Claiming The Spare Twin novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Potatoes

I went down in yesterday's torn clothes with Finlay's hand on the small of my back.

The kitchen smelled the way it always had, of onions, yeast and woodsmoke.

Nothing else about it was the same.

The cooks stood in a line along the wall with their arms folded, and they were not looking at me the way they had looked at me for ten years.

At the marble island, with a paring knife in her hand and a sack of potatoes at her elbow, stood my mother.

She wore a plain gray apron over her Beta's jacket, and the iron pin was gone from her collar.

Odette sat beside her on a stool, in a faded cotton dress, with a bowl in her lap.

Her golden hair was tied back with a rag.

She looked up when I came in, and her face crumpled with relief.

"Linnea."

"You said you asked for this," I said to the old cook.

"She did." The old cook wiped her hands on her apron. "The Council gave your mother a month of work duty. Your sister walked in at five this morning and said she'd serve it beside her."

"Why?"

"She says she owes the house."

I looked at Odette.

She held up a half-peeled potato with a shaking hand, and she gave me a small, brave, sorry smile.

I had seen that smile my whole life, and I had believed it every time.

I wanted to believe it now.

"I'm not asking you to forgive me," Odette said. "I only want to be useful. I don't know how to be anything else, and I won't ask you to feel sorry for me."

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