Seven Times They Chose Him. The Last Time, They Lost Me novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Driveway

"Janine," Aunt Dot said. "Stop shouting."

"Is he there? Is he in your house?"

"He is in my kitchen, drinking hot chocolate. He is safe. He rode here by himself, and he is not hurt."

My mother made a sound I had never heard from her, a high cracked breath.

"I'm coming. Don't you move him. Don't you say one word to him."

"You can come," Aunt Dot said. "You'll come to the front door like a guest, and you'll lower your voice in my yard."

She hung up.

Dylan was shaking under the quilt.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I shouldn't have told you. She'll never forgive me."

"You told us," Aunt Dot said. "That's all you did."

She knelt in front of his chair and took both his hands.

"Nobody takes you out of this kitchen by force. But they're your parents, and they will be here in forty minutes, and I can't stop that. Do you understand?"

He nodded.

"Do you want to go in the car with them?"

He looked at me.

"No," he said.

"Then you'll say so, as plainly as you said it to us."

He nodded again, very small.

I put my good hand on his shoulder, and he leaned on it.

They came in thirty-five minutes, and my father drove the pickup too fast.

By then it was light.

Polly and her mother stood on their porch next door in their coats, because Polly had seen the bike.

My mother got out of the truck before it stopped rolling.

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