Chapter Text
May misses him by ten minutes.
That is what the sleepy-eyed receptionist at the police station tells her when she arrives three hours later, having broken every speed limit and ignored every traffic sign on her way into the city. It’s a miracle she didn’t get pulled over on her way, but she is still too late: Child Protective Services has come and gone, and in the process they somehow found some distant relatives of Ben’s to take Peter, at least for tonight. And even though there was paperwork to fill out and arrangements to make, they are gone before May arrives.
Ten minutes. If she hadn’t stopped to argue with her mother she might have made it. If she had just left…
May didn’t even know Ben had cousins. She asks for their names, but the receptionist doesn’t have them—or maybe just doesn’t care—and she informs May that even if she did, she wouldn’t just give it out to some random woman in her pajamas who looks like she wandered in straight from the nearest shelter.
“I’m not homeless,” says May numbly. “My husband was shot.”
This information does not seem to inspire any sympathy in the receptionist, but she does stop trying to turn May away. Instead, she pages the detective in charge of the case, who is just as sleepy-eyed, and who leads May into his office in the back while in her head the knowledge of her failure plays in her head like a chant: Ten minutes. I missed him by ten minutes.
She can barely hear what the detective is saying, but she forces herself to listen. It was a random mugging, as far as they can tell. The guy probably wanted Ben’s wallet, but he didn’t get it: he spooked when the gun went off and ran for it. The police will do their best, says the detective, his intonation rote and dull, but she probably shouldn’t get her hopes up. These things happen all the time.
“What about Peter?”
It’s the only thing May really wants to know.
Just as the receptionist said, they can’t release any information about Peter or his whereabouts to someone who is not his immediate family. May can try to get in touch with CPS, but they’ll likely tell her the same thing.
The detective tells her he is sorry for her loss, and he shows her to the door.
May exits the precinct. It is almost morning: the sun is just beginning to rise. May stares at the tinge of pink between buildings in the distance, breath rising in a cool mist in front of her face, and then she pulls her phone out of her purse.
Once again, Peter’s number cuts to voicemail.
She closes her eyes, squeezes them shut to will away the gray static that is encroaching on all edges of her thoughts, and when she opens them she dials a different number—the office of the lawyer who handled her and Ben’s divorce.
Of course they are not open at this hour. May leaves a message. She goes back to her car and gets behind the wheel but does not turn it on because as soon as she is inside she realizes she does not have anywhere to go.
May puts her forehead on the steering wheel. She breathes. For a while, it is all she can do.
At some point she must fall asleep, because the next thing she knows she is being awakened by her phone for the second time in fewer than eight hours, and even though the sun has risen fully her hands are numb with cold. It takes her a moment to answer.
It’s the lawyer. She received May’s message, and the police contacted her as well. She tells May to come to her office: apparently, they have a lot to discuss.
The lawyer’s name is Alex. She is in her mid-thirties but looks younger, and she has made a point of keeping May’s cup of coffee fresh and hot since she arrived, though May has barely drank anything. May has always liked Alex. It was impossible, of course, for the divorce to be anything but terrible, but Alex did her best. She’s about as inexpensive as a New York City lawyer can be, too, and it shows in both the size and relative shabbiness of her office, in which May is currently seated. Apparently Ben retained her services even after the divorce was finalized, because Alex has a copy of his will spread out on her desk between them. May didn’t know this. She didn’t know Ben had a will, either.
“He left everything to Peter,” Alex tells her. “Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot to leave. Ben had some savings, but he depleted them pretty significantly when he lost his job a few months ago. He was building it back up, but there’s just a few thousand dollars left in the account.”
May hadn’t known that Ben lost his job, either. She allows herself a moment of sharp sadness for missing that too, and then she sets it aside. The money doesn’t matter now.
“What about Peter?” she says. “Where did Ben want him to go?”
“He wanted him to go to you.”
May almost slides to the floor in relief. She has to set her coffee down to keep from spilling it.
“So… what do we do? Can we contact CPS? How long until I can go pick him up?”
“Hold on, May,” Alex says. “It’s not going to be as simple as just grabbing him from his cousins.”
“Why not?”
