Chapter 6 - The Arrest in the Driveway
“Get your hands off me!” my mother shrieked as the officer forcefully turned her around and snapped the steel handcuffs over her wrists.
Courtney was sobbing hysterically, sinking to her knees on the porch.
“I didn't do anything! It was Mom’s idea! I just watched the baby! Please, I have a job, you can't arrest me!” Courtney wailed, throwing her own mother under the bus the second the consequences became real.
“You’re an accessory to kidnapping, torture, and attempted homicide,” the female officer said, hauling Courtney to her feet and cuffing her. “You can explain it to the judge.”
As they marched my mother down the steps, she locked eyes with me.
She wasn't crying anymore. Her expression was pure, unadulterated venom.
“You’re choosing a whore over your own blood!” she spat at me, fighting against the officers' grip. “She’s going to die anyway, Ethan! And when she does, they’re going to put that baby in foster care because you’re a weak, pathetic man! You need me!”
“Get her out of my sight,” I told Miller, turning my back on her.
They shoved my mother into the back of a cruiser. She kicked the window so hard the glass rattled, her mouth moving in a continuous stream of curses.
The police cordoned off my house with yellow crime scene tape. It wasn't a home anymore. It was a torture chamber. I realized, looking at the dark windows of the bedroom, that I could never step foot inside that house again.
Detective Miller walked up behind me and placed a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“They’re going away for a very long time, Ethan. They’re looking at twenty years to life for what they did to her.”
“It’s not enough,” I whispered into the cold night air.
“I know,” Miller said gently. “Go to the hospital. Your wife needs you. Your son needs you.”
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I didn't wait. I got into my car and sped back into the city, praying to a God I hadn't spoken to in years, begging Him not to take Hannah away from me.
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