Page 14 of Trapper Road

The students are escorted in in groups of five, and each time, parents lunge out of their chairs and embrace their kids and hurry them off to safety.

Lanny’s in the third group, and I claim her with all the love and terror I’m feeling. I kiss her and hold her and finally say, “Did you see Connor?”

She shakes her head. “No, but they were holding us in different places.”

I’m surprised to find an officer at my elbow when I pull back — a stone-faced Black woman who says, “Ms. Proctor? Mr. Cade? Would you come with me, please?”

I look at her, at the sympathy in her eyes she’s unable to hold in check. “No.” I can only breathe the word. The strength goes out of my legs, and Sam braces me against him, holding my weight so I don’t collapse.

“No,” I say again. It can’t be. I refuse to believe it. I won’t. My son can’t be one of the victims.

But why else would this officer be singling me out?

The officer places a hand on my arm. “Your son is alive. He isn’t injured.”

The relief I feel is so pure and sweet that I find myself nearly weeping. But I still don’t understand. “Where is he?”

“He’s a witness to the shooting. Our detectives would like to interview him, but we think it would be best if he had a parent with him.”

Oddly, it isn’t the first time one of my children has been interviewed by the police. It isn’t even the second or third. One would think I might be used to it, but I’m not. Sam and I meet eyes, and it isn’t even a question. We both know Sam is better at this sort of thing. Connor isn’t guilty of anything, but I tend to overreact when it comes to his safety.

“I want to see him,” I tell the officer.

“Me too,” Lanny adds.

“We’ll all go,” Sam says. “Then you can take Lanny home, and I’ll bring Connor when they’re finished.”

I feel the eyes of other parents in the room on us as the officer escorts us to the door. I know they’re all wondering who we are and why we’re being led away. Clearly we’ve been singled out for a reason. Either our child was injured or killed or, almost worse, the shooter.

The very possibility of that last thought makes me almost want to laugh, though I know it would come out more hysterical than anything else. The last thing I need to do is call that kind of attention to myself. Already there’s whispering. Perhaps some of the other parents recognized me. I don’t want to think about what they must be saying — what awful rumors will come of this. The Proctor family, unable to escape their gruesome past once again.

Lanny’s arm tightens around my waist, and I realize she’s noticed the same thing. She’s tense as she huddles against my side, and I pull her closer to me. “We’re going to be okay, sweetheart,” I murmur into her hair. She nods but that doesn’t stop the tears glistening in her eyes.

Outside the day is offensively beautiful. The sun is bright, not a single cloud in the sky, and the thick humid heat of the past few days has given way to a softer breeze. Reporters notice the officer walking with us and cameras shift our way, zooming in.

A familiar panic wells at the sight of so many empty lenses. I can’t face a TV camera without remembering what it was like to be trapped in that decrepit plantation house in the swamps of Louisiana, waiting for my ex-husband to livestream my torture and murder.

Sam knows this. He was there too, at the end. He saw the gruesome scene waiting for me. He understands the PTSD I suffer from that ordeal. Without saying anything, he shifts slightly, walking a step ahead and effectively blocking the cameras from my view.

The officer leads us across the street, past another police cordon, and toward an ambulance idling at the end of the school parking lot. There’s a cot near the back with a small figure sitting cross-legged on it.

Connor.

I run. No one tries to stop me, recognizing it would be futile. He notices me just in time to slide off before I reach him, grabbing him against me in a fierce hug.

“Mom.” The word comes out choked, and it breaks my heart. He sounds like a little boy again, scared from a nightmare.

I pull back long enough to assess him for myself. His arms and shirt are covered in blood, some of it still damp and sticky in spots. “Are you hurt?” I ask.

He shakes his head. He keeps his lips pressed together, and there are tears in his eyes. Tracks of them cut through blood smeared across his cheek. He looks scared and confused and lost, and I want to fix it, but I don’t know how.

He buries himself against my chest, and I wrap my arms around him, wishing I could hold him like this forever and protect him from the world. Already I notice a man and a woman hovering nearby. Both wear plain clothes, but it’s obvious they’re detectives, likely here to talk to Connor.

“I’m sorry,” Connor mumbles into my shoulder.

“It’s okay,” I tell him, even though there’s no way I can know that for sure. I just have to believe it. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

He lifts his head then, and something flashes in his eyes. He glances away, toward Lanny and then to the ground. “It was Kevin.”

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