Saving Noah

by Berry, Lucinda

  SAVING NOAH

  Lucinda Berry

  To be notified of upcoming releases and sales, please subscribe to the Lucinda Berry newsletter.

  SUBSCRIBE

  COPYRIGHT © 2017 by Lucinda Berry

  All rights reserved

  Published in the United States by Rise Press

  ISBN-10: 1541034953

  ISBN-13: 978-1541034952

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and businesses are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  1

  2

  HIM (THEN)

  3

  4

  HIM (THEN)

  5

  6

  HIM (THEN)

  7

  HIM(THEN)

  8

  9

  10

  HIM (THEN)

  11

  12

  HIM (THEN)

  13

  14

  15

  HIM (THEN)

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  HIM (NOW)

  Epilogue

  1

  Noah being charged as a sex offender sucker punched our entire suburban community. Child molesters were adults—dirty old men who lured children into their cars with promises of candy and treats. They weren’t A-honor roll students who ran varsity track and went to mass every Sunday. I still cringed inside every time I said it, but our nightmare was finally about to be over.

  Noah was getting out of the Marsh Foundation in three weeks and I’d counted every day that he’d been gone until he could come home again. I pulled two of his boxes out of the garage before my husband, Lucas, got home, hoping their presence would force him to talk about Noah’s homecoming. I put them in a neat stack next to the couch, but when he walked into the living room, he skirted around them as if they weren’t there, just like he dodged anything related to Noah.

  After he tucked our youngest, Katie, into bed, he planted himself in front of the TV with the remote control in one hand and his phone in the other, shifting his attention back and forth between the two screens. I stared at him from the kitchen, trying to muster up the strength to approach him. He wasn’t classically handsome but he’d always been attractive to me. The dimples in both cheeks made him look playful despite his khaki pants and buttoned-up shirt. He was six feet tall with a leanness that passed as athletic years ago, but decades working in an office had taken a toll on his body. His muscles had begun to sag and the bulge hanging over his belt grew more and more pronounced each year. I took a deep breath before heading into the living room to join him.

  I plopped down on the couch next to him and did my best to appear relaxed. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, rearranged the magazines on the coffee table, and wiped away imaginary crumbs as I worked up the nerve to bring up the subject he continually avoided. I took another deep breath.

  “Do you think we could talk?” I asked.

  He stared at the screen in his hand without looking up. “Sure.”

  “About Noah.”

  His body stiffened the same way it did each time I mentioned his name.

  “What’s there to talk about?” he asked.

  There was no way he didn’t know Noah was getting out soon no matter how hard he tried to remain oblivious to what was happening with his case.

  “Come on, Lucas. Don’t be difficult.”

  “I’m not being difficult. What’s there to talk about?”

  “Maybe the fact that your son is getting out of treatment in three weeks, and we haven’t discussed what we’re going to do about it?”

  “You already know how I feel about it.”

  “But that was a year ago. We haven’t talked about it since.”

  I had ignored him when he’d said he didn’t want Noah to come home after treatment. It was only two months since he’d been locked up and his discharge date was so far into the future that it was the least of my concerns. I was worried about how he’d survive being locked up with criminals and sexual deviants, how he’d sleep in a strange place, and if they would feed him food he liked. Wondering what we’d do when he got out was the last thing on my mind.

  “I still feel the same way,” he said, his eyes glued to his phone. I wanted to slap it out of his hand.

  “Are you serious?” I tried to keep my voice calm.

  He let out a deep sigh. “I don’t want to get into it with you again. Please, don’t start this.”

  “Start this? I’m not trying to start anything. We have to prepare and figure out what we’re going to do. This is happening, whether you want it to or not. I’ve given you time to pretend like he doesn’t exist, but you’re not going to be able to anymore. Not when he’s here. You’re going to have to see him and, God forbid, you might even have to talk to him.”

  When Noah first got locked up, I forced Lucas to come with me on the weekend visits and family sessions because the treatment staff stressed the critical role families played in the rehabilitation process. Lucas was an affectionate man, but he could barely bring himself to touch Noah during our visits. He shook his hand with the formality of meeting a business acquaintance for the first time. He rarely looked at him; his eyes slid over him before he looked away, unable to hide his contempt and disgust. He only spoke when spoken to during the family sessions and sat mute whenever we met with Noah alone.

  I breathed a sigh of relief the first time he pretended to be sick so he wouldn’t have to go. Even though all the experts told us how important family support was for Noah’s recovery, I didn’t think a father who looked at him like he was a pariah qualified. It was better that I went alone. The next weekend rolled around, and he said he needed to stay home with Katie to work on her science project, and I happily agreed. He didn’t bother to make up an excuse the next week, and I pretended not to notice. We didn’t speak about it again. I went alone each Sunday, and he never asked about the visit when I got back. It wasn’t long before his silence extended to all things concerning Noah.