May is immediately impatient. The impulse to self-flagellate for her lateness is fading, replaced by increasingly unbearable thoughts of what Peter must be going through at this moment. The detective said he was right next to Ben when it happened.
“Ben wanted me,” she says, “I want Peter, what’s the problem?”
Alex raises her eyebrows, gentle.
“I spoke to CPS this morning, May. It seems the cousins have expressed an interest in a permanent agreement as well.”
“What? Why? I didn’t even know Ben had cousins. Have they ever met Peter? Have they—?”
“They’re his blood relatives,” says Alex. “That gives them an edge. They’re also married, they have a home in the city, and at least one of them is employed. That gives them an even bigger edge.”
May clenches her hands in her lap. They are shaking so hard she almost can’t do it.
“Ben wanted me.”
“And that’s good. The courts tend to favor the wishes of the deceased in cases like this, but like I said, it’s not cut-and-dry. You and Ben were divorced. You never signed a formal agreement regarding the succession of guardianship. These are complicating factors, May.”
“I’m his family,” May croaks. “It’s not complicated.”
“I’m going to help you,” says Alex, ever-patient, “we just have to proceed carefully. If you were to get Peter, what would you do? Take him back to your mother?”
“No,” says May immediately. She is done with Gloucester. “Ben wanted Peter to stay in the city, and that’s where he’s going to stay.”
“Then you’ll need to find a job. Income is going to be the biggest thing.”
May nods. She still has connections at her former hospital. She should be able to get her old job back. More daunting is the idea of finding somewhere to stay—New York City real estate is a nightmare no matter what borough she chooses, but she has made up her mind, without really thinking about it, that they will stay in Queens. Peter has had enough chaos without being shunted out of the neighborhood where he grew up.
But as it turns out, this part has already been taken care of.
“The condo is still in your name,” says Alex. “Yours and Ben’s. He indicates in his will that he’d like you to stay there, with Peter. Should the need ever arise.”
Tears rise to the back of May’s throat. The condo had been their first purchase as a married couple, a tiny fixer-upper in what used to be a somewhat undesirable part of Queens—hence the affordability. They had done the fixing-up together. It was their only real asset, and when the time had come to divide things up following the divorce they just… hadn’t. Hadn’t even talked about it. It was unspoken, but it was mutually understood: the apartment was theirs, even after “they” had ceased to be.
May still has her own keys. They are sitting in the bottom of her purse.
“Okay,” she says, swallowing the stickiness in her voice. “I can do all of that. How do I get in touch with Peter?”
Alex folds her hands on top of the will.
“I’ll get in touch with CPS,” she says, “let them know you’re looking to move forward with a guardianship, and that you’d like to see him, but until you’ve got his papers in-hand, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. CPS will need to approve the visit, and they’ll probably want to supervise it—and they’ll need to speak to the cousins, who may or may not be okay with it. It’s going to take a few weeks, and even then they might decide it’s just not worth the hassle.”
May’s mouth has gone dry. She says, “Not acceptable.”
“May…”
“No. No. He’s—he was standing right there when his uncle got shot. Right next to him. And then he called me and I didn’t get there in time and he—what if he thinks I just didn’t come? They took his phone, I have no way of contacting him—I can’t let him think I just didn’t come. ”
“For now, you have to,” says Alex firmly. “We don’t want to give them any reason to reject your application, and disrespecting CPS’s current decision about his placement is one of the ways you could do that. I’ll be as fast as I can, I promise. I have contacts in CPS who might be able to help. But the best thing you can do in the meantime is wait. Can you do that?”
May suddenly feels tight. Not just in her throat or her chest but everywhere—like a hand-wound clock that is one gear-twist away from shattering into all its innumerable pieces. Ten minutes, she thinks.
May nods.
“Okay.”
Alex reaches across the table, touches the space between them as though she hopes May will offer a hand, but May does not. She cannot. They are still tightly clenched in her lap. After a moment, Alex withdraws.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” she says.
May does not reply.
