Reborn: I Let My Mother Suffer the Price of Her Favoritism novel · Chapter 7 of 32

Chapter 7: The Blue Tin

The hotel lobby was full, because half of Everett's family had never gone to bed.

They were on the long couches in their wedding clothes with coffee and shoes off, still talking about the church.

When the elevator opened, every head turned.

My mother stood in the middle of the marble floor with her sling and her good coat.

Dale was at her shoulder, and on her other side was the family doctor, a gray man with a leather bag.

"Callie, darling," Mom said, loud enough for the couches. "Thank heavens. We've been so worried."

Everett's mother got up from the nearest sofa and came to stand at my elbow.

"Mrs. Haldane," Everett said. "It's two in the morning."

"I know, dear, and I'm sorry. But I can't sleep while my daughter is wandering around in the night."

"She's not wandering. She's upstairs with my driver outside her door."

"With a man outside her door?" Mom turned to the lobby. "A girl who's been ill for twelve years, locked in a room with a stranger."

I heard somebody on the couches shift.

"Mom," I said, "what do you want?"

"Doctor," she said.

The doctor opened his bag and took out a folder.

"Mrs. Lund," he said to me, and it took me a second to understand it was my name now. "Sloane Haldane has a certified psychiatric condition. Her legal guardian has asked me to take her home for treatment. This is the authorization."

He held the paper out.

I did not take it.

"Sloane is twenty-three," I said. "She walked here by herself and told me she's frightened. I'm not handing her to the people who left her at a bus stop."

"That was a mistake," Dale said. "I was told she'd be picked up."

"By whom?"

He didn't answer.

"Callie." My mother's voice dropped into the soft, aching tone she used with the church women. "You don't understand what you're doing. She needs a routine. Without her evening tea she becomes dangerous within a day."

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