  I tried not to be angry about Lucas’s attitude toward him. His response was better than some fathers’. He didn’t react like Jamar Pickney’s father, who’d shot his son in the head when he learned he’d been sexually abusing his sister, or the father in Detroit who’d slit his son’s throat for taking naked pictures of his cousins and selling them online.

  There were only two fathers who attended the groups at Marsh. Most of the kids didn’t have fathers in their lives before their offenses, and the ones that were there either emotionally detached after their sons’ convictions or disappeared. The moms I met assured me men processed their emotions about it differently. They were confident Lucas just needed space to deal with things in his own way and would come around eventually, so I’d given him his space but his period of avoidance was over.

  “Okay. Let’s talk about where he’s going to live,” he said. He turned off the TV and laid his phone on the coffee table.

  “He’s seventeen, where else is he supposed to live?” I couldn’t keep the emotion out of my voice no matter how hard I tried.

  “We could help him become an emancipated minor. I already looked into the process. It’s pretty easy, especially if the parents are on board with it. All you have to do is fill out an application saying that all parties agree to the emancipation and go before a judge to put his stamp of approval on it. Then, he’s free to live on his own. It’s that simple.” Unlike me, his voice was devoid of all emotion.

  “Really? How’s he supposed to live on his own? What kind of a job is he going to get when he doesn’t
have a high school diploma? And did you forget he’ll be a registered sex offender? He’s not even going to be able to use the Internet.”

  “He’ll have to figure it out.”

  How was he going to do that without any help? How could Lucas consider sending him into the world alone when he didn’t have any of the basic skills he needed to survive? He was still a kid.

  He took my hand in his. “I know you love him and how hard this must be for you.”

  I jerked my hand away. “I love him? What about you? You act like he’s some stranger. Like he’s not even your son. He’s still your son, Lucas.”

  “He stopped being my son when he raped those girls.” His lips were set in a straight line.

  “He didn’t rape them, don’t say that,” I snapped.

  There was a difference between rape and what he did. He touched the girls, but he didn’t rape them. Rape was different, and I clung to anything separating Noah from being a monster. He made a mistake. That was all. One mistake. We all made mistakes in adolescence.

  “Calm down,” he said.

  I didn’t want to calm down. I wanted him to care about his son the way I did—the way he used to. It was like nothing before mattered, and he’d erased all the memories he used to cherish. How could he forget the way he cried when Noah was born, or sat up with him all night in the shower when he had croup? He squealed like a child when Noah took his first steps and taught him to ride his bike without training wheels when he was only four years old. How could he dismiss the way his heart swelled with joy the first time he called him Daddy and every other milestone along the way? He’d coached his baseball team every summer since T-ball and never missed a swimming competition, even during tax season, when he was the busiest. He used to have an entire wall in his office devoted to Noah’s artwork. It traced the lineage of his childhood, from the finger paintings he did in preschool to the self-portrait he created in junior high art class. Now, those images were gone, torn down, and all that remained was a blank wall with leftover pieces of tape hinting at the story the wall used to tell.

  Lucas couldn’t see past what he’d done, but I could. He was our son, and we couldn’t wash our hands of him. Society was going to throw him away, but we couldn’t.

  “How can you make him live somewhere else? It’s so cruel.”

  “I’m protecting my family.” His jaw was set. The same angular line as Noah.

  “He’s your family and if you’d gone to any of the family meetings you’d know how important it is for us to be there for him. All the statistics say family support is one of the biggest factors in his recovery. It’s the most important thing. We have to help him, offer him encouragement. It’s what—”

  “I can’t have him under our roof. I won’t put Katie in danger.”

  Anxiety curled in my stomach at the mention of her—our Peanut. She’d never gotten out of the twenty-fifth percentile on the growth charts. She was dainty and delicate with a small face and piercing blue eyes, constantly studying and taking in the world around her. Unlike most babies of the family, she hid from the limelight, painfully shy, and never liked to be the center of attention.

  I rolled my eyes, shaking my head. “He’d never hurt Katie. Never.”

  “She’s the same age as those girls.”

  “Yes, but he’s better now.” I said it with conviction, hoping my words had the power to make it true. “I’m meeting with the treatment team on Tuesday to come up with a safety plan. You should come with me.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “If he’s better now, then why do we need a safety plan?”

  He didn’t understand. Part of a safety plan was keeping him out of situations where he might look guilty even if he was innocent.

  “We can put locks on her doors just like we did before. We could even put a lock on his door too. Maybe one that locks from the outside, and we can make sure they’re never alone together.”

  He scooted down the couch and put his arm around my shoulders. “Listen to yourself. Do you hear what you’re saying? Locks on doors? Constant supervision? And putting a lock on the outside of his door? So, we’d basically lock him in his room every night and let him out in the morning like a prisoner? What kind of a life is that for him? For any of us?”

