“Everyone okay?” My voice comes out calmer than I have any right to sound.
“We’re fine,” Lemon says, breathing too fast as she rolls down her window, and I’m there in a second. “Everett, I didn’t see what?—”
“Don’t worry about it.” I reach in and give her a kiss. “Drive home.” I scan her face, the kids, looking for injuries I might have missed. My training kicks in—assess, prioritize, act. But this isn’t a courtroom. This is my wife. My children. “Get them in the house. Lock the doors. I’ll handle this.”
“But—”
“Lemon.” I cup her face, force her to look at me instead of the cracked windshield. My thumb brushes her cheek, and I realize she’s shaking. Or maybe it’s me shaking with rage. At this point, it’s hard to tell. “Go home. I’ll be right behind you.”
She nods. Carlotta’s already twisted around checking the twins, and for once, she’s not turning this into the butt of some joke. That tells me everything I need to know about how serious this is.
I step back and watch the minivan pull away with my family inside, thankfully safe, and the rage I’ve been holding at bay floods in to fill the space where fear just lived.
I blow out a breath and try my best to calm myself. It could have been worse. The thought slams into me with the force of a verdict I don’t want to read. It could have caused her to swerve into oncoming traffic. It could have sent the minivan into a tree and caused irreparable damage to those I love.
It could have killed them.
The rage that hits me isn’t hot—it’s ice cold and surgical. The kind that makes my hands steady and my voice level even when every cell in my body demands to tear something apart.
One of those boys threw a rock at a moving vehicle. At my wife’s vehicle. With my children inside.
Do they have any idea what could’ve happened? Do their parents?
I turn toward the house, and the teenage boys scattered across the lawn come back into focus. They’re everywhere and nowhere—ducking behind hedges, peering through windows, phones out recording me like they’re about to make me go viral. And believe me, I’m more than ready to give them the ammunition.
A few of the hoodlums are still on the lawn, hopping up and down, slapping each other’s shoulders, laughing so hard they can barely breathe.
They think this is funny.
And there’s not an adult in sight.
The front door is sealed shut with obnoxious music blaring from inside. The window to the right is bare, and I can see straight through to a living room that looks like a frat house after finals week. Empty soda cans. Bags of chips strewn all about, and furniture sitting every which way as if it were aggressively displaced in a hurry.
I walk up the driveway with measured steps. Don’t rush. Don’t yell. Men who yell have already lost control, and I haven’t lost control in a courtroom in fifteen years. I’m not starting now on some punk kid’s front lawn.
But how I want to.
“Dude, he’s actually coming up here!” one kid shrieks from somewhere behind a fence.
“Holy heck, someone film this!” another cries out.
The laughter roars to seismic levels. They’re stilltreating this like entertainment. Like they didn’t just commit a crime that could’ve resulted in vehicular manslaughter.
Do they teach repercussions in schools anymore? Or have we collectively decided that teenage boys get a pass on basic human decency because they’re just kids?
I mount the front steps and knock with three sharp raps. It sounds authoritative. It’s a knock that says I’m not asking.
The laughter ratchets up another notch.
“I don’t feel safe!” a voice calls from inside, high-pitched with barely suppressed giggles. “I’m calling the police!”
I almost smile. Almost. The irony would be funny if I weren’t currently imagining all the ways this could’ve ended with me identifying my wife’s body.
“That’s funny,” I call back, loud enough to carry over the music. “Because I’m thinking about calling them, too.”
I pull out my phone and text Noah.Cedar Street. House with the raging party. Get here. Now.
The laughter falters slightly. Good. Let them sweat.