May leaves the lawyer’s office. She drives, almost without noticing what she is doing, to the apartment in Queens. Lets herself in and then stands in the dark kitchen for a long time, staring at the shadows of the home that was once hers and barely breathing, trying to will herself to turn on the lights. In the end she does not: she goes, instead, to Peter’s room. It’s as she remembers it: the bunk bed stacked high with pilfered junk for his projects, the walls plastered with news clippings—stories about superheroes. His dresser drawers are all ajar, and some clothes are missing, but this is the only hint that he is not going to come bounding through the front door at any moment, carrying an armful of old electronics and jabbering about the things he is going to build with them.
May closes the drawers, but that’s it. Everything else she leaves as it is. For when Peter gets home.
She goes to Ben’s bedroom.
Much like Peter’s, Ben’s is preserved in the state in which he left it. The bed is unmade, but not as though it was slept in—more like he pulled the covers back, but never climbed under them. Further testament to this is his watch, laid out on the bedside table: Ben only took it off to sleep, so he must have been in the process of getting ready for bed when something made him stop. May approaches the watch, ghosts her fingers over it, but before she can summon the nerve to pick it up, she spots what is beside it: a photo, framed and facing the bed. She picks this up instead, and is surprised to find that she is looking at herself. Herself and Ben and Peter, standing on the beach at Coney Island and looking windswept as they grin and wave at the camera.
The photo is from last summer. A stranger looking at it would never know the laughing, bright-eyed adults were not a couple. They would never know the mop-headed kid between them was not their son.
Before she can stop herself, May has sunk onto the bed, clutching the photo to her chest.
She cries and cries.
May sleeps through most of the next day. Besides those initial tears, this is the only concession she allows herself, and only because she knows it is necessary: she needs her head on straight for everything that is going to come next. When she wakes, she washes her face, makes the bed, and picks up her phone.
She calls the head nurse at her old unit, who says they are in need of someone to work night shifts. It’s not going to be ideal with a thirteen-year-old to take care of, but May says she will take it: as Alex said, income is key.
What comes next is more unpleasant: May opens her contacts, and Ben’s Facebook page, and she begins making calls. She has to tell the people he knew that he is dead, yes, but if it weren’t for Peter she might have given herself more time to prepare for that unpleasant task.
Her real motive is finding out who the cousins are, and where they live.
She knows Alex told her not to. But she doesn’t intend to use the information for anything. She just can’t stand the idea of not knowing where Peter is. And she’s going to have to find out eventually, anyway, because she is going to have to go and retrieve him when she gains guardianship.
It takes a few hours, but eventually she gets what she is after. An old friend of Ben’s parents remembers that Ben’s aunt used to visit the Parker house, way back in the sixties, and that she would sometimes bring what the friend describes as “her ugly little son.” By some miracle, the friend remembers their names, and from there it takes just a quick Google search to obtain an address: Dennis Arlington and his wife live in Crown Heights.
Peter is still in New York.
It takes just about every ounce of willpower May has not to simply get in her car and drive straight to the Arlingtons’ front door. But she doesn’t. No risks, she tells herself. There is too much on the line.
She closes her computer, and she gets back to work.
The weeks that follow are a harrowing mix of crushing grief and untenable monotony, and May almost can’t decide which is worse: the agony of remembering Ben—sharpened into permanence by her current surroundings, which stab her with reminders of all that she missed and all she will never have again every time she turns a corner—would undoubtedly win out, were it not for the agony of waiting for Peter.
May has never been a particularly patient person. If given the choice between standing still and moving, she has always chosen to move—it’s an aspect of her personality that was, for most of her life, an asset. It got her out of Massachusetts when she was younger. It got her Ben, too: because he was too intimidated to ask her out when they first met, May had taken the initiative and asked him.
In recent years, though, May has acquired the skill, thanks to her mother. Or so she thought. But it turns out holding her tongue while her mother screamed obscenities about a burnt meatloaf is not the same as waiting to see the kid she has known since he was born, and who is currently—probably—under the impression she abandoned him. In retrospect, the first was merely irritating. The second is as close to unbearable as anything May has ever experienced.
Somehow she bears it. She starts her new job, and that is good, both for the money—a good portion of which she uses to keep Alex on retainer—and the distraction. When she is not working she throws herself into the apartment, scrubbing every surface and stocking the fridge and clearing out the dust-laden vents in anticipation of the inevitable CPS visit, which Alex promises is coming: she has submitted May’s petition for guardianship. Now it is just a matter of waiting to hear back.
