The Dead Girl's Wheel of Wish novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Ask Her Why She Carries Two

I didn't believe Brock.

I said so to Elias in the truck at four in the morning, and again at noon, and I went on saying it all through Sunday.

Brock was a bully with a motive, and a bully will say anything to get a hand off his collar.

"Then you don't have to do anything," Elias said.

"I have to see her mother."

He drove me to the county hospital without another word.

Roxanne's mother was sitting up in bed in a room full of flowers.

She was a thin woman with Roxanne's freckles, in a pink bed jacket, and she was eating pudding.

Three weeks ago the doctors had given her until April.

"Jo!" she said, and held her arms out.

I hadn't expected it.

I bent down and let her hug me, and she smelled of lotion and hospital soap, and she was warm and real and alive.

"Roxanne told me you've been standing up for her," she said.

I stood there with my mouth open.

"She said you have been the only one who tried to look out for her this whole week."

"I thought she hated me."

"She's under a lot of strain." She patted my cheek. "She hasn't slept. She's been working nights at the library to keep us in the house, and she comes straight here after. I don't know what I did to deserve a girl like that."

"Nights at the library?"

"Two weeks now. Ever since the money got tight."

I was holding her pudding cup in both hands, because she had given it to me to hold.

I thought of the library wifi at 11:51, and a cracked phone buzzing in a canvas bag.

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