Life after Goodbye novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Mother

The bakery was dark except for the lights over the counter.

The owner had locked the front door and was sitting behind the register with a rolling pin across her knees.

At the little table by the window sat the woman in the black vest, with her hands flat on a thick brown envelope.

Kendrick had driven me, and he stayed on the sidewalk outside the glass.

I had told him to.

"You came," the woman said.

Up close she was older than I had thought, with deep lines at her mouth and a wedding ring worn thin.

"I was told you brought something for the baby."

"I brought something for you." She pushed the envelope an inch toward me. "It's thirty-one thousand dollars. It's everything I got for my house."

I sat down across from her.

Before I did, I took the old phone out of my coat, set it on the table and pressed record.

I did it in front of her, and she watched me do it.

"Fine," she said. "Record. I'm not ashamed."

"What do you want for the money?"

"You tell the detective the tea was a mix-up. You say Chelsea never knew what was in it." Her voice didn't waver. "A girl with no record gets a year of probation for that. You say the rest was your imagination."

"The rest being the forged letter."

"The rest being an old man's money." She leaned back. "Your father would have lost nothing. She'd have taken a house on a lake and a pile of shares, and you'd have had all the rest. Why does it matter to you?"

I looked at her for a long time.

"You were in Phoenix," I said. "Twenty-three years ago. Weren't you?"

For the first time she hesitated.

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