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“Where are you going?” I questioned.
He turned back and brushed my hair, and I thought I noted a sadness in his eyes even though he smiled. “Bathroom. I won’t be long.”
I nodded and watched him leave, trying to tell myself that I wasn’t making a big mistake.
* * *
The rest of the day,the doubt wouldn’t leave me. As I walked around the kitchen, making dinner, I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t such a big deal.
I was hardly the first girl to be getting an abortion, and I would certainly not be the last. While it was illegal here, he told me we could drive somewhere where it’s legal and do it there.
So why did I feel like I was fighting with myself to go through with it? Why did I feel like crying at the thought of making the call?
It’s normal,I told myself.You’re altering your body. It’s normal to feel someway about it.
I glanced at Ezra, who was sitting on the couch earlier, working on his laptop. He hadn’t spoken much all morning, but that might be because he’d had back-to-back phone calls the entire day. He was on one right now, pacing the halls as he spoke.
“Alright,” he said to whoever was on the other side. “Keep me posted should anything change.”
He hung up, and then I realized I hadn’t had time to ask him how everything went with his business back in DC.
“How is…uhh?” I tried to remember the name. “Lance?”
He turned to regard me and then placed a kiss on my forehead before he spoke. “Not doing well. He’s refusing to cooperate with the doctors, and he’s still on suicide watch.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, remembering my father. Sometimes, when he drank, I was so sure he was trying to kill himself and not wake up.
At least, that was what my mother used to say.
You’re going to drink yourself to death,she would yell, tears in her eyes.And I swear to God I won’t be here to watch you kill yourself. I won’t.
And true to her word, she wasn’t here.
“Does he have any family?” I asked.
Ezra sighed. “It’s complicated. Lance was a real playboy before he left for the military and didn’t know he’d gotten a woman pregnant. He had a son this whole time that he didn’t know about, and the boy went through some pretty tough times without him. And as it turns out, the boy was one of the kidnappers on a recent mission we went on.”
“Wow. That’s insane.” I didn’t know stuff like that happened in real life.
“Isn’t it? What are the odds?” He shook his head. “I think that’s probably why Lance is like this. Because he feels like he failed as a father, even though he never knew about the boy’s existence. And according to Lance, the boy wants nothing to do with his father.”
I nodded. It was to be expected. The boy probably felt like he was abandoned and that nothing could make it better.
“Is there nothing that can be done about his son’s sentence?” I asked.
“I could try, but it would be hard. The girl he kidnapped was the daughter of a mayor, and that’s without including all the cybercrime he committed.”
“He did?”
“Yup. He hacked into security cameras and masked transactions, and they cloaked themselves so well that it took a miracle for us to catch up to them.” Ezra picked up one of Roscoe’s balls and tossed it while in deep thought. Roscoe’s ears perked up, but after his run earlier, he was too tired to go after it. “At first, we thought this was a high-level operation by a group of people, not high school kids. But with everything they did, it won’t be easy to get him off with a lighter sentence.”
“How did you find him?”
“We caught a break when they forgot to mask one of the security cameras, and it caught a glimpse of their faces. But according to Lance, the boy planned that, too, so they could get caught. He didn’t want them to hurt the girl.”
“That means he’s not completely unrepentant,” I said. “And, if you think about it, it means he helped you guys out. That should count for something, right?”
“It’s not that easy.”