Another distraction crops up, too, a few days after May arrives in New York. That distraction is her brothers, who, having eventually pulled themselves out of their respective beds and made their way to Joy’s house the night May left, have been taking care of her ever since. It seems it took them a while to realize May had no intention of coming back, but now that they have they are none too pleased. David, nearly incoherent with rage, calls her three days after the shooting, threatening to report her for elder abuse if she doesn’t return to Gloucester immediately.
He doesn’t ask about Ben, or Peter. May hangs up without saying a word.
“Don’t block them,” Alex advises when May brings it up, worried it might affect her chances at gaining custody, “keep every text and threatening message. I’d be shocked if they take you to court—it would be cheaper to just put her in a home—but if they do we want evidence that they’re the neglectful ones in this instance.”
So May keeps her phone on, but stops answering it when her brothers’ names arise, and she rides out the waves of malice they both send in her direction, each one a reminder that she is alone in this—that she always has been
At first these waves sting. But eventually May learns to ride them. She lets them buffer her, carrying her toward the realization that leaving her family behind has not left her isolated, like her brothers and mother have always told her it would: Instead, it has set her free.
So she sets her sights on the only real family she has left, and she keeps going.
Six weeks pass. And then May gets a phone call.
It is not from her brothers. It is a New York area code, and May always feels a little jolt of anticipation when she receives those, always answers immediately, hoping it will be Peter on the other end, calling to find out why she hasn’t retrieved him yet. It never is—so far it has mostly been old acquaintances of Ben’s, calling to offer their condolences—but May answers this one immediately nonetheless, hope springing anew.
Of course it is not Peter. It is, in fact, the county coroner, calling to let her know that the police have released Ben’s body, and that she was listed as the responsible party.
A renewed torrent of mourning washes over her. In all her preparations for Peter, she did not even think about making preparations for Ben. But of course something will need to be done.
Not a funeral. She and Ben talked about it—the way all married couples do when they are young: with the conviction that they are discussing something serious, something necessary, but neither of them really believing they will ever have to think about it in the context of anything real. Everyone feels immortal when they are young and in love. Everyone is wrong.
Regardless, May knows what Ben wanted: cremation, ashes scattered in the ocean. No funeral—he’d been to too many during the short course of his life, and didn’t want to subject anyone to another. For this, May is grateful. She does not know if she could handle making arrangements for yet another memorial service on top of everything else.
But there is something she needs to do. She cannot just claim Ben’s ashes and scatter them on her own.
There is someone else who needs to say goodbye.
May’s first impression of the Arlingtons’ duplex, when she arrives in front of it that late June evening, is not one of welcoming comfort, like she was hoping it would be—for Peter’s sake, if not her own. The single-story duplex is old; the foundation is sagging; there is a twisted chain-link fence all around the yard, which is mostly dirt with just a few clumps of grass. May has to triple-check the address when she pulls up in front of it, because her first thought is one of disbelief: is this what CPS decided was best for Peter?
But it’s a thought she quickly checks. Outward appearances don’t mean much: it’s not as though her apartment is some sort of palace. And the station wagon in which she has arrived passed the two-hundred-thousand mile mark long before she pulled onto this dilapidated street. What matters, she tells herself, is that these people want Peter, and regardless of their means, they are putting up a fight to keep him. Resentful though she might be, considering her own position on the subject, May is not here to make things ugly. That’s not what today is about.
As she throws the car into park, she glances into the back. There, buckled into the center seat, is the cardboard box the coroner gave her, which contains Ben’s ashes. May thought it might feel morbid, having him in the car like this, but it felt worse to even think about putting him in the trunk.
“I’m here,” she murmurs as she climbs out of the car. “I’m close.”
She doesn’t know who she is talking to—the ashes? Peter?—but either way, there is no response.
She makes the short trek between the curb and the front door, raises her hand, and knocks.
