by Teague, AS
She shook her head, her hair brushing against my tear-stained cheeks. “I don’t know what you’re going through right now, but I know how I feel, and I promise you that I won’t leave you. No matter what, I will stay here with you. I will pace this floor with you, step for step. I will stand watch by the door all night long. I’ll get in my car and start physically looking for her if you want me to, but I will do all of it with you. Because I love you. And I love those boys. And I want them back too.”
Her arms tightened around my waist, and I squeezed her back, pressing a kiss to the base of her neck, and then cleared my throat and stepped back. “I’m going to call Shay’s parents again.”
Mel pressed her lips together and nodded. “What should I do?”
There wasn’t much she could do, but I knew that she wouldn’t be able to sit down and relax anymore than I could. “Try their cells again?” It was a question because I knew that it was all in vain. Their phones were off and had been all day and night.
She scooted around me to grab her cell, and I caught sight of the clock behind her. Ten minutes until midnight.
The fireworks around here would be going off any minute. They were illegal to shoot off without a permit in the state, which is why the boys and I always went to see the display right after dark. But I lived in an affluential neighborhood, and every year someone would go through the motions of getting the required documents to be able to shoot them off.
The boys had always loved sitting in the living room with the curtains open and watching the display through our back windows. My stomach soured as I looked to the empty couch, the cushions that should have been filled by three kids, my dog, and empty candy wrappers and goofy New Year’s party hats.
I squeezed my eyes shut and turned away from the couch before a fresh round of emotion overtook me and put my phone to my ear.
Barb answered on the first ring, “Aiden? Any news?”
My stomach sank. “I was calling you for the same reason.”
Her breath hitched, and the optimism in her voice was gone when she said, “We haven’t heard anything. Hang on, Chuck wants to talk to you again.”
I sighed. Despite my differences with Shay, I’d always admired her father. He doted on his only child, showering her and Barb both with all the love and affection that I’d missed out on growing up. When we’d started dating in high school, he’d sat me down and had a little chat with me about what he expected from me with regard to his daughter, and when I gave him my word that my intentions were as pure as a fifteen-year-old kid’s could be, he’d shaken my hand and considered me part of the family.
Even now, despite having not been with his daughter in years, he still called me son on the phone, sent me messages of congratulations when I won a game, and made sure to check up on me when I’d suffered my injury. He was a man who I’d decided to model my own fatherhood after.
Despite how his daughter had turned out, he and Barb were good, honest people. “Aiden. Tell me what happened between you and Shay?”
I wasn’t in the mood to rehash it all, but I had nothing else to do but sit and watch the clock, so I quickly recapped our last conversation and then all of the crazy messages and voice mails she’d left me over the last couple of days.
When I was finished, Chuck cleared his throat. “Barb and I have been worried about that girl for a long time. We took comfort knowing that you were looking out for her, but now I see that maybe we should have done more on our end with her. She never did get over your breakup, you know?”
I didn’t have the energy to get into it with him, but I’d also always shot it straight with Chuck Malcolm, and I wasn’t about to change that now. “I know, but I can’t help that. I never misled her.”
“No, son, you never did. I guess what I’m saying is, her mama and I didn’t see what she was doing when it came to you. If we had, we would have talked to her.”
He was feeling guilty, as though if he had just told her to accept that things were truly over between us, we wouldn’t be going through this right now. “Don’t think that would have changed anything.”
He harrumphed. “S’pose not.” The phone rustled, and then he lowered his voice. “Barb’s cryin’. Need to check on her. You let me know if anything changes.”
“Will do,” I told him, disconnecting the call and scanning my messages for any that might have come in while I was talking. There were none, and I clutched the phone tightly in my hand just as the first firework went off. I spun toward the windows just in time to see the living room illuminated in red.
“Fuck New Year’s.”
* * *
For five hours, I alternated between blinding fear and pure, unadulterated rage.
I would pace for an hour until Mel begged me to sit with her on the couch, only to pop back to my feet five minutes later and resume my pointless walk. While my body needed sleep, my brain refused to slow down long enough to even consider trying. I wouldn’t be able to rest until I knew where the hell my kids were, and even Mel didn’t dare suggest I try to get some shuteye.
On the same token, if she was tired, which I was more than certain she was, she never voiced it. She simply sat in the living room with me, listening when the anger overwhelmed me and I was forced to let off some steam in the form of angry curse words or risk combusting.
When the crushing fear threatened to smother me, she was right there, her mere presence breathing life into me, ensuring that the wave of terror that threatened to consume me never got close enough.
But despite all the optimism and support that she gave me, the knock on the door at five twenty-six a.m. stopped me in my tracks.
It was brisk, loud, full of authority, and I knew right away that whoever was on the other side of that door was not Shay or my boys. And I feared that the person who rapped sharply was there to deliver bad news.
The knock came again and still, I couldn’t make my feet move toward where the sound was coming from. My eyes were fixed on Mel, and hers on me. We both stood motionless until the sound came a third time, and then she shook herself out of it and pushed past me to get to the door. She threw it open to find Detective Jones along with two uniformed officers standing on the other side.
