The Things We Couldn't Forget

Chapter 8.

"Do you have any weapons?"

I'm still too dazed, my head is too foggy, I'm still so lost. It takes too long for his words to break through to me.

My hands are behind my back and I'm being pressed into the cold metal of my car's hood. The layer of the wet ice collecting there slices into my cheek, making me wince.

He pulls back ever so slightly before slamming me down again, shouting the same question.

Weapons? Why the hell would I have weapons?

Sirens are blaring while all around me more squad cars are pulling up to the scene.

Behind me I hear a woman shouting, screaming a boy's name.

"Benjamin!" She's screaming at the tops of her lungs, her voice the only thing breaking through the commotion all around.

His mother.

I hear her crying, not a sad cry, but one I know that means that the little boy in the puffy red jacket and those leather boots is back safe in his mother's arms.

I'm yanked away from the car, the wind burning my stinging cheek as the officer spins me to face him, pushing me back against the now closed driver's side door.

I don't realize I'm handcuffed until I try to move my arms. A wave of vertigo nearly makes my knees buckle beneath me as I pull against the restraints. This time they aren't invisible.

They're cuttingly real.

"Please." I beg. I try to grab my throat, I can't breathe, but my hands stay stuck, my arms smashed behind me at odd angles, making my shoulders scream in protest.

"Answer the question!" The officer yells again, I turn my head up to look at him and recognition dawns on me.

"F-frank?" I gasp. "Frank Gillians?"

"Officer Gill-." He starts to correct me but then he looks harder at my face too. "Fuck." He curses under his breath and steps back just a fraction. Just enough for the pain in my arms to be released. "I should have known a Jacobs would be involved." His words cut more cooly than the ice on my cheek.

Instead they grow hot and I turn as if he's slapped me.

"Please just let me go." I whisper. "Please I wasn't doing anything wrong."

"You say that while we just pulled you over with an abducted child in your vehicle." I hear the hatred in his deep voice. How could this be the same guy who used to come over to my house every Sunday morning to play video games with my brother?

It takes a second but then I do register what he'd said.

"Abducted?" I almost shout. "That is so not what happened."

"Are you drunk?"

"W-what?" I stammer. "No, I'm not drunk."

"You're on something, Jacobs." He spits. "You were swerving all over the road."

But I wasn't.

I want to argue. I want to explain how this is all one big misunderstanding. I want to tell him I know I couldn't have been swerving because when I put the little boy in my car I was being so so careful after what had almost happened.

But then I'd have to tell him what did almost happen.

And am I even that sure that he's wrong?

So many things from this day are a blurry sliver of things. Bits and pieces of spliced together memories. Maybe he's right.

Frank pulls me away from the car so that another officer can begin searching my vehicle. Looking for what, I have no idea.