Thought you’d like to know. It’s a boy.
I watched the three dots appear and disappear on my screen as he typed out responses that would never be delivered. I shut the phone off.
When I turned it back on, I saw that he’d called seventeen times that first night, and by morning, there were another twenty-three.
I cut it off again and kept it dark for three days, letting Rich marinate. Letting him feel what I’d felt waking up in that hospital bed with my memory carved out. Let him sit with the uncertainty. Let him wonder if the sonogram was real, if I was bluffing, or if he’d ever see his son.
When I finally called him back on day four, he was desperate. I leaned back against the couch and crossed one leg over the other while Booda sat beside me, listening.
“Where the fuck is my wife?” he asked, and I could hear the tremor underneath all that bravado.
“It depends,” I answered calmly.
“What the fuck that ‘spose to mean?”
“It means your family’s future depends entirely on you.”
His breathing roughened as he spat, “I want proof of life.”
“You in no position to be making demands right now.”
“At least tell me if my son’s still alive.”
A small smile pulled at the corner of my mouth.
“You’re not worried about your wife or your daughter, only the baby boy?”
“Don’t play with me, Koko.”
“I’m not. I just think it’s interesting.”
His voice deepened immediately afterward. “Where the fuck they at?”
“Safe for now.”
“For now?”
I laughed softly. “You should hear yourself right now. You sound nervous.”
“I sound like a father.”
“Nah,” I corrected. “You sound scared.”
The line went quiet, but I could hear him breathing as he tried to regain control of his emotions.
“What do you want?” he asked eventually.
“Now you asking the right questions.”
“You already got my money and drugs. What the fuck else do you want from me?”
“I want you to come get your family.”
His breathing stopped for half a second.
“You think I’m stupid?”
“I think you want your son, and it’s only one way to get him.”
