I Hid My Perfect Score novel · Chapter 28 of 32

Chapter 28: What I Want

I stopped a car length away from her.

"Three things," I said.

Mom laughed, short and thin, at the car door.

"Of course there's a list."

"You asked."

She turned around.

Her mascara had held. Her lipstick hadn't.

Without it she looked like Paisley in the tower.

"One," I said. "Call the lender. Today. Tell them you signed my name. Ask them to take it off the loan and put yours on."

"It's Saturday."

"Their fraud line is open on Saturday. I checked in Seattle."

Her hand tightened on her keys.

"Two. The trophy."

"It's in Paisley's closet. Your father told you."

"You gave it to her. You don't get to hand it back to me like a sweater."

I kept my voice level.

"You tell her it was never hers. Then she decides what to do with it."

Mom looked at the golf club doors.

Paisley was standing just inside the glass with Dad, watching us.

"And three?"

"The paper. The same page. Your words, your name. What you did with my signature and what you told them about Paisley."

"An apology."

"A correction," I said. "Call it whatever you want. Just don't put any mother would do in it."

She stared at me.

"Do you know what people will say?"

"Yes," I said. "They said it about me for a year."

Something moved in her face.

It wasn't the trembling chin.

It was smaller, and it hurt.

"And if I do all that," she said. "Then what? You come home for Christmas? We take a picture?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know."

"I don't know what you get," I said. "I only know what I need."

A golf cart went by on the path behind the cars.

The driver slowed down to look at us, then sped up again.

Mom unlocked her car.

She didn't get in.

She sat sideways on the driver's seat with her feet on the asphalt and took out her phone.

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