Chapter 7: Noah Comes Home
The suppression motion was denied on a Wednesday morning in November.
Diane called while I was at the small desk I had set up near the window, working through an online accounting course I had enrolled in three weeks earlier.
The black card sat in a drawer.
I hadn't touched it.
"Judge Harmon ruled this morning," she said.
"Noah's cooperation stands.
The hard drive data is admissible.
The location records are admissible.
All of it."
I set down my pen.
"What did Ellis's attorney say?"
"He's already filed notice of appeal.
But Sabrina — an appeal on a suppression ruling takes months, sometimes longer.
The crjminal trial moves forward."
"And Noah?"
"Noah is free to return to you.
The custody arrangement defaults back to the pre-trial agreement pending a formal modification hearing, which we can expedite given the circumstances." She paused.
"He can be on a plane by the weekend if you want."
I looked at my apartment.
The damp walls.
The narrow window.
The desk I had pushed against the only wall that got morning light.
"I want," I said.
I found a two-bedroom apartment in Clintonville that same afternoon — second floor, hardwood floors, a small yard in the back that got afternoon sun.
I signed the lease the next day.
I used a portion of the money in the black card account, with Diane's office confirming in writing that the funds were cleared for personal use.
Noah flew in on a Saturday.
I stood at the arrivals gate at John Glenn Columbus International Airport — the same airport where I had watched him walk away from me two months earlier — and I watched the doors open and close, open and close.
Then he came through.
He was wearing jeans and a gray hoodie and his backpack, and he looked younger than he had in the courtroom.
He looked like a twelve-year-old boy who had been carrying something very heavy for a very long time and had finally been allowed to put it down.
He saw me and stopped walking.
Then he crossed the distance between us in about four steps and put his arms around me, and I held on.
We stood there for a while.
Neither of us said anything.
When he finally pulled back, his eyes were red but he was not crying.
He looked at me very directly, the way he had looked at the judge — except this time it was real.
"I'm sorry about what I said in court," he said.
"I need you to know I didn't mean any of it."
"I know," I said.
"I practiced it so many times so I wouldn't hesitate.
Because if I hesitated, Dad would know something was wrong." He swallowed.
"I was so afraid you'd believe it."
"For about forty-five minutes," I said.
"And then I got in the taxi."
He almost smiled.
"The card."
"The card," I said.
We walked out to the car together.
He put his backpack in the back seat and looked around at the interior — a used Honda I had bought with the first careful withdrawal from the account.
"Is this ours?" he asked.
"It's ours."
He nodded slowly.
He looked out the window as I drove, watching Columbus move past — the familiar streets, the bridges, the river.
"I want to go back to my old school," he said after a while.
"If that's possible."
"I already called them," I said.
"They're holding a spot."
He turned to look at me.
"You called before you knew I was coming back?"
"I called the day after the warrant was executed," I said.
He looked back out the window.
"Mom," he said quietly.
"I'm really glad you went to the airport that day.
When we said goodbye."
"I almost didn't."
"I know.
I was watching the entrance the whole time.
I thought — if she doesn't come, I'll find another way to get the card to her." He paused.
"But I wanted it to be me.
I wanted you to know it was from me."
I kept my eyes on the road.
"I knew," I said.
We pulled up to the new apartment.
He stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the building.
"It's nice," he said.
"It needs curtains," I said.
"We can get curtains."
He carried his own bag up the stairs.
I unlocked the door and pushed it open and he walked in ahead of me, moving slowly through the empty rooms, looking at the floors, the windows, the small yard visible through the back glass door.
He stopped in the doorway to the second bedroom.
His room.
There was a bed, a desk, and a lamp.
Nothing else yet.
"We'll get more stuff," I said from behind him.
"It's good," he said.
He turned around.
"It's really good, Mom."
He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at me standing in the doorway.
"Is it over?" he asked.
"The scary part?"
I thought about Ellis in a courtroom.
About attorneys and trial dates and the long machinery of consequence still grinding forward.
"The part where we were alone in it," I said.
"That part is over."
He nodded.
He seemed to accept that.
May you like
"Okay," he said.
"That's enough for now."
