Pretty Baby novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Real Ring

She was waiting in the lobby of the Hartwell tower, in a wheelchair beside the fountain.

A clear tube ran under her nose, and a canvas bag sat in her lap.

She looked about seventy, though the letter had said she was sixty.

I recognized her hands before her face.

They were the hands that had pressed my forehead and said hush, honey, hush.

"Lydia," she said. "I wasn't sure you'd come down."

"I'd have come from the moon."

I knelt on the marble in front of her chair, in the green dress, with a new ring on my hand.

I took both of her hands in mine.

Stefan stood behind me and did not speak.

"I saw the news about Mr. Crane," the nurse said. "The lawyer. They said he'd forged a death. I thought, that's her. That's my girl."

"You wrote me the letter."

"I mailed it from the oncology ward, the week they told me I had weeks," she said. "I should have mailed it six years ago."

"Why didn't you?"

"They gave me an envelope," she said, and her mouth shook.

"Twenty thousand dollars, in the hall outside the nursery. A man in a gray suit with a gold ring."

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