Their faces were solemn, the detective’s forehead creased. He peered from where Mel stood in front of him, and when our gazes collided, my heart lurched.
The look he gave me was not of a man with good news. No, the man standing in my doorway, letting the cold winter air in, was only here to bring me bad news. Maybe even earth-shattering news.
For hours, I’d been waiting for someone to show up with some sort of news, with anything that would let me know where my kids were and what the hell was going on. But now that the man was here to do just that, I wished like hell he’d never knocked on my door.
I looked at Mel, the woman of my dreams, the person who just a few days ago I’d walked off the stage to, declaring to myself and her that our life was finally going to begin, and I saw the fear that I was experiencing reflected in her eyes.
“Detective Jones,” I managed to husk out. My throat suddenly felt like it was coated in sandpaper.
Mel stepped aside. “Come in, all of you.” Her voice was robotic. She was operating on autopilot at this point, just like I was. The three men stepped inside, and she closed the door soundly behind them before nearly sprinting over to where I was still rooted in place in the middle of my living room. She reached my side and pressed her body next to mine, her arm looping around my waist. I’m sure she was doing it to offer comfort, but I hoped that she was prepared to hold me up when whatever it was the detective had to say brought me to my knees.
“Mr. Shaw. Wanted to come here and personally deliver the news. I put out a report to some of my contacts around the state and the surrounding states and got a hit about twenty minutes ago. Reports of a single vehicle accident, Range Rover rollover outside of Hershey, Pennsylvania. Vehicle description matches your ex’s. I’m waiting to get confirmation
on the plates, but there were four occupants in the vehicle.”
The world came to a screeching halt, the words that the man before me was saying coming out in slow motion, as though someone had pushed the pause button.
Single vehicle.
Range Rover rollover.
Four occupants.
His words ricocheted around my head like someone had turned my brain into a pinball machine.
“Did you say Hershey?” Mel asked, her voice eerily calm.
“Yes. Any reason that Shay would be there?” the officer to the right of the detective answered.
I didn’t have the first idea why she would be there. Her parents lived in Oklahoma, and to my knowledge, she didn’t have any friends there. I went to shake my head, but then it hit me. “The chocolate factory.”
“I’m sorry?” Detective Jones frowned.
Mel’s eyes flew to mine. “Isn’t that where Hunter said she was going to take them?”
I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat. Shay had talked about the chocolate factory for years. It was the one place she’d always wanted to go as a child, but her parents had never been able to take her.. If that was really her SUV, it would make sense.
“It could be her,” I whispered.
“Could be,” the officer to Jones’ left said.
“May not be them either, Mr. Shaw,” the detective interjected “But—” He paused and looked to the uniformed cops on either side of him and gave them a subtle chin jerk. They both took a step forward. “You may want to sit down.”
I couldn’t have moved to the couch if the ground beneath my feet had turned to quicksand. I shook my head again. “Just say it.”
He opened his mouth and then clamped it shut, and I braced myself. Mel must have felt my body stiffen, or maybe she needed the support as much as I did, because her grip on me tightened.
“There’s a report of a fatality.” To his credit, Detective Jones’ eyes never wavered from mine as he spoke the words that threatened to take me out. “Another in critical condition. But no word on genders or ages.”
Mel let out a strangled cry, her hand flying to her face, and she began to wobble. For reasons that will always be unknown to me, but her movement snapped me out of the stupor that I’d been in since that first knock on the door, and I finally found my voice again. “It’s not my boys. It’s not them.”
The radio on one of the officers’ shoulders beeped and crackled, and he stepped away and whispered codes into it that I didn’t understand. A moment later, he came back and delivered the blow that I’d refused to believe.
“That was dispatch. Plates match. Vehicle came back as registered to Aiden Shaw.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Mel
One fatality.
One fatality.
One fatality.
Those two words echoed in my mind, and my vision tunneled when that uniformed officer confirmed the vehicle in the accident was Shay’s.
The detective continued to talk, his mouth moving, but I wasn’t hearing anything that he was saying. I knew that I needed to listen to what he was saying, but I couldn’t focus on anything other than my swirling thoughts, the complete and utter fear that it could be Landon, Owen, or Hunter who was gone.
The hold I had on his waist went slack, and my legs turned to Jell-O as I sagged in Aiden’s arms. He gripped my body, his arms acting on instinct, and when I tipped my chin to look up at him, I was met with the face of a man who was experiencing devastation on a level I could never fathom. He had barely survived losing his career. He would never recover from the loss of one of his kids.
His eyes were trained on the officers, but they were glazed over, and even though he was nodding his head as though he was absorbing the information that was being relayed to both of us, I had a suspicion that he wasn’t hearing what was being said either.
I’d been strong for Aiden.
I would continue to be strong for Aiden.
But having strength didn’t mean being stoic, and the tears that I’d managed to keep at bay over the last twelve hours began to pour out of me.
