The God Patent (49 page)

I
t was June 15, the day Ryan had been pursuing for almost three years. Today, Ryan would appear in court, and his attorney would argue that Ryan McNear was a pillar of society, capable not just of paying his debts and building wealth, but of being a stellar role model for his son. She would question the grounds that had been used to renew the restraining order that had kept him from his son for the last four and a half years and then, finally, order that joint custody be resumed.

If things went well today, Ryan would have his old life back—what was left of it, anyway.

He was up well before sunrise—not just because worrying about Katarina kept him from sleeping but because he had a long drive from Hardale to the Fort Worth courthouse.

He dragged an iron across his shirt and then put it on in front of a mirror. As he knotted his tie, he noticed the puffy red skin below his eyes. The lines in his forehead looked like crevices. The thought flashed through his mind that the judge might take one look and think he was doing meth again.

The four-hour drive gave him time to think. His mind wasn’t quiet. The plans he’d made for his thirty days with Sean kept being shoved aside by ideas of where and how to look for Katarina. He left his cell phone in his lap, willing it to ring.
Please Katarina, please call before I go into court. Please.

He parked on Houston Street a block from court, an unprecedented rock-star parking space. He looked back at the car and laughed. What would Linda think if she saw him get into Foster’s red Porsche?

His laughter was enough. He found the focus. He couldn’t help Katarina right now. One kid at a time.

Ryan pasted a smile on his face. It felt genuine enough. His attorney waited for him on the sidewalk outside the courthouse. Before she had a chance to comment on his appearance, he told her that he’d been working late all week. She went through the details of how she expected the case to proceed.

Walking in the courtroom, Ryan saw Linda in the front row. She had her back to him and was looking down. Her husband, that old bastard Howard, sat next to her with his arm around her—with his gray hair and withered skin, he looked about a hundred.

Ryan started across the courtroom but stopped and looked around as though he were looking through someone else’s eyes. Words came to him, a phrase he’d heard his father say: “Stand up straight, smile, and go to hell with some poise.” He strode to the front row and sat next to Ms. Robins, across the aisle from Linda.

Linda looked older too. He recognized her nervous smile and could tell that she was trying not to look at him. When she finally glanced over, he furrowed his brow and nodded to her—the look he’d always used to let her know that everything was okay. And she reacted as she always had. She tightened her lips nervously but settled down.

Ryan’s reaction to Linda had always been the same. It had happened the day they met, every night when he had come home from work, even the last time they’d been here, when Sean told the court that Tammi had blown meth smoke in his face. This time, though, instead of that wonderful but scary warm feeling
filling his chest, he felt empty. It was a strange feeling. Somehow Linda was just a woman that he used to know. That was all—none of that warmth tinged with panicked exultation and fleeting doubt that he used to call love. She was just a rather sad looking lady with beautiful curls framing a lovely, if unsettled, face.

This was about his kids, Katarina and Sean. He had to get them back, one kid at a time.

The bailiff entered the court and gave Ryan a curt nod of recognition—it was Holcomb. The judge followed, a man about the same age as Ryan. Ms. Robins presented evidence of Ryan’s employment, copies of the checks he’d sent to Linda—Linda’s attorney objected, saying that Linda had thought they were gifts for their son. The judge waved it off.

Ryan’s attention wandered to Katarina. His focus returned when Ms. Robins argued that the restraining order that prevented contact with Sean should be repealed. It was the weak link. The judge asked Ryan to stand and then questioned him about his living conditions and career. He asked three questions about drug use: when he had first used illegal drugs, when he had last used them, and why he thought he’d never use them again. Ryan answered as Ms. Robins had instructed, as concisely as possible.

The judge looked Ryan up and down, then spoke to Linda. “This court has determined that it is important for a child to have contact with his father.”

Linda’s attorney stood and said, “If it please the court, we withdraw request to renew said order of restraint but respectfully request that sole custody with the mother and supervised visits with the father be maintained until the father demonstrates drug-free behavior for a period of two years.”

