This week, I’m sharing a short story that I wrote - it’s similar in theme to my novels about the lengths we’ll go to protect our children. I’ve always been fascinated by an article I once read about a father who turned his teenage son into the police for a crime he’d discovered his son had committed. The father was praised for his actions, and rightly so, but to call the police on your own child must have been extremely difficult. The Sacrifice is inspired by that article and the choices we make as a parent.
The Sacrifice By Karen Osman
Thursday night
Tyler should have been home two hours ago.
I’m on the sofa, my eyes flitting between the cold, pitch-black void through the window, and the luminous digits of the TV clock. My fingers work the loose threads of the seat cushion, revealing the beginning of a small hole in the fabric.
11:01 pm.
Brian shifts his huge bulk beside me and stands. ‘I’m going to bed. We’ve called and messaged - there’s nothing else we can do.’
‘But–’
‘He’s almost sixteen, Kath. Probably just lost track of time, smoking God knows what with his mates. It’s what teenagers do.’
Not my teenager.
‘Don’t you think we should go out and look for him?’ I ask, rising. Brian turns and for a second, I think he’ll help me.
‘For God's sake, you can’t keep babying him! This is why he’s having these problems in the first place!’
I jump as the living room door slams behind him and I wait until I can hear his heavy tread in the bedroom above. Only then do I sit back down, my hand reaching for the cushion threads.
It’s past midnight and the hole in the couch is the size of a ten pence piece when I hear the front door quietly open. I bolt for the hallway, suddenly able to breathe easier. I hug Tyler hard, pulling away when I feel his wet clothes.
‘Where’s your coat? It’s minus two out there.’ I chide him, taking comfort in this mundane parenting task. I don’t feel ready yet to address the deeper issue of his whereabouts.
‘You’re shivering. Get changed and I’ll bring up a hot drink for you. There’s a clean towel in the cupboard.’
A few minutes later, I sit on the edge of his bed, watching as he sips hot chocolate.
‘Tyler, I was worried. Where were you? And why didn’t you pick up your phone?’
I try to keep the anxiety out of my voice just like the parenting books tell me but even I can hear my desperation.
He mumbles something about computer games at Joe’s house and his mobile phone running out of battery before handing me his empty cup and slithering down under the duvet.
I leave but not before picking up his sodden hoodie. I hang it in the airing cupboard to dry. It’s only later, when I’m in bed, listening to Brian’s snores, that I realize it hadn’t been raining tonight.
Friday morning
I wake up to shouting.
Disorientated, I pull on my dressing gown and arrive in the kitchen just as Tyler storms past me. He leaves the house before I can tell him to have a good day.
‘I told him he’s grounded - straight to school and back,’ says Brian, standing with a cigarette at the open back door. It’s freezing and I pull my old dressing gown tighter around me.
‘I wish you’d talk to me first before you just–’
‘Before I what? It’s called discipline, Kath - he’s got to learn at some point. Besides, he didn’t seem even remotely sorry for keeping us up worrying last night.’
Us?
I think back to the night before, Tyler soaked through to the skin, avoiding my gaze.
‘Do you think…do you think he’s being bullied again?’ I ask.
‘I bloody hope not - we’re paying enough,’ mutters Brian.
It had started eighteen months ago, Tyler coming home with bruises. The school did nothing and in the end, we had to move him to another one. A posh one - private. Brian was against it from the beginning. Said we couldn’t afford it and we weren’t doing Tyler any favors.
‘It’s just that last night when he came home, he was wet through, as if he’d had a bucket of water dumped on him.’
Brian pauses and I know I’ve got his attention. He’s about to speak when his mobile phone rings. He answers and the moment is lost.
I’m ironing, still in my pajamas and dressing gown, grateful to have a day off from my shift work as a nurse.
Inside, the TV murmurs.
Outside, the wind howls.
I glance at the gun-metal overcast sky but there’s no sign of rain.
The news comes on; a body found on the edge of a lake in a park by a dog-walker early that morning. It’s only when I hear the news reporter mention Goldfinch Park - just ten minutes from our house, that I reach to turn up the volume. I’m too hasty and I swear as the hot metal of the iron sears the back of my hand. I dart to the kitchen and run it under the cold tap but when I return, the news segment is over.
