Live to Tell (Detective D.D. Warren, #4)(89)

The bitterness of his words hurts, just as he intends. I feel the full force of his helplessness. The buried rage from all the times I overrode him, shut him out of the parenting process because I didn’t agree with his solutions, couldn’t let go of my own notions of what was best for my child. I’m the nurturer. Michael, the fixer. We were doomed from the start.

“Did … did they arrest Evan?” I ask, shifting a little in the bed, trying to get comfortable. I feel queasy, but that might be from the conversation as much as the aftereffects of the anesthesia.

“I’m sure an arrest warrant is only a matter of time. At the moment, however, given his fragile mental state, he’s been hospitalized.”

I stare at him in confusion. “Where?”

“Upstairs. Turns out this medical center has a locked-down pediatric psych ward on the eighth floor. Evan’s now a patient.”

My eyes widen. Once again Michael holds up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. I had Darren pull our divorce decree. I still have custodial rights to Evan and, given your current physical and emotional state, I’ll take you to court and demand full custody if I have to. Our son’s experienced a psychotic break. He’s upstairs and he’s gonna stay there.”

“He’s just a child—”

“Which is why it’s a pediatric ward. And, since you asked so nicely, it’s an excellent acute-care program. Highly recommended, considered very progressive in its approach to mentally ill kids. You can visit anytime you want, assuming you get yourself healed enough to get out of bed.”

“Bastard.”

“I wish I’d become one sooner,” he says flatly. “Maybe then we could’ve avoided this.”

“I’m not a bad mom,” I whisper after a moment. It seems a stupid thing to say, given that I’ve just been stabbed by my own child.

But Michael seems to understand. His face smooths, some of the tension seeps from his shoulders. He sighs, rubs his forehead. Sighs again. “No, you’re not a bad mom, Vic. And I’m not a bad dad, and Evan, when he’s Evan, is not a bad kid. And yet, here we are.”

“What will happen next?”

“I don’t know.”

“I won’t press charges,” I state defiantly. “They can’t arrest him without me, right?” My stomach rolls. I am going to vomit.

Michael, however, shakes his head. “Not that simple, Vic. He stabbed you, then confessed to the police. Those officers will prepare affidavits. Those affidavits can be used by the prosecutor to demand an arrest warrant. According to Darren, the court will probably be willing to accept Evan being held in a mental institution versus a juvenile center for the time being. So that’s step one. Next, we let the legal process grind along while focusing on improving Evan’s state of mind. If we can show he’s more stable, the court may be more forgiving. Maybe. But it’s going to take time, Vic. Time for him, time for you, time for the legal system. We’re in it for a bit.”

I cringe at what that means. Evan staying in a locked-down ward. My son, eight years old and institutionalized indefinitely.

My turn to look away, to study the white walls.

So many things I want to tell my son. That I love him. That I still believe in him. I’m not in denial. I’ve seen the darkness in his eyes. But I’ve seen the light, too. I’ve seen all the moments that Evan got to be Evan, and I wouldn’t have missed those moments for anything.

Something occurs to me. I turn my head to peer at my husband. “You said I was lucky the EMTs got me to the hospital in time. But how did they know? Who called them?”

Michael sticks his hands in his pockets. “Evan,” he says at last. “He dialed nine-one-one, told the operator he’d stabbed his mother. He said you were bleeding and needed help.”

“He tried to save me.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. The operator asked him what happened. You know what he said?”

I shook my head, bewildered.

“He said the Devil made him do it. And he said the ambulance had better come quick, because the Devil wasn’t finished yet.”





| CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE





DANIELLE


When Aunt Helen opened the door, first thing I noticed was her red-rimmed eyes. She tried to hide her tears. Brushed at her cheeks, ran her fingers through her short brown hair. Her cheeks remained wet, her face blotchy. She noticed that I noticed and, for both our sakes, gave up on pretense. She gestured for me to come in.

She’d moved out of her downtown condo years ago. Now she had a newer townhouse just outside the city limits. Lower maintenance as she approached the downsizing phase of life. She’d retired from her corporate-lawyer gig years ago. Instead, she worked thirty hours a week for a nonprofit that specialized in promoting better rights, funding, and legislation for abused and at-risk kids. She liked the work, she said, precisely because it was a one-eighty from her previous career. She’d gone from protecting the fat cats to fighting for children’s rights.

You’d think this would give us more in common, easy conversation for the few nights a month we shared dinner. Instead, neither of us ever talked about work. Maybe we had those kinds of jobs; you had to leave them at the office, or you’d go nuts.

“Coffee?” she asked, leading me into the small but expensively appointed kitchen.