“Stop!” I yelled. “We’re trying to help!”
Although, as I said it, I had to wonder at the truth of my words. Maybe I was trying to help, in the sense that I was trying to figure out what had happened here.
But Marla was another story.
Marla had Bill Gaynor’s child, and I was not yet in a position to explain how that had come to pass.
And in that instant, in that millisecond, in the midst of all this chaos, I recalled the bloody smudge on Marla’s door.
Oh, no.
“Give him to me!” he shouted at Marla, who was still hitting any part of him she could catch. She landed a couple of blows on his head.
“Marla! Stop it! Stop it!”
While I struggled with Gaynor, managing to drag him almost all the way out of the car, Marla tucked Matthew under one arm like a football, threw open the back door on the other side, got out, and started to run.
Gaynor managed to turn around—he was younger and in better shape than I was—so that he could push me up against the inside of the driver’s door and drive a fist into my stomach. I let go of him and my knees hit the pavement.
The wind was gone from me. I gasped for air as Gaynor tore around the back of the car and caught up to Marla as she ran across the lawn. As I struggled to my feet, I saw him grab Marla by one arm.
“Go away!” she screamed, twisting her body, shielding the baby from the baby’s father.
Again I yelled, “Wait!”
Gaynor kept his focus on Marla, and his hand on her arm. He was digging his fingers into her flesh, and she was screaming in pain.
“I’ll drop him!”
That did it. Gaynor released his grip on her, took half a step back. For several seconds, everything froze. All you could hear was breathing. Shallow and rapid from Gaynor, his tie askew, hair tousled, arms down at his sides. Marla, jaw dropped, inhaling huge gulps of air. And then there was me, still struggling to get my breathing back to normal after that punch to the gut.
Half doubled over, I came around the car, one arm raised, palm out, in some weak kind of conciliatory gesture.
Gaynor’s wild eyes went from Marla to me and back to Marla. There were tears running down her face, and Matthew was starting to cry, too.
“Please,” Bill Gaynor said to her. “Don’t hurt him.”
Marla shook her head, stunned by the request. “Hurt him? You’re the one who’s trying to hurt him.”
“No, no, please,” he said.
I managed to stand fully upright as I stepped over the curb and walked onto the lawn.
“Marla,” I said. “What matters now, more than anything, is that nothing happen to Matthew. Right?”
She studied me warily. “Okay.”
“He’s our number one concern, agreed?”
“That’s my son,” Gaynor said. “Tell her to give me my—”
I raised a hand in his direction and nodded. “We all want the same thing, and that’s for Matthew to be safe.”
In the distance, for the first time, sirens.
“Of course,” she said.
“Marla, something’s happened in the house, and the police are coming, and it’s all going to get very busy here in a few minutes, and the cops are going to want to ask all of us lots of questions, and we don’t want to subject Matthew to that, do we? Some people are going to believe one thing and some people are going to believe something else, but the bottom line is, Matthew needs to be safe.”
She said nothing, but tightened her grip on the baby.
“Do you trust me, Marla?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“We’re cousins. We’re family. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. I want to help you, and I want to help you through this. You have to trust me.”
Gaynor’s eyes continued to bounce between us.
“I guess I do,” she said. I could see her grip on Matthew, who was continuing to cry through all of this, relax ever so slightly.
The sirens grew louder. I took my eyes off Marla for half a second, saw a Promise Falls cruiser turn the corner a long block away, lights flashing.
“Give him to me,” I said. I looked at Gaynor. “Is that okay with you, if she gives him to me?”
He searched my eyes. “Okay,” he said slowly.
Marla stood frozen. She’d taken a quick look up the street, too, and the imminent arrival of the police had prompted a more frightened look in her eyes.
“If I can’t have him . . .”
“Marla.”
“If I can’t have him, then maybe no one . . .”
“Don’t talk that way, Marla.” Jesus, what might she do? Run into the street, throw herself in the path of the police car, baby in her arms?
The cruiser—only the one so far—screeched to a halt and two male officers, one black and one white, jumped out. I was pretty sure I recognized both of them from my time reporting for the Standard. The black officer was Gilchrist, the white guy Humboldt.
“Give him to me!” Gaynor yelled at Marla, and advanced threateningly toward her.