“Derek.”
“I’m getting eyes on Noah.”
The dispatcher said, “Sir, advise your brother not to enter.”
I almost repeated it.
Then I imagined Noah on the floor, trying not to cry because a grown man had told him crying would get him hurt again.
“Derek,” I said, “tell me what you see.”
A few seconds passed.
Then gravel crunched under tires.
“I’m pulling up,” he said.
His voice dropped lower.
“Your porch flag is knocked sideways. Front door’s cracked. I see Noah’s little blue sneaker by the steps.”
My vision narrowed.
“A sneaker?”
“The blue one.”
I had tied that shoe myself two mornings before.
Noah had insisted he could do it, then made a knot so tight I had to pick at it with a fork.
A tiny, stupid memory.
The kind that becomes unbearable when you are afraid you will never get another one.
“Derek, wait for the officers,” I said, though I already knew he would not.
“I hear yelling inside.”
The dispatcher asked what he heard.
I repeated it as best I could.
Then, through Derek’s phone, I heard a voice from inside the house.
Travis.
Muffled but furious.
“I told you to shut up!”
Then Noah screamed.
It was not loud for long.
It cut off as if he had covered his own mouth.
Derek said one word.
“Move.”
He did not shout it.
He did not curse.
He sounded like a door closing.
“Who the hell are you?” Travis snapped.
Something scraped across the floor.
I heard Derek step inside.
“Noah,” he said, “look at me. Come toward my voice.”
My son sobbed, “Uncle Derek?”
I had to pull over for half a second because my hands were no longer safe on the wheel.
Cars honked behind me.
I did not care.
“That’s right, buddy,” Derek said. “Come here. Slow.”
Then his tone sharpened.
“Hands where I can see them, Travis.”
That told me the whole room.
Derek could see Travis’s hands.
He could see the bat.
