“He’s coming.”
Across the room, an officer asked Travis where the baseball bat was.
Travis said he didn’t know.
Another officer began checking the house.
The bat was found less than ten feet from where Noah had been standing.
That changed the room.
Travis stopped talking.
The officer photographed it before touching it. Another officer documented the position of the furniture, the marks on the floor, and the condition of Noah’s clothing.
Then the ambulance crew carried Noah outside.
He was still crying when his father finally arrived.
The car barely stopped before the door flew open.
I ran toward the house.
“Where is he?”
Derek met me halfway.
“He’s with the paramedics. They’re checking his arm.”
I looked past him and saw my son sitting in the ambulance.
“Noah!”
His head turned.
“Daddy!”
I climbed into the back of the ambulance and pulled him against me as carefully as I could.
He buried his face against my chest.
“I came as fast as I could.”
“You came,” he whispered.
I closed my eyes.
That was all I could manage to say.
The EMT asked me to let them examine his arm again. I stepped back, but I kept one hand against Noah’s shoulder.
The swelling was worse than I had realized over the phone. The paramedic told me they needed to take him to the hospital for imaging.
I nodded.
“Whatever he needs.”
Behind us, an officer approached.
“Sir, we need to speak with you about what your son told you on the phone.”
I looked at Noah.
Then I remembered the thirty-one seconds of audio sitting on my phone.
“I have the recording.”
The officer’s expression sharpened.
“Do not delete it. Don’t alter it. We need to preserve that exactly as it is.”
“I won’t touch it.”
He asked me to explain everything Noah had said, including the threat I heard before the call ended.
I told him.
Every word.
Then he asked a question I hadn’t expected.
“Has your son ever said anything like this before?”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“Has he ever been afraid of Travis?”
I hesitated.
Then I remembered something from three weeks earlier.
Noah had stopped asking when Travis would be around.
At the time, I had assumed it was because his routine had changed.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
The officer noticed my hesitation.
“What is it?”
I told him.
He wrote it down.
Then another officer came outside carrying a phone in an evidence bag.
“Found this inside the house.”
I recognized it immediately.
Lena’s phone.
The officer looked at me.
“We’ve been trying to reach the mother.”
“She isn’t answering?”
“No.”
That was the first moment I understood that the baseball bat might not be the only thing we needed to worry about.
At the hospital, Noah was taken for X-rays.
I sat beside the bed, holding his good hand while Derek waited in the hallway.
For the first time since the phone call, everything became quiet.
No traffic.
No sirens.
No officers asking questions.
Just my son breathing beside me.
Then he looked up.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah?”
