I Died to End Their Lie novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Letter

They drove home before dawn without speaking.

I rode in the back seat with nothing to hold on to.

At the house, Mom walked straight to the little room off the kitchen and stopped in the doorway.

She had never been inside it.

It held a narrow bed, a shelf with five library books, and a wooden chair.

Everything I owned fit in that room, and it still looked empty.

"Where are his things?" she whispered. "Where are his clothes?"

"He took them." Dad stood behind her. "He took a backpack."

"He had nothing."

She sat down on the bed, because her legs had given out.

The mattress shifted under her, and the corner of a page slid out from under it.

Mom looked down.

It was a small piece of lined paper, folded in four, and the edge had my handwriting on it.

She pulled it out.

Under it lay the old accounting notebook, with the ten thousand dollars written on the last page.

She unfolded the letter with shaking hands.

"Phyllis," Dad said. "Read it."

She read it aloud, in a voice that cracked on every other line.

"Dad and Mom. If you are reading this, I am dead, and I'm sorry that it was in your house that I wrote it."

Dad put one hand over his mouth.

"On Thursday night I stood outside your bedroom with a fever of 103 and heard you talking. I know now that I am your son. I know that Cade is the one you adopted. I know that you told me otherwise when I was six."

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