Boss Me

by Claire Adams

  Cole looked to his left, then his right, and I looked too, but Declan wasn’t where he had just been a few moments ago.

  “Where’d he go?” Cole asked. His eyes shot past me, looking down the street. “Declan!” he yelled. The people walking past looked at us. “Declan!”

  My mother had been several feet behind us, texting Bill. She looked up when she heard us yelling. “What’s the matter?” she said.

  “Where’s Declan?” I said. “Do you see him?”

  She shook her head. “I thought he was with you...”

  A strange calmness descended over me, even as my mother’s eyes widened and Cole continued to bellow Declan’s name. He would appear at any moment, I just knew it; he’d step out from around the corner, he’d have a big grin on his face, we’d chastise him for not staying within our line of vision... I just knew this was going to happen.

  Except it didn’t.

  Cole went down to one end of the block and disappeared around the corner, then came back, rushing toward me, shaking his head. My mother had gone the other way, and I looked behind us, asked the people coming out if they had seen a little boy who looked like Declan, wearing...wearing... what the hell had he been wearing? I couldn’t remember, and I didn’t want to give them the wrong information.

  I went back inside to see if maybe Declan had wandered back in, past my mother without her noticing. There was no sign of him. I did see a security guard though, so I went over to him and told him that we couldn’t find Declan.

  “How long has he been missing for?” he asked, his face very serious.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Not that long. Less than a minute, really.”

  And then Cole was pushing his way back inside, his eyes wide, frantic, even though I could tell he was trying to keep himself under control. The security officer was speaking into his walkie talkie.

  “You’re his parents?” he said to us.

  “Yes, well, I’m his father,” Cole said. “His name’s Declan. He’s 4. He’s about this tall, he’s got light brown hair, blue eyes...he was wearing... I think he was wearing a gray T-shirt with a fire truck on it and blue cargo shorts. Navy blue. I’m going back out there to look for him; I don’t think he came back in here.”

  Before the security officer could say anything else, Cole dashed off, this time running the other direction down the block.

  Another security officer had arrived, and the two were talking together, so I went back outside, too. There were so many people. So many cars. All going in different directions, and where would a little 4-year-old boy have gone off to by himself?

  My mother hurried over to me, put her hand on my arm.

  “Did you find him?” she asked hopefully, even though I could tell she knew that I hadn’t.

  “No,” I said.

  She set her mouth into a determined line. “He couldn’t have gotten far,” she said. “He’s got to be nearby. We’ll find him. Come on.”

  We walked down the street, calling his name, but I was now overcome with the fear that something bad had happened and there was nothing I could do about it.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Cole

  He was gone.

  Literally gone.

  I’d pulled away from the kiss with Allie and looked down for him, and where he was supposed to be was just a blank space, empty air.

  I didn’t know if the security guard was going to be able to help, so after I told him what Declan looked like, I took off. No way in hell was I just going to stand around there waiting for someone else to find him.

  I went all the way around the block, calling his name. I ran into Allie and her mother, and they looked startled to see me.

  “I don’t see him anywhere,” I said. “I don’t know if he managed to cross the street or something. I’ve got to keep looking...” I looked at Allie’s mom. “Would you stick around here, in case the security guards find him?”

  “Of course,” she said. “And I just know he’ll turn up, I just know it—”

  I didn’t stick around to hear the rest of what she had to say. Of course it was going to be something hopeful, something reassuring, but those words rang hollow to me right now. Most people go through life thinking this sort of thing would never happen to them, that the stories they see on the news or read about online happen to other people, but never them.

  But what happens when one day you are that person?

  I’d already been that person once, with everything that happened with my sister, and now here I was, potentially that person again. My feet thudded against the concrete. Sweat trickled down my brow. Where the fuck was he? How could someone his size have gotten so far?

  There was an easy answer to that, of course, one that I was trying valiantly not to let enter my consciousness. It muscled its way in, though.

  He got that far because someone took him.

  And once that thought was forefront in my mind, the onslaught followed. A deranged murderer took him. A sociopath. A pedophile. A sick, twisted person who was going to torture him.

  I tried to push that thought out of my mind, but when I did, I was suddenly imagining Declan, him being somewhere with people he didn’t know, wondering where I was, why I was letting this happen to him, why I wasn’t coming to save him.

  I shook my head and yelled his name louder. I asked people if they had seen him. Some people looked concerned, others looked a little wary, but all of them shook their heads. No, they hadn’t seen him. He seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

  There was no worse feeling than being completely helpless. And that was exactly how I felt as I power walked down the street, yelling Declan’s name. I could hear the note of desperation in my voice.

  I stopped walking for a moment and tried to take a deep breath. My shoulders were practically up to my ears, and my jaw was clenched; my whole body felt flooded with cortisol. I was standing outside a frozen yogurt place; the Children’s Museum was across the street, a few buildings down from where I was. I could see Allie; she had just come back out. She was alone, craning her neck up and down the street as if that might somehow make Declan appear. She hadn’t found him yet. I hadn’t found him yet. But I had to keep looking.

