.
Sam jogged down the hallway, his bare feet patting against the creaking hardwood floor.
“Elliott?”
In the living room, Sarah was sitting with Ryan in her arms, a finger pressed to the pacifier in his mouth. She looked up at him with bulging eyes that said, I just got him to sleep! Be quiet!
Sam couldn’t make out the voice shouting back at Elliott. In the background, there was a crash.
“Elliott!” Sam called. His heart beat faster. His eyes darted back and forth, thinking.
Sarah’s expression turned from annoyance to concern.
“Sam?”
Sam was about to yell into the phone when Elliott spoke, voice ragged. “Sam, I need help.”
“Where are you? Are you hurt?”
“I’m at home.”
The moment Elliott spoke the word home, Sam bolted from the living room, through the tiny foyer, and out the front door, not bothering to put his shoes on. Sarah called to him, but the thundering in Sam’s ears swallowed the words.
His feet pounded the pavement of the sidewalk between his house and Elliott’s.
Sam raced across the front yard, grimacing as sticks dug into his feet. But he never slowed. He heard the screams through the closed front door.
He turned the handle just as another crash came, glass hitting the wall, shattering, the shards spraying the backside of the door. Sam stopped and waited for the barrage to pass, then stepped out, first surveying the floor for glass. It was one thing to charge across an unkempt lawn. Walking across broken glass was another. It seemed the shards weren’t the only dangerous thing in the room.
At the edge of the living room, under a cased opening that led to the kitchen, Elliott’s only son, Charlie, was screaming at his parents, the words slurred, indecipherable to Sam. Dark black bags hung under his wild eyes. His black hair was stringy and greasy, partially covering his eyes like a predator staring through blades of tall grass.
His mother, Claire, stood in the dining room to the left, clutching a phone in her hand. “I’m calling the police.”
Elliott held out a hand. “Don’t. He’ll resist, and they’ll arrest him—”
The boy bolted then, through the kitchen, throwing the door open and slamming it into the wall.
Elliott gave chase, and Sam, eying the broken glass, stepped through the room, falling in behind his friend. When he reached the deck, Charlie had already crossed the backyard and was bounding over the wooden fence into a neighbor’s yard.
Elliott bent down, placing his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. “I need you…” he whispered.
Sam wasn’t sure if Elliott was addressing him or calling for strength from a higher power.
Elliott reached into his pocket, drew out a car key, and handed it to Sam. “I need you to drive. I’ll get out and run him down when we find him.”
Sam didn’t mention his bare feet. He merely followed Elliott to the garage, got behind the wheel, and drove the streets and blocks of the neighborhood, stopping at Charlie’s friends’ homes as Elliott worked the phone, calling other parents to see if his son had shown up there.
As the night wore on, the stress of not finding the boy seemed to weigh on Elliott. At 3 a.m., they stopped at an all-night coffee shop and bought large cups of the steaming, caffeine-laden liquid that would see them through the night. Thankfully, Elliott had gone in, sparing Sam the awkwardness of padding through the café in his bare feet.
They sat at a red light, sipping coffee.
Elliott’s eyes were glassy, staring straight ahead. “We’re losing him, Sam.”
“We’ll keep looking—”
“No. Us. Me and Claire. I can feel Charlie slipping away. The drugs are changing him.”
“He’ll straighten up.”
Elliott took a long pull of coffee. “I wish I could find that person who gave him that first pill. They killed him, Sam. They took his life when they did that. They threw him in the sea, and I feel like he’s drowning, and I can’t get to him. I’m just watching from the shore as the tide carries him out. I’m scared he’s already too far gone.”
Sam didn’t know what to say. The light changed, and he drove into the night.