Page 143 of Steel

He looked at me with tears in his eyes. “Donna.”

I feltthe bile rising in my stomach as I stared down at Donna’s cold, lifeless body in that freezer. She lay there like this was her new casket, perfectly placed and positioned on a bed of blankets with a pillow beneath her head.

“Fuck, Donna,” I whispered, gripping the freezer’s lid.

All these months I’d been visiting her grave, I was visiting an empty tomb. She was here all along. How the fuck did Ms. Anita manage to get her from the cemetery to her house undetected? Had someone helped her? Had my son seen his mother in here?

I felt a hand on my shoulder as Neha came to my side.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh my God!”

“I gotta find my son,” I said, closing the freezer. “I don’t know what is going through that woman’s mind, but she’s clearly unstable.”

“I’ll call the police?—”

“No. Call my father and tell him to get here now.”

“Kerrion—”

“Neha. Call. My. Dad.”

She stared at me for a moment before retrieving her phone from her pocket. I left the shed and went back into the house. My feet carried me down the hallway where the bedrooms were. The first place I checked was KJ’s room. Immediately, I noticed the open closet. Several empty hangers dangled from the rack. There was an open box of wipes and diapers on the floor, along with a plastic bag from a dollar store.

Seeing that made me sprint from the room and down the hall to Ms. Anita’s room. Shoving the door open, I went to her closet to find several empty hangers for her too. Several things looked to be missing from her vanity and bathroom as well. I couldn’t believe that she had taken my fucking son and left. All week long, shit seemed normal. She was laughing and smiling with him anytime I came over or called her.

She seemed to be in good spirits.

I thought back to the heavy feeling I felt when I walked out of the house after leaving KJ with her for the week. I chopped it up to the weight of everything that transpired over the last almost year. I thought back to her comment . . .“Grandma’s gonna take good care of you, precious.”

I knew now that it was a warning.

I should have paid attention to it.

I should have seen this shit coming.

“Fuck!” I yelled, swiping everything off the wall in front of me.

Rage filled me, and anything I could reach went crashing to the floor. The dresser. The mirror. The TV. I went to her bed and flipped that shit over too. My fist flew into her pictures on the wall before it went through the wall itself.

“Son of a fucking bitch!”

Neha appeared in the doorway, eyes wide. My father appeared behind her. He must have been close by because there was no way he’d gotten here that damn fast. He moved her out of the way and came to me. For a moment, all I could do was stare at him with tears in my eyes. The moment he wrapped his arms around me, my knees buckled, and I fell to the floor, bawling my fucking eyes out.

“She took him, Pop! She took my fucking son!”

I’d never felt pain like this. She told me I never wanted to feel this type of pain, and I had no idea that she would be the one to inflict it upon me. The range of emotions I felt in this moment was crippling.

I was angry. Enraged. Hurt. Afraid. Sick to my fucking stomach.

“I gotta find my son,” I said, trying to get out of my father’s grip. “I gotta find him, Pop!”

“You gotta calm down first, Kerrion.”

“I can’t fucking calm down! She’s got my baby! He can’t defend himself, and you want me to calm the fuck down!”

He gripped me tighter. “You don’t think I’m mad as fuck right now? You don’t think I want her fucking head for this shit?”

“That’s my son! Mine!”