Reborn to Leave Her Behind novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: What Pauline Owed

Alec's POV

Mrs. Hartigan had put out four chairs in the living room, in a half circle.

My mother sat in one with her purse on her knees, because Mrs. Hartigan had called her at eight that morning and asked her to come.

Erin sat in another, with her back very straight.

I took the last one, with my fever mostly gone and my knees still weak, and it put me exactly four feet from her.

Mrs. Hartigan did not sit.

She stood in front of the empty fireplace holding a green folder, and she opened it without a word.

"This is what I wrote the week my daughter was born," she said. "I want you to hear it, and I want your mother to hear it too."

She read the list out loud.

She read the piano and the violin and the medical school, and then she came to the line near the bottom and her voice caught.

"Marry someone steady," she read. "Someone who will stay. J.R."

My mother turned her head and looked at me.

"I wrote that when Erin was four," Mrs. Hartigan said. "I picked your son for my daughter, and I never asked her, or him, or you."

"Oh, Pauline," my mother said quietly.

"I used him." She turned to me. "From the pool when you were eight to the day I told you to go and tell on her. I made you the one who watched. It was a terrible thing to do to a child, and I did it for ten years, and you never once complained."

"I didn't mind," I said.

"That's what's wrong with it."

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