Chapter 10: The Wooden Train

Sabina's POV

Constance Wexley came up my stairs at ten the next morning carrying a wooden train and a box of pastries.

She wore a soft green coat and the same pearls, and her silver-blonde hair was coiled low on her neck.

She looked older by three years.

She looked, I thought, exactly like a woman who had not slept.

"Sabina," she said at the door, and her eyes filled. "My dear girl."

She put her arms around me before I could decide to stop her.

She smelled of lavender and cold air.

For one second I was twenty-two again, standing in her sitting room while she fastened a jade clasp on my wrist.

I stepped back.

"Come in," I said.

Quentin stood in the kitchen with his hands behind his back.

He had slept on my couch, because Jamie had asked him to stay.

His mother looked at him once and then past him.

"Where is he?"

"He's here."

Jamie came out from behind the table with a foil wrapper in each fist.

Constance sank to her knees on my rug in her good coat.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, look at you."

Jamie looked at the train.

"It's from your grandmother," she said, and her voice shook. "It's a Wexley train. Your father had one just like it."

"Shiny?" Jamie asked.

"The wheels are brass."

He took it and ran it down the floorboards, making a noise with his lips.

Constance covered her mouth with both hands and cried, quietly, with her shoulders bowed.

I had to look away.

It was hard to hate a woman crying on my floor.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Broke Me, I Hid His Son from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.