My Twin Stole My Fiancée and Life novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: What Mom Said
The emergency room lobby was nearly empty at four in the morning.
My mother sat in a plastic chair under a flickering light, in her church coat, with her purse on her knees.
She was holding a paper cup of coffee she hadn't drunk.
Lark stopped three feet behind me.
"I'm right here," she said quietly.
"I know."
I had been X-rayed and taped. Two ribs cracked, none broken through. A nurse had given me an ice pack and a look that said I should have been in bed.
I walked across the lobby and sat down in the chair beside my mother.
She didn't look at me.
"They told me you were safe," she said. "Natasha said a doctor friend would watch you until Sunday. A quiet room and a nurse. That's what she told me."
"And the key?"
"I gave it to the men in my kitchen." Her voice was thin. "I thought I was helping you rest."
"Mom. They tied my hands."
Her face crumpled.
"I didn't know. I swear on your father, I didn't know. I came here at midnight because I couldn't sit in that house, and I waited for them to bring you, and nobody did."
"They brought me to a ditch."
"I know that now."
She turned her face to the wall and put a hand over her mouth.
I let her cry for a while.
Then I said, "Tell me why."
"Why what?"
"Why you wrote the wrong time on my birth certificate."
She flinched.
"I wasn't going to say it here."
"There's no one here but a nurse and a janitor. Say it."
She breathed in, and for the first time in my life I watched my mother not know what to do with her hands.
"I grew up on a farm in Pike County," she said. "My father owned four hundred acres. My brother was born first and I was born second, and I was a girl, and when the old man died he left every acre to my brother."
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