My ex-wife, Lauren, and I had been separated for almost three years.<\/p>\n
We shared custody of our four-year-old son, Mason, and despite occasional disagreements, our arrangement had mostly worked.<\/p>\n
Then one Tuesday afternoon, Lauren called me crying so hard I could barely understand her.<\/p>\n
She said Mason was gone.<\/p>\n
I immediately grabbed my keys.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m coming over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her response stopped me.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t. Everything has already been taken care of.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nothing about that made sense.<\/p>\n
She refused to explain further and ended the call.<\/p>\n
I spent the entire night calling relatives, hospitals, and anyone who might know what had happened.<\/p>\n
Nobody knew anything.<\/p>\n
The next morning, I received a text from Lauren\u2019s new husband, Eric.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease don\u2019t panic. Mason is alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
My hands started shaking.<\/p>\n
Then he sent me a photo.<\/p>\n
Mason was sitting at a kitchen table eating cereal.<\/p>\n
Eric explained that Lauren had been planning to move several states away. She believed that if she convinced me something terrible had happened, she could disappear with Mason before I had time to stop her.<\/p>\n
Eric had discovered the plan the night before.<\/p>\n
Instead of helping her, he took Mason to his sister\u2019s house and contacted an attorney.<\/p>\n
I drove there immediately.<\/p>\n
The second Mason saw me, he ran into my arms.<\/p>\n
Lauren\u2019s plan collapsed within hours.<\/p>\n
The custody arrangement was reviewed, and the court became involved immediately.<\/p>\n
I never forgot the terror of that phone call.<\/p>\n
But I also never forgot the message from the one person I least expected to help me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My ex-wife, Lauren, and I had been separated for almost three years. We shared custody of our four-year-old son, Mason, and despite occasional disagreements, our arrangement had mostly worked. Then one Tuesday afternoon, Lauren called me crying so hard I could barely understand her. She said Mason was gone. I immediately grabbed my keys. \u201cI\u2019m …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9734,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9732\/revisions\/9734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}