Contract Over: You're Free to Go novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Our Son

I stopped walking.

Archie's hand was warm in mine, and he was telling me about a rocket that could carry a dog.

"Dad, you're squeezing."

"Sorry, bud."

The car door opened.

Alistair Southwell stepped out onto the school sidewalk in his charcoal coat, holding a long flat box wrapped in blue paper.

The parents nearby slowed down.

A few of them knew the car. A few more knew the face from the newspaper.

"Good morning," Alistair said warmly, to the whole sidewalk. "Mr. Cronin. What a coincidence."

"It isn't."

"And this must be Archibald."

He crouched down, and I stepped in front of my son before he finished the motion.

"Don't."

"I only want to say hello."

"You've said it. Go."

Alistair looked up at me with perfect patience.

"I brought a gift for a boy I've heard so much about," he said. "From his stepmother's family."

"He doesn't want it."

"Dad, what is it?" Archie asked from behind my leg.

"Nothing, bud."

"It's a model of a ship," Alistair said to Archie, around me, in a sweet voice. "A steamship, like the ones my grandfather built. You have his chin, did you know that? I noticed it from the car."

Archie touched his own chin.

I felt what I had felt at twenty-three, when a man grabbed a woman's arm in a bar parking lot.

"Mr. Southwell," I said, and lowered my voice to something just for him. "I put a man through a wall once. It cost me fourteen months, and I'd do it again. Back away from my son."

"Mr. Cronin," Alistair said gently, loud enough for the line of parents to hear, "I'm trying to give a child a toy."

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