“Daddy… Mommy’s boyfriend hit me with a baseball bat. He said if I cry, it’ll hurt more…”

—Marcus… —I whispered again, barely recognizing my own voice—. Please… say something.

There was a creaking sound, then hurried footsteps, and finally his breathing, low but steady, returned to the other end of the line.

“I’m inside,” he said. “The door was locked.”

A dull thud echoed behind him, as if something had fallen or been pushed against a wall.

My mind tried to imagine the scene, but each image was worse than the last, so I closed my eyes as I drove.

“Ethan?” I asked, my voice breaking. “Do you see it?”

There was a pause that was too long, filled with small sounds: footsteps, something crawling, a faint moan that I couldn’t identify at first.

“I found it,” Marcus finally said, more quietly. “It’s in the hallway.”

My heart was pounding so hard that I had to loosen one hand on the steering wheel to avoid losing control of the car.

—Is he…? —I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“He’s conscious,” she replied. “But his arm hurts. He’s scared.”

A child’s sob crossed the call, weak, contained, as if even crying was something that should be done in silence.

I felt something inside me slowly breaking, like a crack that had been forming for some time and could no longer be ignored.

“Dad…” Ethan whispered, barely audible. “Are you coming?”

—Yes, champ—I replied quickly, with an urgency that almost choked me—. I’m coming. I’m very close.

Marcus said nothing for a few seconds, and that silence had a strange weight, different from the previous one.

It was not an absence of sound, but the presence of something that had not yet been said.

“We are not alone,” he finally added.

The traffic around me ceased to exist for an instant; everything was reduced to those three words.

“Kyle?” I asked, feeling the name as something strange in my mouth.

“Yes,” Marcus replied. “It’s in the kitchen.”

A faint metallic noise filtered through the call, followed by a sudden movement, like a chair being dragged across the floor.

“Did he see you come in?” I asked.

—Now we’re talking—.

The way he said it, without raising his voice, without rushing, reminded me of years ago, when I competed and measured every move.

—Marcus… —I began, but I didn’t really know what I was asking for.

Did he want me to stay calm?
To protect Ethan?