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?”
“Mom told me not to tell you.”
My chest tightened.
“What did she tell you?”
Noah stared at the blanket.
“She said Travis gets mad when people tell.”
I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t.
The door opened, and Derek stepped inside.
His face told me something had happened.
“What?” I asked.
He looked at me, then at Noah.
“The police found something else at the house.”
“What?”
Derek lowered his voice.
“A second phone.”
I stared at him.
“Whose?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Then Derek handed me the one thing the officer had allowed him to bring from the house.
A folded piece of paper.
My name was written across the front.
Not my address.
Not my phone number.
Just my name.
And underneath it was a date from two weeks earlier.
I opened it.
There were only six words written inside.
“Take Noah away from this house.”
I looked at Derek.
“Who wrote this?”
He shook his head.
“We don’t know.”
Then my phone rang.
It was the police officer handling the case.
His first sentence made me sit up straight.
“We need you to come back to the station.”
“Why?”
There was a pause.
“We found the person who wrote the note.”
I looked at Noah sleeping beside me.
“And?”
The officer took a breath.
“She says she knows why Travis attacked your son.”