  I was about to start walking again when I happened to look into the frozen yogurt shop, the glare off the window shifting enough that I was able to see inside. And there, at one of the tables, was Declan.

  I just stood there, frozen in place, unable to believe my eyes. He had a cup of frozen yogurt that he was eating with an orange plastic spoon. He was sitting at a table with a group of other children, 6 or 7 of them, maybe. It was a large table, and there were two young women at it, too, sitting at the end. They had a bunch of balloons attached to a baby stroller that was parked next to them.

  Declan looked up right then and waved.

  I walked inside, trying to take deep breaths. Part of me wanted to yank him out of that chair and shake him. Part of me wanted to run over and hug him and never let him go. But instead, I walked over and forced myself to smile.

  “Hey, bud,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m eating frozen yogurt with my new friends,” he said.

  The two girls at the end of the table looked at me in confusion. One of them craned her neck around to look at the table behind her where a woman was sitting with a girl who looked to be maybe 7 or 8. Then, they both regarded me again.

  “Um...do you guys know each other?” the girl with brown hair finally asked.

  “Uh, yeah, we do,” I said. “This is my son, and he somehow snuck away and ended up over here.”

  The two girls looked at each other. “I thought that was his mom,” the other one said, nodding to the woman behind us. “I thought he had just come over from that table and wanted to sit with Oliver and his cousins. It’s Oliver’s birthday,” she added, as if that somehow made a difference.

  I nodded slowly, took another deep breath. This wasn’t their fault, those two girls, even though
I felt an involuntary surge of anger toward them.

  “Well, happy birthday, Oliver,” I said, addressing the kids, not sure who Oliver was, not caring. “But Declan and I need to get back. You’ll have to bring them ice cream with you, bud.”

  “It’s not ice cream; it’s frozen yogurt.”

  “Where’d you get the money for that, anyway?”

  “I just ordered it, and they gave it to me.”

  I looked behind the counter, where there were three high school-age looking kids. Of course they did.

  “Right,” I said. “All right, I’m going to go pay for that ice cream, and then we need to get going, okay?”

  I went over and pointed Declan out to the girl standing at the cash register. “I’m paying for his ice cream,” I said. “Apparently he ordered it but didn’t pay for it.”

  The girl shrugged. “Oh, that’s okay. It happens sometimes.”

  “It’s actually not okay,” I said. “So I’d like to pay for it.”

  I pulled my wallet out of my pocket and yanked out a five-dollar bill, which I placed on the counter. I didn’t bother to wait for her to give me change; I just walked back over to Declan and told him we had to leave.

  He’d finished his frozen yogurt by then, so he said goodbye to his newfound friends, and I led him outside. We walked a few steps away from the entrance of the frozen yogurt place, and then I stopped him and squatted down so I was eye level with him.

  “Declan,” I said. He had a little smear of chocolate frozen yogurt on the corner of his mouth, which I reached up and wiped away with my thumb. “Declan, first I want to say that I am very relieved that you are safe. The second thing I want to say is that you scared us all. A lot. We had no idea where you were because you just walked off without telling us where you were going. What if I hadn’t seen you at the frozen yogurt place? What would you have done then?”

  “I would have left and gone back over to the museum.”

  “What if we weren’t there, though?”

  “You wouldn’t just leave me!” he said.

  “Of course we wouldn’t. But we didn’t know where you were.”

  He looked down at his shoes. “They were leaving the museum, too,” he said. “I saw all those balloons. So I followed after them because I wanted to see the balloons. And they ended up coming over here, so I sat with them because they were getting frozen yogurt, and I wanted one, too. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  I exhaled. “I’m not mad,” I said. “I was scared. I was afraid something had happened to you.”

  “What do you think had happened?”

  “We don’t need to get into the details. But I need to know that you understand that you cannot do something like that ever again. It’s not safe. We can’t get separated, okay? When we are in a big place like this, I need to be able to see you at all times. Do you understand?”

  He nodded. “Yes,” he said.

  “Okay, good. Let’s go back over and find Allie. She’s been really worried, too.”

  Declan took my hand, and we walked to the corner and waited for the light to change so we could cross. He had crossed the road by himself. Well, he’d been tagging along with that group of kids, but still. I shuddered at the thought of him dashing across when the oncoming traffic had a green light. Now that he was here, now that he was safe, all those awful possibilities flared again.

  Allie was talking with the security guard as we approached, but when she saw that I had Declan, she ran over to us, then dropped down to her knees and threw her arms around him.

  “Declan!” she exclaimed. She had tears in her eyes, and I could tell she was trying valiantly not to cry. “Oh, Declan, you’re here! We were so worried about you! Where did you go?”

  “He was across the street eating frozen yogurt,” I said.

  The security guard gave us a moment and then stepped over to me. “He’s all right?” he said.

  “Yes, he’s fine. Thank you for helping us look, though; I really appreciate it.”

  He nodded. “Glad this one had a happy ending. They’re not always so lucky.” He gave me a pointed look, and I knew he was trying to shame me, knew he thought of me as just one more careless parent who was too interested in their phone to keep an eye on their kids.

