Page 46 of Forgotten

“It’s pretty early in the morning,” she said. “I have things I have to do. Can we just talk here?”

“No,” I said. “If you are serious about wanting to talk to me, you will meet me in the park down the street from the sheriff’s station. I’ll be here until you get here.”

“It might take me a little while. Your son needs to go to the babysitter.”

“Take as much time as you need. I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “Call me when you get here.”

I hung up before she could protest and walked across the park to a food truck that had parked outside. Food trucks were a rarity in Foley, but in the greater Louisa county area, you could catch them occasionally. This one served wraps with hot chicken or lamb, and I ordered one. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday, which was probably a massive mistake considering the amount of booze I had in my system. But ever since I’d walked away from Charlotte, I just couldn’t imagine putting anything other than alcohol down my gullet.

I looked terrible. I could see my reflection in the glass of the truck and tried and failed to smooth my hair out to make it look reasonable. I was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday and looked like I’d been hit by a truck.

Oh well. It wasn’t like I was going to impress anyone anymore. I didn’t care about anything. Nothing except setting the record straight with Lacey and getting this part of my life moving forward.

I sat down and ate my wrap joylessly. When it was finished, I threw away the wrapper and walked back to the truck to buy a soda. It wasn’t the whisky I’d been downing all night before I turned to beer, but it was better than nothing. Sitting on the bench where I’d sat with Charlotte only made me angrier, and the anger built as I waited for Lacey to arrive.

Finally, after an hour, she showed up, and I was mostly sober, dehydrated, and absolutely done with everything when I saw her recognize me in horror. She almost recoiled at the sight of me, and I crossed the space between us.

“Jesse, what happened to you?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I want to take a paternity test. You owe me that. I will do whatever you want, pay whatever you want in child support, whatever. But I want proof. Give me that.”

“No,” she said, taking a step back. “Jesse, you’re scaring me. What the hell happened to you? And you don’t need a paternity test. You know it’s yours.”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “All I have is some pictures. No proof.”

“You don’t call this proof?”

She pulled out her phone and swiped to her camera roll. A picture came up a few seconds later of a little boy with curly hair that looked like a mix of my own and Lacey’s. He had a big, crooked smile like mine, but nothing else about him struck me as looking particularly like me. I could see the resemblance to Lacey, sure, but it wasn’t as convincing as the baby pictures she’d shown me years before.

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“He’s your spitting image,” she said. “How dare you deny him?”

“Wait, let me see that again.”

She resisted showing me the picture again, but I was fast and grabbed the phone, pulling it toward me. She relented, and I stared at the picture, not at the child, but at something else. Something in the background that caught my eye. I pinched the screen to zoom in and tried to make out what it could be. It was a familiar shape, but…

“What is this?” I asked.

“What is what?”

“This,” I said, letting her take the phone back.

She froze, her eyes going wide before pinching the screen back into place, clicking the button on the side to darken it, and then shoving the phone into her back pocket.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “Just a toy on the coffee table.”

“That was no toy,” I said. “I know what that is, and it was no toy.”

“You’re crazy. What do youthinkit was?” she demanded, an incredulous smile on her face.

“It’s not what I think. It’s what I know. That was a badge. Specifically a deputy’s badge for Louisa county.”

“What? No,” she said, shaking her head. But the lie was written across her face. She knew she was caught.

“Where did you park?” I asked.

“Back that way,” she said, pointing vaguely.

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