Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Cami came back into the room, her cell phone in one hand and a business card in the other with what he could see was a handwritten number on the back. She put it on speaker and held it up as it rang. After a few seconds, a woman answered, the sound of something frying loud in the background.
“Yes, hi. I’m trying to reach Elora Maxwell.”
“Elora doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Oh, okay. Do you know how I can get ahold of her?”
“I don’t have her current information. But last I heard, she took a job in the Virgin Islands.”
“I . . . see. Okay, well, thank you.”
“Are you a lawyer for one of the families she worked with?”
“No. I was a client.”
“Oh, a client. Well, I don’t know anything about all what happened with her agency, but I know my mom spoke well of Elora. She said she was too soft for her own good. Doesn’t sound like it worked out very well. Anyway, have a nice day.” And with that, the person on the other end, a relative maybe, hung up.
Cami stood there, her gaze shifted to the side, her face growing paler by the second. Her eyes moved to the screen in front of him, clearly making out the article headline about Open Hearts Adoptions being shut down. She sank into the chair next to him. “Too soft? What does that even mean? They seemed competent. Their office was nice. Elora was . . . oh God.” She put her head in her hands.
“It doesn’t look good, I agree,” he said. “But it’s still not proof your son isn’t okay. It’s still not proof this boy”—he enlarged the screen where the live feed was playing—“is the baby you put up for adoption.”
Cami leaned in, her mouth forming a small O. “Oh my God, look, the door is opening.” The boy had seen it, too, and had turned to face the person entering. Rex and Cami both leaned in, their heads almost touching as they waited to see who would appear.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Cyrus scooted toward the wall next to the bed and plastered his back against the solid surface. The door opened, and a man stood there, staring blankly at him. He was holding a bag in his hands, and Cyrus smelled the scent of fried food. His stomach rumbled, and the man let out a small harrumph as he took a step inside as if he’d heard Cyrus’s body’s admission of hunger, and it’d spurred him to deliver the food. He placed the bag on the floor and then glanced over at the bedpan that Cyrus had used a few hours before but made no move to retrieve it.
“Who are you?” Cyrus demanded, attempting to keep the quiver from his voice. The man was tall, but kind of fat, and he reminded Cyrus of his school bus driver, the one who picked his nose when he thought no one was looking and wiped it on his pant leg. “And why am I here?”
“Better not to ask questions,” the man said. “Just eat your food.”
“I want to leave.”
“Yeah, well, I want to fuck Beyoncé and swim with the dolphins.”
“Why am I here?” he asked again.
“You won’t be for long. Just until the end of the week. I’d let you watch TV, but there ain’t no fuckin’ power here.” He reached in his back pocket and removed some rolled magazines and dropped those on the floor next to the bag of fast food. “Comics. Best I could do. Spider-Man. Kids like that,” he told him as though it was simply a fact and since Cyrus was a kid, he must obviously like Spider-Man.
“You’re a nose picker, too, aren’t you?” Cyrus asked.
“Huh?”
Cyrus let out a sound of disgust. He glanced behind the sleepy-looking man at the door, calculating the possibility of jumping off the bed, faking right, and then running left around him and out the door. He’d used that method to successfully avoid a bully named Crew who was in his class but had been held back three times and was as big as a lumberjack. Cyrus wasn’t big, but he was fast, and he was nimble.
And he was used to evading bullies. Sometimes he was successful, sometimes he wasn’t.
He thought of a time he wasn’t, which made him think of Mr. Abdullah in the park. Cyrus had shown up with a black eye, and Mr. Abdullah had told him about a book called The Art of War as they played chess. Cyrus had told Mr. Abdullah that his dad didn’t like war. Mr. Abdullah had said no one should like war, but that sometimes war was dropped in your lap. Cyrus wasn’t sure he was at war, but he was definitely a prisoner. Mr. Abdullah would know what to do in this situation, and so would his dad. But he didn’t want to think about either of them because it made him want to cry. Mr. Abdullah wasn’t here. And Cyrus would never see his dad again. Cyrus was alone.