Page 93 of Cut Off
“Sir, we’re here to execute an emergency temporary custody order. Issued by the family court at six forty-five this morning. Petitioner is Gwen Anders.”
The world behind him goes sideways.
“What?”
“Emergency temporary custody, sir. The child, Eli Anders. We’ll need you to bring him out, please.”
“No.” It comes out of me before I’ve decided to say it. “No, no, no, hold on. We have a hearing. We have a hearing today. In two hours. That’s the whole point of today, that’s—”
“This is separate, sir. This is an emergency petition. The judge granted it this morning.”
“On what grounds?” My hand on the door shakes, and I clamp down on it. “On what fucking grounds?”
Stevens doesn’t flinch. He has the same face on. “Emergency petitions are granted when the court has reason to believe the child’s safety may be at imminent risk, sir. We don’t have the underlying paperwork. We just have the order.”
The words, “child’s safety may be at imminent risk” go into my ear and ricochet around inside my skull like a puck in an empty rink. I can’t make sense of them in any way that maps onto my life. Eli is upstairs with my mother, getting his hair flattened with water. Eli has eaten two bowls of cereal this morning. Eli slept in his bed under his glow stars all night. There is no risk in this house. There is, in fact, less risk in this house than in any house Eli’s ever lived in, and I will say that under oath. I will say it in any room. I will say it to anybody.
“There’s been a mistake.” I don’t recognize my voice. “Officer—Stevens—listen to me. There’s been a mistake. We’re getting ready right now to go to a hearing. About custody. I have a lawyer. I have—she has been working on this for weeks. I’ve done everything. I’ve done every single thing the court asked me to do. There’s no—he’s not—I have not—”
“Sir.”
“Call my lawyer. Her name is Olivia Gardner—”
“Mr. Holt.” His voice is gentle and absolutely immovable. “I understand. You have every right to take this up with your attorney. Right now, we are legally required to take the child. We don’t have discretion on this. We have an order.”
Thetears come up without permission. I am a thirty-year-old man in a navy tie, and I’m standing in my doorway crying in front of four cops.
“Please,” I hear myself say. “Please. Just—give me a second. Let me call her. Let me just call my lawyer—”
“You can call her once we’ve left, sir.”
I’m breaking. I feel it happening in real time, like ice fracturing across a frozen pond, the cracks shooting out from the center. I put both hands on the doorframe because I cannot trust my legs to do their job.
“Jonah.”
Mom’s voice. Behind me. Calm in the way she gets calm when things are on fire.
She comes up on my left, her hand finding my back, light, steadying. She looks at Stevens. She looks at the order in his hand. Her face does a brief, terrible flicker—and then resets.
“What do you need,” she says to Stevens. Not a question. A logistical request.
“Ma’am, we need the child. He can bring personal items—a backpack, a favorite toy. We’re not going to rush him. But we do need to leave within the next ten minutes.”
“Okay,” she says. “Okay. I’m going to go pack him a bag. Jonah—” Her hand on my back, firm. “Jonah. Look at me.”
I look at her.
“I’m going upstairs,” she says, slow and clear. “I’m going to pack his backpack. I’m going to bring him down. You’re going to hug him, and you are going to tell him this is temporary. Can you do that?”
I can’t do that. I nod anyway.
She squeezes once and goes.
I stand in the doorway with Officer Stevens looking at me, and his partner looking at the porch boards, and the two cops at the curb looking at nothing in particular. I breathein, and I breathe out, and I think Gwen, you absolute… absolute… absolute… and I can’t finish the sentence because there isn’t a word for it.
Dad comes down the stairs first. Then my mother. Then Eli.
Eli’s in his hearing clothes. Khakis. Button-down shirt. The tie my mother fixed. His hair is, against all odds, lying flat. He’s holding Flash like he does when things are bad. His face, when he sees the cops, does something I’d pay any amount of money to never see on his face again.
