Chapter 2 - The Father Who Was Always Working
"GET AWAY FROM MY SON!"
Malcolm's voice thundered through the living room.
Patrice spun toward the doorway, the wooden cane still in her hand.
For a split second, she looked frightened.
Then her expression changed.
"Malcolm! Thank goodness you're here. Jordan has been completely out of control."
Malcolm barely heard her.
His eyes were fixed on the boy kneeling beside the metal bowl.
"Jordan?"
The child looked up.
When he recognized his father, relief crossed his face, but he didn't immediately run toward him.
Instead, he glanced at Patrice.
Malcolm noticed.
That hesitation frightened him more than anything Patrice had said.
"Put the cane down," he ordered.
"Malcolm, you're misunderstanding—"
"Put it down."
Patrice placed it on the side table.
Malcolm picked it up and moved it beyond her reach.
Then he knelt in front of his son.
"Buddy, look at me."
Jordan tried.
His breathing was uneven.
Malcolm reached toward him, but Jordan flinched so suddenly that his father stopped.
The movement felt like a blow.
"Okay," Malcolm said quietly. "I'm not going to grab you. You tell me what you need."
Jordan's lower lip trembled.
"My back hurts."
Malcolm helped him stand only after Jordan nodded. The boy winced as he straightened.
Behind them, Patrice crossed her arms.
"He was being disrespectful. I was correcting his behavior."
Darlene stepped out of the kitchen.
"No, ma'am."
Patrice turned sharply.
"Darlene, stay out of this."
Darlene looked at Malcolm.
"I watched her hit him across the back. He fell right here."
Malcolm felt his stomach tighten.
He had seen the cane threatening his son on the monitor. He had not seen the actual strike.
Now Darlene was telling him what had happened before the camera came back online.
"Is that true?" he asked Patrice.
She stiffened.
"Are you going to believe the housekeeper over your wife?"
Malcolm looked at Jordan.
The boy had been standing beside him, gripping the hem of his shirt.
He still hadn't said a word.
Malcolm turned back to Patrice.
"You do not get to use your marriage to me as an answer to that question."
He guided Jordan toward the hallway.
"Come on, son. Let's get you somewhere quiet."
Patrice followed them with her eyes.
"You're making a terrible mistake by undermining me in front of him."
Malcolm stopped.
"No. My mistake happened long before I opened that door."
He took Jordan upstairs.
For the next twenty minutes, Malcolm sat on the edge of his son's bed while Jordan rested against his pillows.
The boy's room looked almost untouched.
Model airplanes lined a shelf.
A basketball sat beneath the desk.
A photograph of Jordan's late mother, Nicole, stood beside his bedside lamp.
Four years earlier, after Nicole died, Malcolm had promised his son that he would never have to face anything alone.
He had meant it.
Then grief had given way to responsibility.
The business needed him. His clients needed him. His employees needed him.
And when Patrice entered their lives, she seemed to understand how to manage the household when he couldn't.
She attended school events.
She organized family dinners.
She answered messages from teachers.
She told Malcolm that Jordan needed firmer boundaries.
He had mistaken her confidence for care.
Now he remembered things he had dismissed.
Jordan rarely joined them for breakfast anymore.
He sometimes asked whether Patrice would be home before agreeing to invite a friend over.
When Malcolm called during business trips, his son often said he was fine and quickly handed the phone to his stepmother.
Malcolm had treated those changes as ordinary growing pains.
"Jordan," he said, "has she hurt you before?"
The boy's eyes filled again.
He looked toward the closed bedroom door.
"She said you wouldn't believe me."
Malcolm felt his throat tighten.
"Why would she say that?"
Jordan picked at a loose thread on his blanket.
"Because you always believe her when she says I'm bad."
There was no anger in his voice.
That made the words harder to hear.
Malcolm couldn't deny what his son had experienced.
He had often accepted Patrice's account without asking Jordan what happened.
"She tells me to stay in my room when you're gone," Jordan continued. "Sometimes she won't let me eat with her."
Malcolm stared at him.
"Where do you eat?"
Jordan didn't answer immediately.
Then he whispered, "Sometimes in the kitchen. Sometimes nowhere."
Malcolm closed his eyes.
He wanted to promise that everything would be normal tomorrow.
But nothing about this was normal.
A soft knock came at the door.
Darlene stood outside holding a glass of water.
Jordan looked at her, then at his father.
May you like
"She calls that dog bowl my place," he said.
And Malcolm understood that the moment he had witnessed downstairs hadn't started that afternoon.
