“If you do.” Bas’s tone rose in a clap of thunder.
“Hey! You have my word.” He raised a hand in surrender and hurried away, shaking his head. “Crazy.”
The thunder rolled Aleida’s way, and Theo wailed and wound his arms around her neck.
“Make it shut up. Now!”
“Hush, Schatje.” Aleida rocked her boy with her gaze locked on the bear. “Hush.”
“I’m sick of the crying.” Bas flung his hand toward the car. “Go to bed. No dinner.”
“Yes, Bas.” Hunger was the least of the punishments she could have received.
She struggled to her feet, climbed into the backseat, and lay down with her sobbing son in her arms.
“Make it shut up.” Bas thumped his hands on the car roof. “Or I will.”
“Hush, Schatje.” Her tears dampened her son’s hair. His welfare—his life—depended on his silence.
Salt-crusted eyes resisted opening. Aleida rubbed them, and faint daylight emerged. Then came the memory of what caused that salt, and she tightened her arms.
Around nothing.
Theo? Had he fallen?
On the floor of the car, Oli lay upside down. His thick gray legs jiggled in the air.
The car was moving.
“Theo?” She sat up.
Bas was at the wheel. He’d put Theo up front with him? How unusual.
But no one sat with Bas in the front seat.
Her mind emptied. Her lungs emptied. Her heart emptied. “Where—where’s Theo?”
“Don’t get hysterical.” Bas honked the horn. “Hurry, you idiots.”
Aleida’s fingers coiled into the seatback. “Where is ourson? What did you do with him?”
Bas shook his head. “Why do you always get hysterical?”
Of all times, now she had every right to hysterics. “Where is ourson? Ourson?”
“I told you to shut him up, but you never do. Is peace and quiet too much to ask?”
“What did you do?” Aleida’s voice ground out.
“Last night, a couple agreed to take him to London for us.”
“You—you gave our son to total strangers?”
Bas shrugged. “You saw it yesterday, mothers shoving their children through car windows.”
Desperate mothers, certain their children stood a better chance in a car than on foot. “But we already have a car. What on earth? Where—how—what were you thinking?”
A horse-drawn cart stopped in front of them, and Bas stomped the brakes.
