The first court hearing was brief. The judge, Hon. Arlene Kline, reviewed the emergency order and extended it: no contact, no proximity, no gifts delivered through third parties. She set a review in thirty days and stacked conditions like sandbags: parenting classes if the Harts wanted any future contact, psychological evaluations, compliance with investigators. Robert’s attorney scowled at the paperwork. Linda cried without sound, tears collecting along the rim of her mask.
Afterward, Megan paused in the corridor where the echo of footsteps made the building feel larger than any of them. She saw Linda across the way, hovering near a vending machine, eyes red and uncertain. For a second they were just two women who loved the same child and had wrecked that love in radically different ways. Linda took a step forward. “Megan—please. I never meant—”
“We were coming back,” Linda said, pleading rising like a tide. “Robert said—”
“Robert isn’t a spell you’re under,” Megan said. “You’re a nurse, you’ve told me that a hundred times. You assess harm and you prevent it. You didn’t.” She turned away before the conversation could become a loop that closed around her and stole oxygen.
Back in town, Hart Auto started bleeding. Vendors demanded payment on thirty-day invoices that used to stretch to sixty. A video of Robert shouting at a reporter went viral enough to get the dealership’s Facebook page flooded with bad press. The bank called about a loan covenant tripped by “material adverse change.” For the first time in years, Robert found himself behind the service bay, tightening a belt on a used sedan because the mechanic called in sick and the foreign buyer he was wooing decided to shop elsewhere. Pride had always been his currency; now it came back counterfeit.
Linda’s world shrank to the square footage of the house and the distance to her lawyer’s office. She stopped going to church. When she did go out, she wore sunglasses even in the rain. At night she replayed the moment on the gravel shoulder: Emily’s pink hoodie, the gravel spitting under the tires, the way the mirror held her granddaughter’s shape a few seconds longer than it should have. She told herself that turning back would have fixed it, that ten minutes and a hug could rewind time. She rehearsed knocking on Megan’s door, rehearsed apologies, rehearsed sentences about worry and guardianship and “stability,” but every rehearsal ended with the same image: a child running after a car.
The second hearing came with discovery. Carla’s report detailed the timeline: GPS pings off Robert’s phone matching the highway pull-off, the gas station footage, a text on Linda’s phone timestamped 6:42 p.m.—“I can’t do this. She’s crying.”—followed by Robert’s reply: “Ten minutes. Don’t be weak.” Linda stared at the words on the screen like seeing her own handwriting in a stranger’s diary. Megan felt her stomach drop, but not from surprise; it was something colder, the confirmation of a calculus she’d suspected: this had been a plan, not a panic.
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