My Last Wish novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Two Doors Down

Callie spends the night at Dane's, Chad and Tierney come to the door, and at dawn a process server hands her an emergency custody petition.

I held up the paper the doctor had given me that morning.

"This is my discharge," I said to the guard. "She signed it an hour ago. Her number is on the bottom."

The guard stopped and read it.

He read the whole page, which I was grateful for.

Behind him, a woman in a pharmacy coat had stopped to watch, and so had two men carrying flowers.

Chad was still talking.

"She's confused, she's been confused for years, she doesn't understand what she's doing."

"Sir." The guard handed me the paper back. "It says discharged and competent to make her own decisions. That's her signature, and that's her son."

"I'm the child's father."

"Then you can take that up with a judge," the guard said. "Step back from the vehicle."

Chad looked around the lane at the people watching him.

He fixed his tie.

"Callie," he said, very gently. "Come home and we'll talk."

I put Teddy in the front seat of Dane's truck and buckled him in myself.

Dane didn't say a word until we were around the corner.

Then he pulled over, put both hands on the wheel, and breathed out.

"You're coming to my place," he said.

"I need to go back for his things."

"Tonight, you need a bed. Tomorrow you can fight about socks."

Teddy giggled in the middle of the seat.

"Dane's truck," he said, patting the dashboard. "Dane's truck is loud."

It was loud.

It was the only thing that had made me smile all day.

Dane lived in a narrow brick house two doors down from the one I had been married in.

He had a spare room with a quilt on the bed, and he'd put a folded towel and a toothbrush on the dresser.

I looked at the toothbrush for a long time.

"I bought it in March," he said, from the doorway. "In case."

I didn't ask which March.

Teddy fell asleep on the quilt with one shoe still on, holding a wooden truck Dane had made him.

I sat on the bed beside him and listened to him breathe.

At nine that night, the doorbell rang.

Dane opened it a crack, with his shoulder against the frame.

Chad stood on the porch with Tierney beside him.

Tierney had a cardigan over her arm and a bag of Teddy's clothes in her hand, and she looked like she had been crying.

"Callie?" she said, past Dane's shoulder. "I'm so sorry to come here. I told him not to."

Dane didn't move.

"It's all right," I said, and went to the door.

I stood in the hall with my arms folded over my cardigan.

Tierney reached through the opening and took both my hands in hers.

Her bracelet clinked against my wrist.

"He's frantic, Callie," she said softly. "He hasn't eaten. He's been walking through the house all afternoon calling for you. Please. Just come home, and let's sit down like adults."

Her hands were warm.

Mine had stopped shaking.

I noticed it, and I didn't know why it made me uneasy.

"I'm not coming home," I said.

"Callie."

"I'm staying here tonight, with my son."

Chad's face did something I had never seen it do.

For a second it went completely flat.

Then he smiled.

"You'll be back by morning," he said. "You always are."

He took Tierney's elbow and turned her around.

She looked back at me over her shoulder with her eyes full, and she mouthed, I'm sorry.

I closed the door.

Dane was still standing with his hand flat against the wood.

"You all right?" he said.

"I think so."

"Callie."

"I said I think so."

He nodded.

He went and checked the locks on the back door, and then the front again, and then the windows.

I lay down beside Teddy in my clothes.

I slept, which surprised me.

At six in the morning, I woke to someone knocking on the front door hard enough to rattle the glass.

Dane was in the hall in his socks, and I heard the door open.

"Callie MacTiernan?" a man's voice said. "I have papers for Callie MacTiernan."

I came out holding Teddy against my shoulder.

The man handed me a thick envelope, said, "You've been served," and left.

I tore it open on the hall table.

The first page said Emergency Petition for Temporary Custody.

Under it was a stapled copy of a hospital note, almost three years old, with my name across the top.

It said ninety-ninth attempt.

Chad's signature was on the bottom of the petition, filed at 11:40 the night before.

He had written it while I was asleep in Dane's spare room.

The hearing was in ten days.

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