One Night Stand novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Thirty Days

By nine that morning there were thirty people on Dottie's pavement.

They had cameras on tripods and a van with a satellite dish.

One man had set a stepladder against the lamppost.

Dottie pulled the kitchen curtains shut and stood in front of them with her arms crossed.

"I've lived on this street thirty-one years," she said. "They are standing on the neighbour's hydrangeas."

Otto pressed his face to the gap at the edge of the curtain.

"Why are those people looking at our house?"

"They're lost, baby," Dottie said. "Come away."

I took him upstairs and gave him a puzzle and sat on the bed with my hands between my knees.

Mateo found me there.

He had put on a jacket and his public voice.

"You can't stay here," he said.

"This is my home."

"Nobody is saying it isn't. They have his face on every website in the country."

"So?"

"By tonight they'll know the park you take him to."

"And your solution is to take us somewhere."

"My house in Chestnut Hill has a gate and a driveway nobody can see from the road. Thirty days. Until this turns into something else."

"That's your whole plan?"

"It's what I have." He stopped. "It is not an order. It's a request, and I'm bad at requests, so tell me what you need."

I looked at my son, who had put a dinosaur on top of the puzzle.

"Three things," I said.

"Go on."

"One. You don't lie to me. About anything, ever, even the small stuff."

He nodded slowly. "Agreed."

"Two. Nobody takes Otto from me. Not you, not your lawyers, not your grandmother. If I say he's coming home, he comes home."

Keep reading free with an account. Start One Night Stand from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.