Chapter 5 - For Now
Detective Guzman returned my phone after speaking to my father.
Her voice was quiet.
“Mrs. Sullivan, do you need medical attention?”
“Yes,” I said.
Jason stepped forward.
“She’s fine. She’s just shaken.”
Guzman turned toward him.
“I asked her.”
A small silence followed.
Important.
Jason was used to answering for me.
Guzman had just refused to let him.
Chelsea was still on the roof, tire iron lowered now, her heels pressed awkwardly against the damaged metal.
One officer said, “Ma’am, step down slowly and drop the tool.”
Chelsea looked at Jason.
Not the officer.
Jason’s face tightened.
“Chelsea,” he said. “Do what they say.”
She laughed once.
“You said she’d cave.”
The driveway froze.
Jason’s eyes flashed.
“Stop talking.”
Too late.
Detective Guzman heard it.
So did the body camera.
So did I.
So did my father, because the call was still open.
From the phone in my hand, his voice came through faintly.
“Olivia. Say nothing else until counsel arrives.”
Jason heard it.
His face changed.
“Is that your father?”
I looked at him.
“No,” I said. “That’s the man you should have been afraid of disappointing.”
The ambulance arrived nine minutes later.
Those nine minutes felt like an entire lifetime.
Chelsea was brought down from the car roof and separated from Jason.
The tire iron was secured.
The officers photographed the windshield, the damaged baby seat, the SUV positions, the shattered fragments, Chelsea’s phone, Jason’s phone, my ultrasound photo on the passenger seat, and my hands shaking over my belly.
Guzman asked if I could step away from the car.
I tried.
My knees almost failed.
She caught my elbow with permission in her touch.
“I’ve got you.”
I nodded.
A paramedic checked my blood pressure.
Too high.
My pulse.
Too fast.
Fetal movement.
I placed both hands over my stomach and waited.
There.
A kick.
Small but definite.
I broke then.
Not loudly.
Not for Jason.
Not for Chelsea.
For the life inside me reminding me he was still there.
The paramedic smiled softly.
“Good sign. We still need to get you checked.”
Jason tried to come toward the ambulance.
Guzman blocked him.
“I’m her husband.”
“For now,” I said.
He flinched.
Good.
Let the word land.
At the hospital, they monitored the baby for hours.
I stared at the line moving across the screen, listening to the steady heartbeat.
Not dramatic.
Not cinematic.
Just a fast, living rhythm.
The most beautiful sound I had ever heard.
My father arrived before the second monitoring cycle ended.
He did not burst in.
He knocked.
Even then.
Even with fury behind his eyes.
“Come in,” I said.
Robert Callahan entered wearing a charcoal suit and no tie, his silver hair slightly disordered in a way that meant he had driven himself and ignored at least three people who told him not to.
He looked at my face.
Then my stomach.
Then the monitors.
Then his jaw tightened.
“Baby?”
“Heartbeat is good.”
His shoulders lowered half an inch.
Only half.
Then he took my hand.
“Olivia.”
That was all he said.
My name.
Not I warned you.
Not why did you go.
Not what were you thinking.
My name, held like proof that I was still there.
I cried then.
He sat beside me and waited until I finished.
Then he said, “Now we proceed carefully.”
That was Dad.
Love first.
May you like
Procedure second.
Revenge never spoken, but not entirely absent.
