Don't You EVER Do That Again!

I know I promised a fisking, but I just fixed that last trainwreck and I'm spent. It's been a long day and a longer night. It started last night when we went to visit a friend in the hospital and Kane decided to ruin everyone's night with a stomping hissy fit in a Pizza Hut, then did his best to rip the door handle off the van. When we got home, there were lies, there were shouts, and there was refusal to go to bed. It wasn't good. Then he told us he still had homework to do.

Tonight he was grounded to his bed, along with his brother. We let them come downstairs to have dinner at the table, but Kane didn't manage to get a bite in his mouth before spitting on his plate, so back to bed he went. When I went back upstairs to talk to him and give him another chance to come have dinner, he was browbeating his brother because Donovan refused to run away with him. Donovan's not always very patient with us mere mortals, but he's beginning to get it into his head that this house is actually a pretty sweet deal in some ways; besides, there's been a thunderstorm waiting to pounce all day.
More threats to run away from home from Kane. Yawn. I put him back on his bed and sent Donovan downstairs to eat.

Then Kane disappeared, leaving only a scrawled note on the inside of the front door: "I ran AwAy Because you don't can NEVER understand." I was sure he was in the house, probably on his bed, laughing at stupid dad. I even wrote "I don't believe you. Thanks for playing" on the back of his note and took it upstairs. But I didn't find him. I searched the upstairs, the downstairs. No sign of him. We checked outside, the garage, the workshop . . . . nothing. Melissa took the van and drove around while I watched the baby. Nothing. I took the van and made concentric circles out from the house. I checked the town square, the park, the school, stores . . . . nothing.

We checked my parents' house. They joined the search. They ran into the school principal outside the school, and he took down our numbers. We checked the house of a boy Kane had told Donovan he would run to, though he'd never been there before. We looked for the house of a girl Donovan thought Kane might try to find. We checked the routes out of town to the south, since Kane had once threatened to run away to the next town over and live, I kid you not, under a weeping willow tree. In January. When it got dark, and the thunderstorm broke, we went home for a photo and to make sure he hadn't come home and we went to the police station. That's not a fun conversation.

We were just about done and ready to sign the report when Kane called me from the home phone.

It's a long story, but yes, he ran away, and yes, he was in the places we looked, but he hid from us when he saw the car, and yes, he's in big, big trouble. But tonight we're just going to get some sleep and be glad he's here.
(And yes, we went back to the station so Kane could have a conversation with the police officers about his actions.)