“Mrs. Ko—” She stops. Swallows. Her hands are still pressed against her dress. “Mara.”
The smile falls off my face. “Where is my son?”
“But the paperwork…” Her voice is barely above a whisper and it’s shaking, actually shaking. “His name was on the pickup list, with your signature. I?—”
No. No, no, no.
What the fuck is going on? Where is my son?
The world is tilting. The colorful drawings pinned to the school fence, sunflowers, houses, a lopsided blue dog, are blurring into smears of meaningless color. My lungs have turned to lead. I can’t get air in. There is a high, thin ringing in my ears that sounds like a tea kettle screaming in an empty house.
“Mrs. Farkas.” I step closer. I have to. If I don’t move, I’ll collapse. I lower my voice because there are still children nearby, their laughter coming from the sandbox like a cruel soundtrack to the end of the world. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel the pulse in my back teeth. “Tell me right now. Where is Theo?”
“Some men came.” She can’t hold my eyes. She looks at my chin, my shoulder, anywhere that isn’t directly at me. “About an hour ago. They said they were his uncles. They had a car outside andthey said you’d sent them, they said you’d had an emergency and you asked them to collect him, and I told them I couldn’t, I told them I needed written authorization, I have a policy, I’ve always had the policy?—”
“Mrs. Farkas—” His uncles? I don’t have brothers. I don’t have anyone left.
“But when I checked the authorization list, one of their names was there. With your signature.” The words come out in a rush like she’s been holding them behind her teeth and they’ve finally broken through. “You’d never mentioned him in person, but he was on the list. We couldn’t deny him checking Theo out. I couldn’t?—”
I stop hearing her.
Not because she stops talking. She keeps talking, I can see her mouth moving, but the sound of it goes somewhere far away and what replaces it is a roaring in my ears that I recognize from a hallway in Moscow five years ago, from a closet door and a shot and boots on marble.
Theo.
My son. My mind flashes to him—his sticky fingers, the way he insisted on wearing his left shoe on his right foot this morning because it felt “more adventurous,” the tiny, soft mole on the back of his neck. He’s so small. He’s so impossibly small against a made man.
My five-year-old son with his dinosaur books and his serious eyes and the way he holds my face in his small hands when he wants me to pay attention to something important.
Someone took him. Someone came to his school with forged paperwork and took my child.
The courtyard tilts. I’m dimly aware of the sun on my neck, the smell of woodchips, the mundane reality of a Tuesday afternoon, while my soul is being ripped out through my ribs.
“Mara.” Mrs. Farkas grabs my arm. I realize I’ve put my hand out against the gate because my legs are turning to water.
Don’t fall. If you fall, he’s gone. If you break, he dies.I swallow the bile rising in my throat. I force the panic into a small, dark box at the base of my brain and I lock it.
I can feel the shift, the terrifying, familiar hardening of my spine.
“Which direction?” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. It sounds like something being operated by someone else entirely. “The car. Which direction did it go?”
She points.
I’m already turning, already moving. She’s shouting about the police, the precinct on Váci Street, but I’m already in my car. I sit behind the wheel for three seconds, staring at the dashboard.
Breathe. I press both palms flat against my thighs. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
My hands are shaking so violently I can feel it in my elbows, a rhythmic vibrating of pure, unadulterated terror.Stop it. Stop shaking.I grip the wheel until my knuckles turn white, forcing the tremor down by sheer will.
I pick up my phone. I call Nadia.
It rings twice.
“Hey, did you make it in time or did you do the sprint again because I keep telling you if you just left ten minutes ear?—”
“They took him.” My voice cracks completely down the middle. “Nadia. Someone took Theo.”
Silence.