I give up on the ironing and clean Tyler’s room. Brian thinks he should clean it himself. As I pull out a ball of dirty laundry from under the bed, I think he’s probably right. I change the bedding to the non-stop pings of his computer. He sometimes forgets to turn it off and his messages briefly flare on the screen. Usually, I’d just ignore them but after last night, I’m drawn to the monitor.
‘What a night, bro! That was mental!’
I scan the rest of the conversation, relieved to learn he had been with Joe after all.
Then I see a message from Tyler. ‘that prick deserved everything he got’
I swallow hard.
‘daft git he probably ran home freezing his bollocks off’ This, from Joe, who had seemed quite sensible. Or as sensible as a fifteen-year-old can be. I try to push away my unease - whatever happened last night, my son wasn’t the victim.
An hour later, I’m in the car. Brian’s cigarette’s overflow in the ashtray, and despite the cold, I open the window. I find myself driving towards Goldfinch Park. I walk towards the lake, taking the overflowing ashtray with me in the hope of finding a bin. There’s a crowd by the edge of the water held back with police tape. I push to the front and see people in hazmat suits but otherwise, there’s little to see.
Friday afternoon
I’m washing the dishes and side-eying Tyler as he bites into his sandwich, eyes glued to his phone. What did he do last night? Surely, he couldn’t be a bully - not after going through it himself? I force myself to wait, knowing timing is everything.
‘So, what did you get up to last night?’
‘Not much, y’know, hanging out with Joe and the lads.’
I turn slightly, every instinct telling me there’s more. The burn on my hand throbs from the warm soapy water.
Tyler picks up his phone and slides off the chair. ‘Gonna do homework.’
I panic. ‘ What about the prick who deserved everything he got?’
Tyler freezes. ‘How do you know–’
I abandon the washing up. ‘Tell me what happened - did someone hassle you?’
‘No.’
He’s sullen now and I know my instincts were right.
‘Tyler?’
He scuffs the chair leg with his shoe. ‘He was asking for it.’
‘Who?’
‘Denny.’
Even his name has the power to trigger me. I saw him once, walking to school. He wore a gold signet ring on his finger and I used to torture myself with images of the metal smashing into my son’s face.
‘Denny? Denny Jenkins? The boy from your last school who was–’
I was about to say giving you grief, but that doesn’t really explain the horror of what that twisted bastard put my son through.
‘He was by himself in the park,’ explains Tyler, ‘so we just gave him a scare, that’s all.’
I recall Tyler in the hallway the night before, wet through.
‘And how did you do that exactly?’
A smirk spreads across Tyler’s face. ‘We dunked him in the lake.’
I tell Brian about it when he gets in from work who tells Tyler he’s grounded for another week.
Tyler is no longer smirking.
The three of us eat dinner, the latest headlines on the TV filling the silence. There’s live coverage of the dead body found in the park, a wind-swept anchorwoman reporting from the edge of the lake. A caption runs across the bottom of the screen. A part of me already knows who it is. Still, when the body is announced as Denny Jenkins, I start to shake violently.
Tyler turns white and Brian lunges for the remote to turn up the volume. We stare at the TV as the camera cuts to footage of the body being pulled from the water earlier that day. Tyler stands, his chair clattering to the floor, looking around wildly, as if trying to escape.
Friday night
The whiskey bottle sits on the coffee table. Brian sent Tyler to bed so we could talk. He’d denied everything; said Denny had been fine when he left him. I picked up on the singular right away - hadn’t Tyler said it was him and Joe? Had Tyler gone back?
‘We need to call the police, Kath,’ says Brian.
It’s the whiskey talking. It must be. Who calls the police on their own son?
‘If we call the police, they’ll arrest him. And he didn’t do anything,’ I counter.
‘Didn’t do anything?’ Brian swivels to face me. ‘He dunked the kid in a freezing cold lake in the middle of the night!’
‘Yes, but he didn’t kill him.’
Brian sighs, pours another whiskey and lights up.
‘They have all sorts of ways of identifying people, Kath - fingerprints, DNA - the police are going to turn up here at some point, so best he comes forward first.’
‘No.’
Brain doesn’t respond, just smokes quietly.
‘How long are you going to let this go on for, Kath?’ He prods me with his finger, the cigarette too close. ‘You’ve indulged him for fifteen years, rescued him from every situation. He has no idea how to deal with life.’
