When Love Walked Away novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Her Name Alone

On Monday I went home to find the dress Tilly would be buried in.

The funeral home had asked for it, gently, in a voice that sounded rehearsed.

Gabe drove me because he said I shouldn't be alone with the key in my hand.

Calle Ocotillo was a quiet street of low stucco houses with gravel yards and one palo verde in every front lawn.

Mine had a blue door.

I had bought it three years before I married Brodie, with my own money, with forty-one thousand dollars I had saved over six years.

I saw the white SUV in my driveway before I saw anything else.

I knew the SUV.

I had watched it pull out of a country club gate.

"Is that Lacey's?" Gabe asked.

"That's Lacey's."

The front door stood open an inch.

I got out of the truck and walked up the path with my keys in my fist.

Inside, my living room smelled like someone else's perfume.

Three suitcases sat in the hall.

A pair of white sandals sat on my shoe rack, in the slot where Tilly's rain boots went.

In the kitchen, a boy sat at my table with a bowl of cereal, kicking his legs.

He looked up.

"Hi," he said. "Are you Tilly's mom?"

"Yes."

"My mom says Tilly went to heaven."

"Yes."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I put her unicorn blanket on my bed, because it was sad by itself. Is that okay?"

I pressed my lips together.

"It's okay," I said. "Where's your mom?"

"She's changing."

A voice came from the hallway.

"Sweetheart, who are you talking to?"

Lacey Birch came around the corner in my robe.

It was the green silk robe my sister had given me for the wedding.

She stopped dead in the doorway.

"Theresa," she said.

"Get out of my house."

"Brodie said you wouldn't be back until after the weekend."

"Get out of my house, Lacey."

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