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“No, he’s—”
“Get him inside the house, then call me back.”
He was about to hang up when Sean said, “Hold on, man. Let me get a word in.”
Caleb sighed, which did exactly nothing to release the tension that had him wired tight. Adrenaline and stress made a potent cocktail. “Go ahead.”
“The thing is, the photographer’s here because Richard Morrow invited him. It’s some kind of sick photo shoot or something, I guess. I didn’t think it was my call to tell the kid’s dad what he could and couldn’t do, you know?”
“Shit,” Caleb said. It was the only thing he could think of to say. Ellen’s ex was an even bigger prick than he’d thought.
“Hang tight,” he assured Sean. “I’ll be there with Ellen in ten.”
Chapter Twenty-three
The slow-motion slide of her heart into her stomach made it impossible for Ellen to unbuckle her seat belt. Caleb had to do it for her.
Her baby was playing with his father in the sandbox, and Weasel Face crouched next to them, taking their picture.
Henry wasn’t in any danger. He was perfectly content, talking to himself and shoveling sand onto the back of his dump truck with the solemnity of the very young while Richard perched on the edge of the sandbox, performing parental attentiveness.
And yet Ellen’s hands shook so hard, she had trouble working the door latch.
Again, Caleb was there, helping her out of the car, and he said, “Let me handle this,” low and cautionary, but she could hardly hear him because there was a man, a strange man taking pictures of her son so he could put them in newspapers and on the Internet, where thousands of other strangers would see the soft, downy curve of Henry’s cheeks and his innocent blue eyes, clear as a mountain lake.
They weren’t his father’s blue eyes at all. They were Henry’s. Not Richard’s to sell. Henry’s.
And then, without realizing she’d crossed the drive, she had Henry in her arms. She’d plucked him so abruptly from the sand that it streamed off him, filtering into her sandals, and he went stiff and shoved against her with both hands as she pressed her face against his cheek. “Ma put you down,” he said. “Henry is w
orking.”
But she couldn’t. She knew she was overreacting—Henry had been in candid shots before, and a picture now and again wouldn’t bring the world to an end—but still she couldn’t stop herself from burying her face in his hair and breathing in the little-boy smell of him, that sweet combination of baby shampoo and cheddar bunnies and dirt.
The camera whirred and clicked quietly, recording her reunion with her son.
The photographs weren’t the issue. It was the violation. Richard’s violation—but here was the vulture he’d hired, sticking his camera in her face and saying, “Smile.” Until the edges of her field of vision turned scarlet, she’d had no idea the expression “seeing red” was anything more than a figure of speech. It was real, probably the result of the blood pounding in her ears.
“Caleb?” she said, mildly surprised by how not-insane she sounded. “Could you please take Henry inside?” But Caleb wasn’t next to her, where she’d expected him to be. He was still over by the car, conferring with the other agent.
“I’ll do it.”
Maureen’s voice. Maureen was here, it seemed. Ellen hadn’t noticed. She hadn’t looked at anyone or anything but Henry and Richard and the camera and the rodent-faced prick who was holding it.
“Henry doesn’t want to go inside,” her son said as Maureen took him from her. Her hands were reluctant to let go of his dirty little jean-clad butt. “Henry stay here wif Mama.”
As he receded toward the house, his cries rose in pitch and lost intelligibility, until he was crying “No! Noooooo!” and Ellen felt like she’d been knifed in the chest.
He’ll be okay. Maureen will show him a movie and give him a cookie, and he’ll be just fine.
Ellen had other things to worry about. Richard. But before Richard, Weasel Face.
She advanced on the photographer. This man—this scrawny man with his digital SLR and his knees stained from crawling over the damp grass in pursuit of pictures of her son—he was all of her nightmares rolled into one. He was the dream she’d had about losing Henry at the mall and the one where Henry had been in a bus that sailed off the edge of a cliff. He was the stranger with candy and the cleric who liked little boys. He was the driver on his cell phone who hit her kid on a crosswalk because he wasn’t paying enough attention to the road.
He was a threat to her baby, and she was going to kill him.
“You sick, twisted, heartless shithead,” she said, stalking him until he was backpedaling down the driveway.
His mouth opened and closed, but if words were coming out, she couldn’t hear them over all the whooshing blood in her ears.
