Chapter 8

The judge's ruling came down at 9:14 the next morning, and it was thorough.

Dane Corrigan, having voluntarily relinquished his parental rights eleven months prior, had no legal standing to seek custody, visitation, or contact with the child, Toby Ryan Corrigan. The voluntary relinquishment was affirmed as final and enforceable. A protective order was granted, prohibiting any contact with the child or the child's mother, subject to criminal penalties.

And, in a paragraph that made the news:

The court notes the existence of video footage, submitted by the respondent, depicting the petitioner placing the minor child in a decorative display compartment and attaching a paper tag to the child's wrist. The court views this footage with grave concern and recommends that the petitioner seek professional evaluation before any further proceedings.

The footage, the judge noted, had been provided by a witness who had been present in the garage and had filmed the incident on a personal phone.

The witness's name was redacted.

Dane read the ruling on his phone at 10:04, in the first light of morning, sitting on the collapsed wood-panel wall where he'd spent the night. The work-lights were still off. The sidecar was still empty. The small footprints were still there, leading to the open garage door.

He read it twice.

Then he got up, for the first time in eleven hours, and walked across the concrete to the sidecar.

He stood over it for a long moment.

The fiberglass shell was gray and curved, built to hold a mannequin in racing leathers — chrome rail, low bucket, a single wheel where a motorcycle's sidecar had once attached. He'd bought it at an estate sale for four hundred dollars. He'd told himself it was an investment, a piece that would appreciate, a conversation starter for the garage.

Now it was just the place where he'd put his son.

Dane reached down and picked up the paper tag that had fallen from the boy's wrist at some point in the chaos of the night. It lay on the concrete where the boy had stood, exactly where the small bare foot had pressed against the dust.

FREIGHT — RETURN TO OWNER.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he folded it in half, and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket, the one that had held a folded page eleven months before.