Beyond the flimsy front door, May can hear a low, rhythmic clanging. It is superseded by a set of heavy footfalls, which get louder as they approach the door. It swings open so suddenly May takes a startled step back, nearly loses her footing on the stairs. When she catches herself, she has to reorient her gaze: the man who opened the door is a good six inches shorter than she is. He has a bald head and a squat, unpleasant face, and before May can even think to introduce herself he sweeps over her with his small eyes and says, “We don’t want whatever it is.”
May only just manages to regain herself before he slams the door in her face. She sticks out an arm to prevent this and the look on the man’s face when he realizes what she’s done suggests she might as well have slapped him.
“Sorry.” May releases the door. “I’m just—are you Dennis? Dennis Arlington?”
The man’s eyes narrow. “Who’s asking?”
His immediate, unmitigated coldness has thrown May off. As has the strong smell of cat litter emanating from within the duplex, and the increased clanging, which May thinks might be coming from some ill-maintained clothes dryer. All of these things are such a contrast to what she was expecting from the people who are, according to her lawyer, just as determined to keep Peter as she is to reclaim him, that for a moment May just stares at him, her mouth hanging open. When her voice comes unstuck in her throat she simply says, “Is Peter here?”
Mr. Arlington’s eyes narrow even further.
“Are you a social worker? Because we already had his visit and everything was in perfect shape. And I have to say, we don’t exactly appreciate you showing up unannounced at all hours—”
“I’m not.” May forces some of her befuddlement back, stands taller. “I’m… I apologize, I know this is unexpected, but I didn’t have your phone number to call ahead. I’m not with CPS, I’m—my name is May Parker.”
Abruptly, Mr. Arlington turns his head and barks over his shoulder, “Uma! Get over here!”
There are more footsteps. These ones shuffle where the others were heavy, and it’s quickly apparent why. The woman who appears is almost identical to her husband in stature and demeanor, and who is wearing slippers and a ratty, ancient bathrobe. She smells so powerfully of vodka that for a moment it supersedes the cat litter.
A terrible feeling is building in May’s abdomen and in the back of her head, hot and heavy. It feels like a premonition—just like the night Ben died, when the phone rang and she knew what she would hear when she picked it up.
“What?” the woman snaps. “Goddammit, Dennis, I told you to—” She cuts herself off when she spots May. Just like her husband, she narrows her eyes. “Who are you?”
“I’m—” May swallows. “May Parker. I’m here to see Peter.”
Mrs. Arlington joins her husband in the doorway. Shoulder-to-shoulder, their block-like bodies obscure the inside of the apartment completely. Inside, the clanging goes on.
“So,” says Mrs. Arlington, “you’re the bitch.”
It is May’s turn to flinch as though slapped. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, very good, play dumb,” Mrs. Arlington snarls. “Here to see the boy, hm? And what exactly is it you plan to say to him? Going to try to convince him how much better off he’d be with you? Going to give him a few ideas to feed to his social worker the next time he comes around, give yourself a little edge? Well, I think not. No ma’am, I think the best thing you can do is take your fancy little ass and get off my doorstep, how about that?”
May can’t help it; she looks down at herself. She thought it was probably a long shot that the Arlingtons would let Peter come with her to scatter Ben’s ashes right away, but on the slight chance that they would she came dressed in a simple black suit. It’s far from fancy; she isn’t even wearing jewelry.
“I just…” May is still finding it hard to form words. “What the hell are you talking about?”
To May’s enormous shock, Mrs. Arlington steps forward and jabs a fat finger right into her chest.
“You’re all alike, aren’t you? Rich, pretty little know-nothings who think they can just swoop in the moment someone in the family kicks it and start collecting what isn’t theirs. Well, I’ll tell you, missy, your ploy won’t work. My husband and I might not be wealthy, but I’ll tell you we work for a living, and anything the government gives us goes straight to toward caring for that boy, isn’t that right, Dennis?”
“That’s right, dear.”
“That’s right.” Mrs. Arlington nods, her jowls quivering. “So if you think you can swoop in and take our check, after we put ourselves on the line to take care of the boy—”
“Stop.”
May puts up a hand. She closes her eyes, because the realization that is forming in her mind has manifested as a sharp, swelling pain behind her left eye. When she opens them, the Arlingtons are still scowling at her.
May says, “You only took Peter for the social security?”
