Mom Cooked Only for Bella, So I Found My Real Mother novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Her Table, Not Yours

"Explain," I said.

Odette looked from me to Luke, and her smile went out.

"Oh, honey," she said. "I thought you two had already talked."

"I'll talk to her," Luke said. "Odette, go to bed."

She went, one hand pressed flat against her mouth.

The hall door clicked shut.

Luke stayed where he was, ten feet away, with his keys still in his hand.

"I'm listening," I said.

"I saw your face under the gas station lights and I couldn't breathe."

"You called her."

"I called her because I'd been wrong once before." He looked at the floor. "Four years ago I told her I saw her daughter in a girl at the Walmart. It wasn't her. Odette drove to Sulphur at midnight and sat outside a stranger's house."

"So you let me eat fries and sleep on your cot instead."

"I let you sleep. I didn't want to hand you a stranger and a story the same night you got locked out of your house."

"That wasn't yours to decide."

"No."

"You decided for me anyway."

"Yes."

He said it flat, with no excuse after it.

I had a speech ready. It all fell apart because he wouldn't argue.

"Why did you keep it up for days?" I asked.

"Odette asked me to wait for proof. And I was scared." He lifted his eyes. "If I said it and you left, she'd lose you twice."

"That's a lot of people being scared for me."

"I know."

I pulled out a kitchen chair and sat.

My hand was throbbing under the gauze.

"I'm angry," I said.

"You should be."

"I'm going to be angry for a while."

"Okay."

"Don't say okay like that. Say something."

"I'd have told you first if I did it again."

"That's better."

He almost smiled.

"And I want you to hear this," I said. "You told me to be sure in a month. That is not a promise I make to a man who lies to me. It is a promise I make to a man who tells me the truth when it costs him."

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