The Dragon Mother Returns: Taking Back Everything That Belongs to My Daughter novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Letter

The paper inside was my own stationery, with the little gold dragon at the top.

I unfolded it.

Clara,

I know you're angry with me. I have to go anyway. Zermatt is the most important deal I will ever make, and I can't let anything stop it, not even the weather.

If anything happens to me, give the card to Lionel until you're ready. He knows what I want. Be good to Paisley. She's your family now.

Don't be sad. Work hard.

I'll be home soon.

Mom

I read it twice.

The handwriting was almost perfect.

Whoever wrote it had practiced for a long time.

"I didn't write this," I said.

"I know you didn't."

I looked up.

Clara was watching me from the cot with her arms around her knees.

"Paisley practiced on the backs of your old birthday cards," she said flatly. "I found them in her trash in February. Pages of capital C's."

"Then why did you sign?"

"Because it sounded like you."

She said it without any heat at all.

That was worse.

"Every word," she said. "The deal. The weather. Work hard. Be good to everybody. And then that, at the end."

She nodded at the last line.

I'll be home soon.

"You always said that," Clara said.

I opened my mouth.

There were a dozen true things I could have said.

That the weather was supposed to clear. That the deal would have kept three thousand people employed. That I'd planned to take her to Maine in the summer, just the two of us, and I'd already booked the house.

She had heard every one of them before, in some other version.

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