We stood that way, clinging to each other wordlessly as we tried to comprehend what we’d just been told until the detective stopped talking and took a step forward. Hesitantly, he put a hand on Aiden’s arm, and even though it sounded like he was in another room and not directly in front of me, I heard him say, “Mr. Shaw. Is there someone we can call for you?”
“Her parents.” He managed to force the words out, his lips barely moving. “I need to call her parents.”
“They’ve already been informed,” Jones said.
“I need to get to the airport.” I hadn’t been able to tear my gaze away from his terrified face, and I watched as he blinked away the confusion. “Can you drive us to the airport?”
The detective nodded, and we were through the door without anything more than our phones and wallets, not bothering to turn the lights off or even lock up behind us.
An hour later, we’d boarded a private jet set to take us to Pennsylvania. The next available flight was over two hours from now, and Aiden refused to wait that long, instead spending an ungodly amount of money on a chartered flight.
We hadn’t spoken a word to each other, each consumed with our own thoughts and fears, but his hand had never left mine, and even now as we sat waiting to take off, his fingers were laced through mine, flexing every now and again as though to reassure himself that I was still there.
The detective informed us that Shay’s parents were already en route to the hospital in Pennsylvania and would likely beat us there.
On the drive to the airport, Jones told us that the drive to Hershey was over thirteen hours, but the flight was just shy of two.
Despite the somewhat manageable duration of the flight, being in the cabin of that plane, the rich leather seats wrapped around us, was pure agony.
By the time we’d boarded, we still didn’t have any updated information as to who it was that hadn’t survived the accident and who was critically injured. We didn’t even know for sure that it was Shay and Aiden’s kids in the vehicle.
My mind tried its damndest to come up with every alternate scenario, and by the time the plane touched down in Pennsylvania, I had almost convinced myself that Shay’s car had been stolen and it wasn’t Aiden’s kids who were inside at all, but a group of thieves. I knew that it was far-fetched, but I held on to that idea on the entire drive from the airport to the hospital.
Aiden barely let the cab come to a complete stop before he tossed the driver a hundred-dollar bill and slung the door open. I managed a whispered thank-you and then followed him out of the car, barely able to keep up with him as he sprinted through the emergency room doors.
He raced to the desk and slapped a palm on the counter, startling the nurse who was looking at a computer screen on the other side. “May I help you?”
“Car accident,” Aiden croaked, his voice strangled. It was the first words he’d uttered since we’d gotten on the plane. “There was a car accident a few hours ago. A Range Rover. Four people inside. Were three of them boys?”
The woman in bright green scrubs shook her head and frowned. “I, uh, I’m sorry, who are you?”
“Just answer the question!” Aiden roared, and I placed a hand on his shoulder. Instead of calming him the way I’d hoped, he merely shook it off.
The nurse’s eyes bugged out of her head at his outburst, but she quickly regained her composure and began typing on the keyboard in front of her. “Looks like there were four people brought in via ambulance from an MVA a few hours ago.” Her mouth was set in a tight line when she glanced back up to where we were watching her intently. “Let’s go through here.”
She pushed out of her rolling chair and came around the side of the desk, gesturing for us to follow her through a door to the side.
“No! I’m not going anywhere till I find out if my boys are okay.” Once again, I reached for his arm, and this time I
didn’t let him shrug me off.
“Come on,” I whispered, my mouth dry. “She’ll tell us everything we need to know. But let’s do it in private.”
The nurse nodded at my words. “Yes, some privacy.”
Aiden finally relented, and I gripped his forearm tightly as we followed her into a small room with a couch and two chairs. There were no windows in the room and the lighting was soft. It struck me that this was probably where they delivered bad news, and I wondered if the room was also soundproof.
The nurse clicked the door shut behind us and then turned and faced Aiden. “You said ‘your boys’,” she started. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Aiden Shaw,” he barked. “I’m Aiden Shaw. The SUV, it’s registered to me because it belongs to the mother of my children.”
She nodded. “How many children do you have?”
“Three. Three boys.” His lower lip quivered. “Listen, the detective in Green Bay told me that someone died. Please, I need to know, was it one of my boys?”
She pressed her lips together and said, “Tell me your boys’ names.”
“Landon Shaw, Owen Shaw, and Hunter Malcolm,” he bit out.
She checked the tablet she’d brought in the room with her and then looked back up at where we stood in the middle of the space. “Ages?”
“Landon and Owen are eight. Hunter is six.”
“And which ones are your children?” she asked, a crease forming between her brows.
Aiden huffed and took a step forward. “They’re all my kids.”
“And you said your name was Aiden Shaw?”
“Yes!” he said, the exasperation causing his voice to rise an octave. “Look, just tell me what’s going on with them.”
“Hunter Malcolm, is he your son?”
“Yes!” Aiden and I said in unison.
“But his last name isn’t Shaw?”
“Look, he’s not my biological son, but he’s my son.” Aiden pleaded, “Please, can’t you just tell me what’s going on?”