The Spare They Came Begging For novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: After

I stood in the ballroom doorway and watched them take her.

The detective didn't put her in handcuffs.

He didn't have to.

He just held the revolving door for her, and she went through it in her midnight blue velvet, into the cold and the flashing lights of a cruiser.

A guest was filming from behind a Christmas tree.

My mother didn't look back.

When I turned around, Conor was standing behind me in his rented suit.

He didn't say anything.

He just held out my coat.

I woke up at nine the next morning on Moira's top floor, still with a curl in my hair.

The house smelled like coffee and bacon.

I went downstairs in my sweats and found Conor asleep on Moira's couch, still in his suit pants and his white shirt, one arm hanging off the edge.

The kid was sitting on his chest eating dry cereal out of the box.

"He slept here," the kid informed me. "He snores like a walrus. A walrus is not a shark."

"I'm aware," Conor said, without opening his eyes.

Moira was at the stove in her Bruins hoodie, flipping bacon.

Her phone was propped against the sugar bowl, playing the morning news.

"You're on every channel," she said. "So's your mother's mug shot. She looks good in it. It's very annoying."

The anchor said my mother had been charged with larceny from a charitable organization and forgery.

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