Ms. Robins stood, and as the judge’s gaze turned to her, she said, “There is no evidence to contradict the father’s stated behavior with regard to drug use.”

As the attorneys argued the case, Howard whispered to Linda across the aisle from Ryan. She turned toward him, and as she turned, she paused on Ryan for an instant. She whispered back to Howard, and her eyes got large. Howard rubbed her shoulder and whispered one more line, this one just loud enough for Ryan to hear, “…it’s the right thing.”

Linda turned back to face the court and reached up to her attorney. The attorney leaned down, and Linda whispered to her. The attorney then said, “The mother wishes the court to grant the father’s requests.”

The judge called the clerk forward and signed a form.

That was it.

A few loud ink stamps, a couple of signatures, and Ryan’s life transformed—but it didn’t feel like it. With this problem solved, his mind started back to work on finding Katarina, but Ms. Robins stopped it. Ryan still had to meet with Linda to arrange custody of Sean. The two attorneys arranged for Ryan and Linda to meet at a nearby restaurant.

Ryan sat between the two attorneys, across from Linda and her husband. There was an empty chair across the table next to Linda. He didn’t recall seeing her with so much makeup before—hazards of age, he figured. Her husband pulled her close to him protectively. Ryan understood what he was doing. Linda was an intelligent woman with a strong moral compass who was a loving mother, but she was also delicate under pressure.

Ryan took a long drink of iced tea and then described his plans to reunite with Sean. First, a weeklong trip to visit the family in Massachusetts: a week at Grandma’s house with Sean’s cousins—the full benefits of a Catholic family. Ryan didn’t mention that it would be his first visit back too. Then, three weeks in California, where they would take surfing lessons—as he said it, he could picture Katarina zooming down the tube of a wave the
same way she used to ride her skate down the hill from Nutter House.

Linda said that taking Sean away like that, all at once, might not be best for him. Instead, she recommended that Ryan attend Sean’s sixteenth birthday, less than a month away.

Linda, her husband, and both attorneys waited for him to respond, obviously thinking it a generous invitation on Linda’s part.

What if Katarina hadn’t shown up yet? Ryan stuttered but accepted the invitation.

Linda’s attorney asked how visitation would be scheduled when Sean was back in school. Ryan had custody every other weekend. He would alternate those weekends between flying Sean to California and flying himself to Texas. He’d keep an apartment not too far from the house where Linda, Sean, and Sean’s stepfather lived. As he described it, he realized that it was a perfectly realizable scenario. He wouldn’t be poor anymore. He was a published expert in artificial intelligence and could now work on the books. He could even start his own company.

Linda stood and Ryan started to follow suit, thinking the meeting was over. Ms. Robins pulled Ryan back into his seat. Linda stepped aside and spoke into her cell phone, then came back to the table.

Ryan looked at Ms. Robins, and she rested her hand on his. He looked at the others. Linda wouldn’t look back, but her husband said, “Do right by your boy.”

“Howard, I will,” Ryan said, and then it hit him. “Howard—Ward, it was you, wasn’t it? You’ve been sending me e-mails about Sean all this time.”

Howard nodded. Linda looked confused.

“Thank you,” Ryan said. “Thank you so much. That was such a decent thing to do. I don’t know how I would’ve—”

Then something in his peripheral vision distracted him, someone walking toward them. He looked up.

It was like looking in a mirror, a mirror that went back in time.

Sean lumbered up to the table the same way that Ryan had twenty minutes before. His hair was thicker than Ryan’s, wavy instead of coarse and bushy around his neck. He wore a rope necklace, faded jeans, and a black T-shirt advertising Trivium, one of the bands Katarina watched on MTV. His chin, his jaw, his nose—all except for the big brown eyes and wavy hair he got from his mom—was Ryan at that age.

