Chapter 1 - The Hallway
The first thing Daniel Mercer heard when he stepped inside his house was his son screaming, “I said I don’t want to go!”
He had come home three hours early from Chicago with a model airplane for Oliver, hoping to surprise him. Instead, he found the boy shaking in Rosa Alvarez’s arms; she had cared for him since he was a baby.
At the far end of the hallway stood Sloane Whitaker in a burgundy dress, one hand pressed against her hip. Her hair was perfect. Her face was not angry, exactly. It was the tight, offended look she wore whenever life refused to follow her instructions.
“Daniel,” she said, as if he had interrupted a meeting. “You’re home early.”
Oliver clutched Rosa’s pale blue uniform so hard his knuckles had turned white. His cheeks were wet, and he was breathing in little broken gasps that made Daniel’s chest tighten.
“What happened?” Daniel asked.
“Nothing happened.” Sloane’s smile arrived too quickly. “Oliver had another episode. Rosa keeps rewarding him for it by picking him up and letting him carry on.”
“He’s frightened,” Rosa said quietly.
“I didn’t ask you.”
“Don’t talk to her like that,” Daniel said.
Since Julia died fourteen months ago, Daniel had missed concerts, forgotten school meetings, and buried himself in work. He told himself he was keeping the family afloat. Now his son looked like a stranger in a nightmare.
Sloane lifted her chin. “We need to talk privately. Oliver has been impossible all week, and I’m trying to help him.”
Oliver’s fingers twisted into Rosa’s sleeve. He looked at his father with an expression Daniel had never seen on him before—not anger, not ordinary sadness, but the desperate fear of someone who had run out of safe places.
“Dad,” he whispered. “She said you signed the papers.”
“What papers, buddy?”
May you like
Sloane’s face changed for less than a second.
Then Oliver buried his face against Rosa and whispered, “The ones that send me away.”
