They Excluded Me From the Family, So I Built a New One novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Thumbs-Up

At ten a small blue car came up the lane too fast and stopped crooked in the gravel.

Libby got out with her backpack on one shoulder and no coat.

She had told me she'd be in an exam until evening.

She stood at the bottom of the porch steps and looked at the new brass lock on the door.

Then she looked at me.

"Aunt Sue," she said. "Hi."

"Hello, Libby."

My neighbor's sister was putting a tray of muffins on the porch table, and she didn't pretend not to listen.

I nodded to her, and she went inside my neighbor's house without a word.

"You're supposed to be at school," I said.

"I skipped it."

"Why?"

She pushed her hair behind her ear, and her hand shook.

"Because I have to tell you something and I couldn't do it on the phone."

"I know about the chat."

Her face went white, then red.

"How long?"

"Since Wednesday."

She sat down hard on the bottom step.

I let her.

I had raised her through four years of braces and a broken wrist and her first heartbreak, and I knew what her silence looked like.

It was not the silence of someone who felt nothing.

"I sent that thumbs-up," she said to her knees.

"I saw it."

"I sent it because Rosalie told me something, and I believed her."

"What did she tell you?"

"She said you were tired of me." Her voice cracked. "She said you'd told Desmond you couldn't wait until I finished school so you'd finally have your own life back."

I stared at her.

"I never said that."

"She had screenshots, Aunt Sue. Texts from you to Desmond, and you said you were exhausted."

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