The police separated them all into different rooms for questioning. They interrogated Cooper, who immediately cracked and admitted to kicking Toby repeatedly.
He told them he did it because Toby wouldn’t give him the television remote. They tried to call me a dozen times from my father’s cell phone, begging and screaming.
But I was sitting in a quiet, dark hospital room, watching my son breathe. I was completely and gloriously unreachable.
The next morning, while Derek slept in the chair next to Toby’s bed, I walked down to the hospital gift shop. I purchased a cheap burner smartphone and activated my number.
A flood of voicemails poured in immediately. I skipped the ones from my mother, who was alternately screaming threats and begging for mercy.
I clicked on a voicemail from my sister, Deandra. Her voice was shrill and distorted by alcohol and sheer terror.
“Jemma! You psychotic bitch! How could you do this?!” she screamed into the phone.
“The police were here for three hours! CPS is threatening to take Cooper away and he’s suspended from his sports academy!” she yelled.
“You have to call the police right now and drop the charges! You tell them it was an accident or I will ruin you!” she threatened.
I deleted the voicemail without replying. I didn’t call the police to drop the charges.
I called my lawyer instead.
Part 4: The Financial Guillotine
My family thought my only weapon was the police. They thought that once the shock of the cops wore off, they could bully me or manipulate me back into submission.
They believed that because I had always been the quiet, accommodating sister, I possessed no real power. They forgot who signed their checks every month.
For the past three years, Derek and I had been the silent, invisible pillars holding up their entire entitled existence. When my father decided to retire early to play golf, my parents couldn’t afford their sprawling home.
Derek and I had quietly taken over the three thousand dollar monthly mortgage payments to help them out. In fact, when they nearly foreclosed, we bought the house outright to save their credit.
We allowed them to live there rent free while the deed sat squarely in my name. Furthermore, Deandra claimed she couldn’t afford Cooper’s elite private sports academy.
Derek and I had been paying the fifteen thousand dollar annual tuition out of our own pockets for the last two years. I left Derek at the hospital holding Toby’s hand and drove directly to the sleek office of our attorney, Mr. Graves.
I sat across from his massive mahogany desk. I didn’t cry or shake because I was a woman executing a corporate demolition.
“Cancel the auto pay on the mortgage for the Oak Haven property immediately,” I told Mr. Graves, my voice flat.
“Draft a formal thirty day eviction notice for my parents. I want them out of my house,” I ordered him.
“And I want you to immediately withdraw all future tuition funding for Cooper’s sports academy,” I continued.
“Send the school a formal notice that we are no longer financially responsible for that student,” I concluded.
Mr. Graves, a man who usually remained unflappable, raised his gray eyebrows at my requests. “Jemma,” he said gently, leaning forward.
“That is going to cause a massive, catastrophic disruption to your family’s lives. An eviction notice to your own parents?” he asked.
“Pulling a child from school mid semester? This is the nuclear option,” he warned me.
I looked at the lawyer and remembered the sound of my son’s rib snapping. I remembered the blue tint of Toby’s lips and my mother ripping the phone from my hands.
“They broke my son’s rib and watched him suffocate on the floor,” I said, my voice dropping to a terrifying calm.