I checked the address again.
It was correct.
I slowed down.
“No,” I whispered.
This couldn’t be where Oliver was living.
I’d bought him a four-hundred-thousand-dollar beach house so he could concentrate on college. The place had four bedrooms, a pool, an ocean view, and a kitchen he’d barely learned how to use.
And now my eighteen-year-old son was apparently living here.
I pulled over beside a curb and stared at the building.
It was a converted two-story house divided into small apartments. The paint was peeling around the windows. A bicycle with a broken chain leaned against the porch.
Apartment 3B.
That was the number Oliver had given me.
I grabbed the cookies and got out.
My heart was beating so hard I could hear it.
I climbed the narrow stairs and stopped outside the door.
For several seconds, I couldn’t knock.
What if he wasn’t there?
What if he’d given me the address because he didn’t want me to worry, but he’d already left?
What if something had happened?
I raised my hand.
Knocked.
Nothing.
I knocked again.
“Oliver?”
Still nothing.
Then I heard footsteps.
Slow.
Heavy.
The lock turned.
The door opened three inches.
Oliver looked through the gap.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
My son looked older.
Not eighteen.
Older.His hair was longer than when I’d last seen him. There were dark circles underneath his eyes, and his T-shirt hung loosely from his shoulders.
But he was alive.
That was all I could see.
I pushed the cookies against my chest and reached for him.
He opened the door.
I wrapped my arms around him.
He didn’t move at first.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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