My laptop stayed open on the table.
I do not remember picking up my jacket, but later someone told me I dropped it in the hallway and never turned around.
At the elevator, my hands were shaking so badly that I pressed the down button three times.
I was twenty minutes away from Lena’s house on a good day.
On a downtown lunch-hour day, with delivery trucks and red lights and construction cones, twenty minutes could become thirty.
Noah was four years old.
He was alone with a grown man who had just hurt him.
I could feel rage rising in me so fast it almost became useless.
Rage wanted me to scream.
Rage wanted me to throw the phone.
Rage wanted me to drive like an idiot and become one more problem between my son and help.
But panic only helps the people who are not depending on you.
I needed action.
So I called my brother.
Derek answered on the first ring.
“What’s up?”
“Noah called me,” I said.
The elevator doors opened, and I ran into the parking garage.
My shoes slapped the concrete hard enough to echo.
“He said Travis hit him with a baseball bat. Lena isn’t home. I’m twenty minutes out. Where are you?”
There was one second of silence.
Then Derek’s voice changed.
Derek had always been the calm one in emergencies.