  The thing was, he wasn’t too far off. I looked down as Allie was listening to Declan describe where he had gone off to, what flavor frozen yogurt he’d ordered. I hadn’t been distracted by my phone; I’d been distracted by another person, but in the end, did that really matter? What mattered was Declan had run off, and I had allowed it to happen because I’d been preoccupied. I wanted to just erase the whole thing from my memory, because he was here, he was safe. I wanted to embody the all’s well that ends well mantra, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that things could have so easily gone terribly wrong, that this outcome could have certainly gone a different way.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Allie

  We were all shaken up over what happened with Declan, though now that he was back, I was hoping we’d be able to put it behind us.

  When we went back to my mother’s apartment, though, it was clear that the day had been altered, that it was no longer a fun, carefree trip, that something had shifted. We ended up cutting the trip short and not staying for dinner, and instead driving back early.

  Cole seemed distant, or if not distant, absorbed in his own thoughts. I could tell how bothered he was by the whole thing, and I knew that he blamed himself, even though really, we were both to blame. It had happened so fast, as those things do.

  I glanced into the back seat and saw that Declan was fast asleep. I reached over and took Cole’s hand. He didn’t pull his hand back, but his fingers were limp, and he didn’t give me a squeeze back. He kept his eyes glued on the road.

  “I am really glad that everything turned out okay,” I said. “I know you’re probably blaming yourself for this, but—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “Don’t try to tell me this wasn’t my fault, because that’s a complete lie. This was entirely my fault. I should have been watching him, and I wasn’t.”

  “Then it was partially my fault, too,” I said. “We both should have kept an eye on him.”

  “You’re not his parent.”

  It stung to hear him say it like that. No, I wasn’t his parent, but I felt as though I was responsible for him, too, when we went out.

  “I know I’m not,” I said. “And I wasn’t implying that I was. But we had both been keeping an eye on him all day, and maybe you thought that I was going to watch him and that’s why—”

  “We were kissing, Allie. I didn’t think you were going to be keeping an eye on him while we were kissing. I didn’t even think about it, to be honest. It didn’t even cross my mind. If it had, I wouldn’t have done it.” He shook his head. “Or maybe I would have, I don’t know. You never think these sorts of things are going to happen to you until they do. And yes, I’m very relieved that everything turned out fine and we’re not going to be some cautionary tale on the 6 o’clock news, but it should not have happened in the first place, and I really can’t forgive myself for being so stupid.”

  “We know better now,” I said. “We’ll be more aware of it in the future. Nothing like this will ever happen again.”

  Cole shook his head. “No, it won’t.”

  “The important thing is that everything turned out okay.”

  I looked at Cole to see his reaction, but his expression didn’t change; he kept his eyes on the road, and I finally pulled my hand away. We were quiet for the rest of the drive back. When we got into our neighborhood, he stopped in front of my house. “I’m just going to let you off here,” he said. “That way I can try to get Declan into the house without waking him up.”

  “Okay,” I said, even though it wasn’t even 7 o’clock yet.

  “He’s had a really busy day,” Cole said.

  I unbuckled my seat belt. “He has. I wouldn’t be surprised if he sle
pt until tomorrow morning. Well... okay. Goodnight, Cole. I’m sorry that things turned out the way they did, but I’m glad they were all right in the end.”

  I leaned forward a little, thinking that he would at least give me a kiss goodnight. He stayed where he was, though, for several seconds, until he finally leaned forward to give me a quick peck on the lips.

  “Goodnight,” he said.

  I got out of the car feeling very disconcerted, though I tried telling myself that I was just imagining it, that there was nothing wrong. That Cole was just shaken up about earlier and he’d be fine later on.

  We hadn’t eaten dinner there, so I rummaged through the fridge and made a salad with some leftover cold chicken from the night before. I ate that and then tried to watch TV for a little bit, though there was nothing that good on. It was getting later, though, and I decided I would take a shower and go to bed. I was on my way to the bathroom when there was a knock at the door.

  I felt a smile go across my face when I saw that it was Cole. I knew that I’d been silly to be worried earlier, that all he needed was a little time to process what had happened and realize that everything had turned out fine.

  But when I opened the door, he was not smiling.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. Then he shook his head. “No, it’s not. And listen, I can’t stay long since Declan’s in bed. I probably shouldn’t even be over here right now, considering all that’s happened.”

  “Do you want me to come over there?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. I... I’ve been giving everything a lot of thought. And I just... I can’t do this anymore, Allie, I’m sorry.”

  My heart stopped beating for a second, and it felt as though my whole body froze for a moment, like blood wasn’t even circulating. “Wh... what?” I said. “What do you mean?”

  “I have been so caught up with you. I’ve been distracted because I’ve been thinking about you, I haven’t been able to focus—I’m not saying this is your fault, because it’s not. But something seriously bad could have happened to Declan, and if it had, I never would be able to forgive myself. And it was all because I wasn’t paying close enough attention to him because I was focused on you.”