Mrs. Arlington scoffs. “Oh, I see. Little Miss Holier-Than-Thou, is it? Well, where were you the night his uncle bit the dust, hm? Wanted to make sure he was good and dead before you made your move, I suppose? Well, we were there. We picked him up and we kept him. Put him in school, make sure he’s got three square meals a day, nevermind that he’s constantly underfoot, always snivelling—”
All at once, thoughts of civility flee May’s head. They are replaced by something else, something much more potent: a humming, insensate rage.
She feels almost absent from her body when she speaks. Her voice does not sound like her own. She says, “Where’s my nephew?”
“Oh, so suddenly he’s your nephew? Well, where—”
Mrs. Arlington gasps when May surges forward, puts a shoulder down, and pushes her way into the duplex.
“Dennis! Stop her!”
“Now, see here—!”
May is already making her way past the threshold, eyes scanning—she sees dirty dishes on the countertops in the kitchens, empty liquor bottles on the floor. A cat streaks past her as she storms into the living room, where an ancient, staticky television is playing a soap opera on mute.
“Peter? Peter!”
Peter is not in any of these rooms. The deeper she gets in the duplex, the louder the clanging from the dryer, and May turns toward it: it is coming from a half-open door on one end of the living room.
“Peter!”
As she draws closer, May sees stairs, leading down.
Before she can open the door, two pairs of stubby hands wrap around her arms and drag her back. May struggles—clawing at the hands, spitting obscenities, still almost absent from herself and barely aware of what she’s doing, her only clear thought of getting to Peter, of getting him out—but she is outmatched by the pair of them, these so-called cousins who only want Peter for what they can get out of him. The Arlingtons drag her back down the hallway, and they shove her out the front door.
May stumbles. She’s wearing heels; her ankle twists, and there is a burst of white-hot pain. She grabs the railing just in time to avoid tumbling down the stairs, but she still goes down in a heap on the uppermost step, legs curled beneath her, ankle throbbing, head spinning.
May looks up in time to see Mrs. Arlington point her stubby finger down, directly in her face.
“We’ll see about this, little miss,” says Mrs. Arlington. “We’ll just see about this.”
And she slams the door in May’s face. May hears the deadbolt slide into place. Beyond it, the clanging goes on.
May sits on the stoop for what feels like a very long time, staring at that closed door. When she gets to her feet she does so slowly, numbly, hardly registering the pain in her ankle as she limps her way back to her car. She gets inside and stares at the box in her back seat for a long time, until the twilight fades to darkness and the lights in the Arlingtons’ duplex are shut off.
May drives home. And she starts making calls.
“Can I ask you a question?” says Alex, striding into her office, where May has been waiting for her for the last half hour. She takes a seat behind her desk, folds her hands, and looks May dead in the eye. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
May has her swollen ankle propped on the second chair in front of Alex’s desk. It’s sprained but not broken; regardless, the pain, in combination with everything else that happened yesterday, kept her up most of the night. At Alex’s inquiry, she puts her face in her hands, scrubs them through her hair.
“I know,” she says. “I know, it was stupid. I lost my temper.”
“You shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Damn it, May, I told you to stay away from him, and now—”
“I know!” May raises her head. “I know. I wasn’t thinking. Or—I was thinking, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I just… he insisted. When his parents died, Peter insisted on going to the funeral, even though he was barely out of the hospital, and the thought of him not being there when Ben… I just, I got lost. I’m sorry.”
Some of the angry disbelief in Alex’s expression wanes, but not all of it.
“Do you have any idea the shitstorm you’ve just created?” she says.
“They only wanted Peter for the money.”
“Yes,” says Alex bluntly. “It’s foster care. If nobody was in it for the money there wouldn’t be enough homes for one eighth of the kids in the system. The ones who get placed because they’re actually wanted are rare. And now you’ve ruined Peter’s chances of being one of them.
May’s throat immediately tightens. “They can’t reject my application.”
Alex makes a noise of disbelief.
“Are you kidding me? You showed up at Peter’s residence, broke into the home, and by all accounts acted like you intended to kidnap him in front of his legally-appointed custodians. How well did you really think that was going to play out in front of a judge?”
