The Day My Family Left Me to Die novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: Who I Am Now
My mother parked outside the laundromat and kept the engine running.
She looked at the building, the flickering sign, the window with the green quilt in it, and did not say what she thought.
"Come home," she said instead. "The house is yours. The Fund is yours, what's left of it. The county will sort out the paperwork. You'll be Millicent Penfield again by spring."
"No."
My voice still caught on the first word of every sentence.
She turned her head.
"I'm keeping Hattie's name," I said. "Millicent Lang."
"Why?"
"She had nobody. No one came looking for her when she was gone, and I'm wearing her. I don't know where she went." I turned the silver ring on my thumb. "Somebody ought to carry it."
My mother's mouth shook, and she pressed it flat.
"And Penfield belongs to a woman who died on a waiting-room chair," I said. "I'd like to find out who's left."
"Will you come to dinner?"
"Sundays," I said. "I'll sit next to you."
She laughed once, wetly, and took my face in both her hands.
"You'll sit wherever you like," she said. "I'll never choose a chair for you again."
I got out of the car.
Seth came up the stairs on his last night, at nine.
He wasn't carrying anything.
He knocked twice, and I opened the door.
He stood on the landing in his security jacket, which I'd given back, with his hands open at his sides.
He had to report at eight in the morning.
"Seth," I said.
His eyes closed.
"Say it again."
"Seth."
He let out a long, unsteady breath, and I took him by the front of his jacket and pulled him inside and shut the door.
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