‘That Denny made his life hell!’
‘A bit of taunting and a few punches in the school yard is hardly hell,’ grunts Brian. ‘It would have burnt itself out eventually. But you had to interfere, didn’t you? And now look where we are.’
My jaw tightens and I imagine throwing the heavy metal ashtray at his head.
‘Whether you like it or not,’ continues Brian, ‘Tyler was involved somehow and if he doesn’t learn to face consequences - it's better we tell the police what we know now…’ He stands and heads for the stairs. ‘I’m calling the police tomorrow.’
Saturday morning
It’s early and my eyes are gritty when I peer into Tyler’s room; he’s sitting on the edge of his bed. If this was any other Saturday, he wouldn’t be up until at least noon.
‘I didn’t do anything, Mum,’ he says as soon as he sees me.
‘I know, love.’ My arms wrap around him. He leans into me and every fiber of my being wants to go back in time when he was safe inside my belly.
‘What’s going to happen?’ he asks.
‘To you?’ I hold his face in my hands. ‘Nothing.’
I leave and go into the kitchen with the intention of making tea. Instead, I sit at the same table where our lives derailed the night before and run my fingers over my burn, which stretches red and angry across the back of my hand.
Brian comes into the kitchen, opens the back door and lights his cigarette, before taking his mobile phone out of his pocket. Before he can dial, I join him at the doorway, numb to the cold air.
‘You’re right, Brian,’ I say, placing my hand on his arm. ‘I already called the police. They’ll be here shortly.’
Surprise crosses his face but he puts his phone back in his pocket.
An hour later, Brian and Tyler are in the living room pretending to watch football. I know Brian won’t tell him anything until the last second.
When the doorbell finally rings, I’m proved right and the sound of Manchester United fans is replaced with Brian’s voice. He’s still talking when I open the door to two police officers, a man and a woman. They take in my appearance; the shadows under my eyes and the old dressing gown stained with tea.
‘Mrs Adams?’ I nod and let them in. The three of us stand in the hallway like awkward strangers at a party, listening to the shouts and sobs of Tyler as Brian tries to calm him down.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say eventually, nodding towards the living room. ‘Can we just give them a minute? Tyler is so upset about what his father’s done and it’s important Tyler hears it from him.’
The policewoman raises an eyebrow in question.
‘It wasn’t meant to happen, you see...’ I pull my dressing gown tighter around me.
‘What wasn’t meant to happen, Mrs Adams?’
‘It’s just that…Brian…he couldn’t cope with what Denny Jenkins had done to our son. The bullying was horrific - Tyler was driven to the brink of suicide.’ I raise my burnt hand to my mouth to catch the sob that escapes.
I shake my head, bewildered. ‘It was too much for Brian to see his son having to go through it all again.’
‘What are you saying, Mrs Adams?’ The policeman this time, brisk but not unkind.
‘It was only supposed to be a warning. If I’d known what Brian was going to do, I would never have let him go out that night.’
I’m rambling, unable to stop. ‘I never thought Brian would do something like this though…but then I saw the news and...’
I wipe away the snot and tears with my hand. ‘That’s always been Brian’s way of dealing with things, you see.’ This time both police officers cast their eyes over my burnt hand.
My tears are heavy and genuine as the living room door opens.
Brian appears, his large frame filling the doorway, dwarfing Tyler who looks petrified.
As the policeman steps forward, I hold my husband’s gaze as the policewoman asks Brian where he was last Thursday night between 10 pm and midnight.
Two months later
I’m cleaning Tyler’s room again when I hear the computer ping but this time I ignore it. When the police found the cigarette butt at the side of the lake that I left for them to find from Brian’s filthy car ashtray, it was enough to cast suspicion. Who knows what will happen next? I clear Tyler’s desk so I can dust, putting away the pens and books into the desk drawer. It’s too full though and I tip everything onto the carpet, intending to reorganize. A flash of metal catches my eye as it rolls across the carpet.
I hold it up to the light; a gold signet ring.
I put it in my pocket, knowing I might need it later.
Thank you to everyone who has become a paid subscriber. This is currently my main writing work and I’m extremely grateful to anyone who can contribute a small monthly/annual amount to support it.
Great short story, just enough detail to leave you guessing till the end. Would love to see more of your work. Your first three novels were amazing.