May sits up, not caring that it sends an electric jolt of pain through her tender ankle.
“Has anyone actually seen the conditions he’s living in? There was alcohol everywhere, I’m pretty sure they were keeping him in the basement —”
“May. I don’t care. And neither does CPS.”
May sinks back. She can actually feel herself going pale. “They’re blacklisting me.”
Alex shakes her head. “Worse. I spoke to my contact at CPS. May, they took out a protective order against you.”
“A what? You mean a restraining order? Are you fucking kidding me? They’re the ones who tried to shove me down a flight of stairs!”
“After you broke into their home!” Alex says. “How are you not getting this? This is serious, May!”
May sinks a little further. Anger is morphing into shame. She lowers her head when she says, “I don’t want to go near them. I just want to get Peter out.”
Alex takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly through her nose.
“May,” she says, “the protection order isn’t for the Arlingtons. It’s for Peter.”
Suddenly May feels like she weighs nothing at all: like she might float right off this chair and into the great wide nothingness of the sky.
“They can’t do that,” she says. Her mouth is dry. “They don’t even want him.”
“It wasn’t the Arlingtons,” says Alex. “They have custody, but CPS are his guardians. They applied for the order last night.”
“But… they weren’t there. No one was there, it’s their word against mine, they can’t—”
“You called CPS, May. You called them twelve times, ranting like a crazy person—”
“Because I wanted to get Peter out of there!”
“Yes! And because you didn’t wait, because you didn’t consult with me before losing your fucking mind on the organization that currently has custody of your kid, you went ahead and corroborated everything the Arlingtons are claiming! You admitted to being on their property, you admitted to trying to take Peter—you made yourself look just as crazy as the Arlingtons are claiming you are! Of course they took out a restraining order! So I ask again, May, what were you thinking? ”
May doesn’t feel like she weighs nothing anymore. Now she feels like she is going to be sick.
“They didn’t even want him,” she whispers.
Alex gives a long, exasperated sigh, and she too runs her hands through her hair.
“Okay,” she says, without raising her head. “Okay, listen. I’m going to… see what I can do. I’ll petition the judge who signed the order. We’ll say… we’ll say you were out of your mind with grief, that it was a momentary lapse… Maybe, maybe I can get them to lift the order. But I have to be honest with you, May, unless they completely expunge it… and even then, the odds you’re going to get him back now…”
May leans forward, urgent, and puts her hands on the desk. “You can’t leave him there. You didn’t see it. You didn’t hear the way they talked about him. Like he was some… charity case. Like he was a burden. If he gets stuck there because of me…”
Alex reaches across the desk, just like she did the day after Ben died. This time, she takes May’s hand in hers.
“I’m going to do my best,” she says. “But you need to keep your head down, do you understand me? Do not contact CPS. Stay away from Peter. You do exactly as I say, May, or I won’t be able to help you at all.”
And May, because she has no other choice, agrees.
It’s yet another promise she is destined to break.
Two weeks later, May receives another late-night phone call. This time, she is not asleep. She has barely slept at all since that night at the duplex. She did not scatter Ben’s ashes; she keeps them, for now, on her bedside table, so she has something besides the picture of the family she ruined to stare at throughout the night. When her phone rings, she doesn’t even startle. Just rolls over, away from the box, and answers her phone.
“May,” says Alex, “I’m so sorry.”
And she gives her the news.
Peter is no longer with the Arlingtons. He has been arrested on charges of assault, for pushing Mrs. Arlington down a flight of stairs. That is all that Alex knows. What’s more, it’s all she is ever going to know: her CPS contact will no longer be providing information. The case has become too complicated; she worries that if she continues to speak to Alex, she risks losing her job.
Wherever Peter is going next, only CPS knows.
May, who can taste her stomach in the back of her throat, thanks Alex for everything she has done so far. She hangs up the phone, and when she lowers it, there is a text message on the screen. It is David, threatening once again to track May down if she doesn’t return to take care of their mother.
Her brother’s threat is like lightning: a flash of realization in an otherwise turbid dark. Immediately, with perfect clarity, May realizes what she has to do.
David won’t have to track her down.
May is going home.