  I bit my cheek to keep from crying. I hated this. Every part of it. It never got easier.

  We sat in silence, staring at the blank TV screen, lost in thought about what our life used to be and the family we’d been, all the dreams we had for our kids and each other. The vortex of depression threatened to pull me inside, but I wasn’t going back. I’d spiraled there before and crawled my way out. I wasn’t doing it again.

  “I can’t let him live on his own. He’s still just a kid.” The tears I’d been holding back spilled down my cheeks.

  “You could live with him.”

  I jerked my head up. “What are you talking about?”

  “The two of you could get a place together. It could be somewhere nearby so you’d still be able to see Katie whenever you wanted to.” He took a deep breath.

  “Are you kidding me?” I jumped up, threw his arm off me, and paced the living room. We couldn’t separate our family. We’d been apart long enough. I’d waited eighteen months for this day to come. He knew how excited I was for Noah to come home and all of us to be together again. How could he be so insensitive?

  “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s not if you stop to think about it. The other night I watched a documentary about a family who had a daughter with schizophrenia. She was psychotic and violent. She had a younger brother and started attacking him whenever she went into one of her fits. They couldn’t live together anymore because they were afraid she’d hurt him, so they moved into two different apartments in the same complex. One where the girl stayed and another where the boy stayed. The parents went back and forth between them. They still spent time together as a family, but it kept the boy safe.”

  I couldn’t believe we were talking about keeping Katie safe from Noah. He adored her from the moment we told him he was going to be a big brother. He was ten when she was born and insisted on learning how to do everything to care for her. He changed her diapers like a pro and fed her bottles like he’d been doing it his whole life. We were so grateful for the extra set of hands during those early months because unlike Noah, Katie was a difficult baby who didn’t like to go to sleep without a fight and never slept for more than a few hours.

  He spent hours lying next to her, reading her books, and dangling toys over her head. She was mesmerized by him, and he quickly became her favorite person. Her eyes searched for him whenever she heard his voice and toddled after him from room to room after she learned to walk. Her first word was “No-nah” and sometimes she still referred to him by it.

  Unlike Lucas, Katie begged to go with me every week to see him, but staff only allowed siblings to visit on prearranged monthly outings. She created a calendar with her visiting days circled in pink hearts and tacked it on the bulletin board in her room. Each week she created care packages for me to take filled with letters she’d written and pictures she’d drawn for him. When she was able to visit, she gave him a huge hug and cried all the way home when we left. She was going to be as devastated as me if he didn’t come home to live with us. How would we explain it?

  She didn’t know what he’d done. Not in words. At least we told ourselves that. She knew he made bad decisions and hurt kids because his brain wasn’t working right at the time. We told her he had to go away so he could work with doctors to fix his brain and help him make better choices in the future. What would we tell her now?

  How would I function away from her? Noah’s absence sucked the energy out of me, but she breathed new life into me. She was the reason I got out of bed in the morning when all I wanted to do was pull the covers over my head and stay there. Her schedule organized my life and kept me grounded when everything spiraled out of control. I was determined to keep her sheltered from the tragedy as best I could an
d protect her innocence as long as possible, so I put on a brave face and worked hard to keep up with her routines and maintain the order in her life.

  What would I do without fixing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for her lunch or making sure her leotard was clean for ballet? How would I go to sleep without the angel kisses I placed on her forehead each night? What would she do when her nightmares startled her awake, and I wasn’t there to lay with her and rub her back until she fell back to sleep?

  Noah would suffer from her absence too. She was the only person who could make him smile and bring life to his eyes no matter how badly he felt. It wouldn’t be lost on him that we didn’t trust him enough to live in the house with his sister. What kind of a message did that send for his recovery?

  But in the last eighteen months, I’d learned I was much stronger than I thought. I’d been blessed with an easy life and never would’ve thought I was capable of going through what I’d been through and not being devastated beyond repair. There weren’t any parenting books about what to do when your son was a sex offender, and I’d figured it out on my own. It was like stumbling through a dark hallway alone, feeling your way through, and hoping for a glimmer of light to reveal your next step. It was too much to hope for a light at the end of the tunnel. I gave up on that long ago, but if I looked hard enough, there was always light on my next step. Was Lucas right? Was this the next step for our family?

  I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

  “Okay,” I said. “How would it work?”

  2

  I surveyed the two-bedroom apartment that would soon be my new home with Noah. I hadn’t lived in an apartment since college and had forgotten how small they were. I took the unit even though it was on one of the busiest streets because it was within walking distance to Lucas’s house. I already thought of it as his house. The carpet was beat up and worn, stained with patches of other people’s lives. The walls had been a dingy grey covered in a yellowish film from the previous owners’ smoking, but I’d talked the landlord into allowing me to paint the place. It was an easy sell because I promised to buy the paint and do it myself. The fresh coat of white on the walls looked nice and helped with the smell.