At least she cuffs him in front rather than behind his back. I flinch as the cuffs snap into place. This is it. They’re really arresting him. They’re really taking him away to jail. My baby. In jail. How could this be happening?
“Liam, please just tell them where she is!” I blurt out.
For a moment, everyone goes silent.
Jason stares at me, open-mouthed. “Erika…”
The officers are staring at me too. Liam’s face is bright pink. “Mom,” he says, “I didn’t—”
But before he can finish saying whatever it was he was going to say, Rivera puts an arm on his back and leads him out the front door. The sun is still up, and it’s obvious several of our neighbors are watching him get led to the police car in handcuffs. Everyone knows what’s going on. I expect more rocks through our window tonight.
And then they drive away. I follow them outside and watch the police car until it becomes a speck of dust in the distance. Jason comes out to join me. I expect him to yell at me for my little outburst in the house, but he doesn’t say a word.
When we get back in the house, Hannah is standing in the middle of the living room. Her eyes are bloodshot, and she looks like she hasn’t showered today. I’m fairly sure those are the jeans and shirt she was wearing yesterday. “Did they take him? They arrested him?”
Jason sighs heavily. “Yes.”
A tear escapes from her left eye. “Dad! How could you let them?”
He frowns. “I didn’t have much of a choice. They had a warrant for his arrest.”
She stomps her foot on the ground. “This is bullshit! He didn’t do it. You know he didn’t!”
“Hannah…” I say.
“Don’t even, Mom!” she snaps at me. “I know what you think of him. I see the way you look at him. At least Dad thinks he’s innocent.”
They both look at me, waiting for a response. I don’t know what to say. Hannah is absolutely right.
“Even if he’s guilty, I still love him,” I finally say.
And that is the truth. Hannah and Jason might think Liam is innocent, but they’re wrong. I’m the only one who can see through him. All I can hope for now is that Olivia Mercer is still alive. Maybe if he tells them where she is, they’ll go easy on him.
“You have no idea, Mom,” Hannah says. “Liam would never have done this. He really liked Olivia.”
I wish I had a wife, so I could put her deep in a hole.
Unfortunately, Hannah is the one who has no idea what she’s talking about. I know my son. And I know this won’t end well.
_____
When I first saw those two blue lines on the pregnancy test seventeen years ago, I never would have believed the baby growing inside me would end up behind bars.
Everything about Liam’s early life was easy, starting with my pregnancy. I got knocked up on our first try—and in contrast to my pregnancy with Hannah, where I was sick for the entire time, I felt great when I was carrying Liam. People used to tell me I was glowing. And the labor was similarly easy. Five good pushes and he was out. Screaming and pink and perfect.
Liam was a really mild-mannered baby. He rarely fussed or cried. He ate whenever I offered him my breast, and he slept nearly through the night as soon as we brought him home. He was a beautiful baby too. He looked like one of the children in the magazines with his chubby cheeks and sweet smile. Other women were always stopping me in the street to admire him.
And Liam was fantastic at playing the part. When people would ask him how old he was, he would hold up one finger and cry, “One!” He loved to perform. Sometimes I would look down in his crib at night at his sleeping face and wonder how I got so lucky.
It was when he was barely four years old that I first noticed something different about him.
We were at the park. I had Hannah in her carriage and she was sobbing as usual. I was lucky that Liam could be trusted to play independently, because Hannah required all my attention. So I didn’t notice what he was doing until I found him crouched in the corner of the park. I pushed Hannah’s carriage over to see what was going on.
Liam was playing with a large carpenter ant. He had built some sort of enclosure, and he would allow the ant to leave, then trap it again. I watched him do this for a minute, trying to figure out the rules of his game. Finally, I said, “What are you doing, Liam?”
He lifted his big brown eyes and smiled at me—that smile that made all the women fall in love with him. “The ants thinks he’s gonna get away, but he can’t! He doesn’t know I’m gonna smoosh him.”