Ryan tried to stand up, but forgot to push his chair out and bumped the table. Then he started laughing.

Sean sat in the chair next to his mother. He started laughing too.

Ryan said, “How’s it goin’ buddy?”

Sean said, “Oh, you know, not much.”

They stared at each other and laughed a couple of times.

Ryan finally said, “You want to take surfing lessons with me?”

“Sure, whatever.”

Ryan pushed out the chair, walked around the table, and pulled his son out of his seat. He measured himself against Sean. They were exactly the same height. Ryan said, “I’ve missed you, son.”

Sean said, “Me too, Dad.”

Ryan wrapped his arms around his son and held him tight. Tears flowed around the smile etched onto his face and he said, “Sorry, Sean, I’m kinda blown away, is all. I didn’t know you’d be here.”

Ryan saw that Sean was fighting back tears. “I didn’t know you’d be here either.”

“My God, you look good,” Ryan said. “I heard you’re playing varsity tailback.”

“Well, junior varsity,” Sean said. “That reminds me. Dad, do you know where my football is? The one I scored my first touchdown with?”

R
yan got back to Foster and Rachel’s minimansion late. On the ride back, he’d felt fragmented. The urgent need to find Katarina made it impossible to think about reuniting with Sean. And how could he go to Sean’s birthday party if he was on the road searching for Katarina? But he’d promised.

He pulled himself together at the doorway and stepped in. The floor of the entry was littered with shards of glass that had once been a standing vase. Foster and Rachel were arguing in the study down the hall. One or both were crying. Ryan shut the door behind him firmly enough so that his hosts could hear it. He hoped they’d quiet down, but it had the opposite effect.

Rachel emerged from the study yelling at Foster. “I’m not an angel, I’m your wife!”

From inside the study, Foster screamed at her. “You lied to me! The patent officer. You were engaged to the patent officer—Ryan’s lawyer told us, and your father didn’t deny it.” Glass broke, and Rachel lurched down the hall toward Ryan, who was still in the entryway. Foster yelled, “How could you have kept that from me?”

“It was a long time ago. A mistake. It didn’t matter to
us
.”

“No,” Foster said, no longer screaming. “No. You’re no angel. You’re a whore.”

“Why can’t you see?” Rachel covered her face with her hands, sobbing. “I’m not an angel. I never wanted to be an angel. I’m just the woman who loves you.”

Ryan walked up the stairs toward the guest room. Before he made it to the top, his phone rang.

It was Dodge: “Just got a report of a girl who might be Kat at a truck stop outside of Vegas—she should have gotten farther than that by now. Plus, I had a report this morning of a girl in Amarillo that could be her.”

“Why hasn’t she called?”

“Not sure Kat would even think of calling. She’s never had to call anyone to tell them she’d be late—nothing like that.” Dodge whistled through his teeth. “Listen, McNear, handing out posters is doing nothing. The police aren’t going to help.”

The ruckus downstairs culminated in a crash. Ryan said, “I’ll be in Amarillo in the morning—can you connect me with whoever thinks they saw her?”

“Keep your phone charged. I’ll hook you up with my contacts along the way—take I-40.”

“You think I’ll find her?”

Dodge didn’t answer.

Ryan slumped down at the top of the stairs. “What do you think happened?”

“No point in speculating.”

It took Ryan five minutes to pack. He left most of his notebooks on the bed and headed downstairs—the keys to Foster’s Porsche still in his pocket.

Foster was sitting at the bottom of the stairs. He looked up at Ryan. His eyes were bloodshot, but his hands were steady. Ryan set down his suitcase and leaned on the banister. “Foster, I have to find Katarina.”

“Yeah, I know.” Foster nodded slowly. “We have to find her; she’s our angel.” He stood up. “Ryan, I thought you deserved what happened to you after my bachelor party. I thought God was punishing you. I just want to apologize. I’ve made a lot of mistakes along this path—we’ve gotten a lot right too, but we’re not finished.”