The Stolen Read Free Page A

grown a great deal in a short amount of time and the flesh hadn’t caught up to his bones. Everything and nothing was just like she remembered.
    “Baby, oh my God…”
    She gently pushed James away from the door and tore open the screen. The boy stood on the front porch with a look of slight bewilderment, a twinkle of recognition, a blurry memory slowly coming into focus. He didn’t move. Instead, the boy’s eyes met Shelly’s as though waiting for something, and before another second passed Shelly Linwood gathered the boy up into her arms and squeezed him like there was no tomorrow, until his arms tentatively wrapped themselves around her body and held on. She remembered how he’d felt in her arms, and though heavier, he was the same child she’d held in her arms for the first six years of his life. She showered the boy’s head with kisses until he pulled away slightly, an embarrassed grin on his young face.
    “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Baby, is it really you?” The boy shrugged, then was muffled as Shelly attempted to squeeze the life out of him again.
    Shelly heard a car pull up. When the engine cut off, she looked up to see Randy’s silver V70 Volvo in the driveway. The door opened, and her husband climbed out with a groan. Randy was forty-one, just ten pounds heavier than when they’d met in high school. His jawline was still visible above a slight jowl, his arms still maintaining some of the tone from his linebacker days at Hobbs High. Shelly loved to run her hands down his arms when he lay on top of her, the definition of his triceps making her shiver. It had been a year since she last felt that, but now she needed to feel him closer more than ever.
    Her family.
    Randy stretched his back, ran his fingers through his thinning hair, then reached back inside to grab his briefcase.
    “Honey,” he said, noticing the commotion on the front porch. “Please tell me there’s a Michelob left in the fridge, I—”
    “It’s Daniel,” Shelly blurted. “He’s back.”
    Randy looked up, confused. Then when everything came into focus, his briefcase fell to the ground. He stared for a moment, shaking his head, then ran up the steps to join his wife. He placed his palm over the boy’s forehead, pulled his hair back, gazing into the young, confused eyes. Then he joined his wife in the embrace.
    “You people are weird,” James muttered. “I don’t get it. Who is he?”
    “This,” Randy said, turning the boy to face him, tears streaming down his face, “is your brother. His name is Daniel. Do you remember him?”
    James had been just three when it all happened. Shelly didn’t take it personally when Daniel looked at his sibling, bewilderment reigning over his face, a slight twinkle of memory.
    “My brother?” James said. “I thought he was, like, stolen or something.”
    “He was,” Shelly said, stroking Daniel’s hair. “But thank you, God, somehow our boy has found his way home.”
    James looked at Daniel. There were no bruises on his body; no cuts or scrapes. His clothes looked new enough to still have the tags on them. Though he was so young, Shelly wondered if James remembered all those people rushing in and out of their house. Men and women with badges, other loud people with cameras and microphones. Once on an Easter egg hunt, Shelly had entered the bedroom to find James and Tasha rifling through a trunk stuffed full of newspaper clippings about Daniel’s disappearance. James had asked Shelly about Daniel once, and she answered with a single tear, a trembling lip. He never asked again.
    To Shelly, this was God’s will. It was fate that her family be reunited.
    To James Linwood, though, he couldn’t understand how his brother, who’d disappeared nearly five years ago without a trace, could simply reappear like magic without a scratch on him.

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    T he bar was sweltering hot, but the swirling fans made it more palatable than the thick sweater choking the