“I came to see my son,” I said, not moving.
Cyclops laughed, a harsh sound. “Your son doesn’t want to see you. He’s sick of your cow-shit smell.” He turned toward Lauren, his tone turning sharp. “Close the door. Kick him out, or I won’t be responsible.”
Lauren’s sleeve shifted as she moved, and I saw bruises on her wrist. Finger marks. Someone had grabbed her hard enough to leave evidence.
Her eyes met mine, tears gathering. “Please go,” she whispered. “Matthew is fine. Tomorrow I’ll tell him to call you. Please.”
“Lauren,” I said, voice lowering, “where is my son?”
Her lips parted, trembling, but she didn’t answer.
I stepped forward, trying to push past her.
The door slammed in my face. The bolt clicked. Inside, Cyclops’s mocking laughter rose again as the music returned, louder than before.
They thought a wooden door would stop me.
They thought I would walk away, defeated and embarrassed, like some harmless old man with nothing left but loneliness and gifts that never got delivered.
But I’ve faced down bulls in a storm. I’ve survived winters that took livestock and men. I’ve buried the love of my life and kept moving because there was no other choice. I was not about to abandon my son to wolves wearing family faces.
I pretended to give up.
I walked toward the gate with my suitcase, shoulders slumped, playing the role they expected. Once hidden behind the oak trees that lined the property, I shoved the bag into the bushes and pulled my hood up.
Then I slipped along the stone wall, using the shadows, circling toward the back of the house.
Matthew’s garden looked like a battlefield.
He’d once called it his sanctuary, the place where he breathed after long shifts at the trucking company. We had pruned roses together out back, father and son, hands dirty, laughing when I teased him for planting flowers like an old woman. Now those rosebushes were trampled flat. The lawn was torn up by deep tire tracks. Mud churned everywhere.
The trucks had driven all the way back here to load something heavy.
Or hide something.
I moved quietly through bushes until I reached the shed in the corner. Matthew had built it himself, a simple pine structure he’d joked would fall apart with one good kick. But the door was different now. Reinforced with iron bars. Secured with a massive padlock that looked new.
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