Saved From Suicide, Sold Into a Lie novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: What Mom Brought
Connor's POV
My mother came to Hank's door at seven, with the boy by one hand and a cardboard file box in her arms.
She had not slept.
Her hair was flat on one side, and she had no scarf and no gold badge.
Hank opened the door and looked at her for a long time.
"Come in, Mrs. Ledford," he said at last. "Wipe your feet."
The boy tugged at my sleeve before I had even sat down.
"Why does that man have a stick?"
"It's a cane," Hank said from the stove. "I broke my knee chasing a bad guy."
"Did you catch him?"
"Twenty years later, yes."
The boy considered this.
"Can I hold it?"
"After dinner."
Leanne stood by the sink with a dish towel in her hands, not drying anything.
The boy noticed her.
He walked straight across the kitchen and held up the plastic badge.
"You're Leanne," he said. "Mama said you were the nice one."
Her face broke open before she could stop it.
"Did she?"
"She said you never forget anybody's birthday."
Leanne knelt on the linoleum and said nothing.
After a moment she took the badge in both hands.
I looked away to give her the room.
My mother set the file box on the kitchen table and took off the lid.
"Sit," she said. "Please."
I stayed standing.
"Say it," I said. "All of it. The way you'd say it to the judge."
She nodded.
"Joanna came to my house the night before the flight," she said. "She was in a wet coat, and she told me she couldn't breathe in your marriage. I told her to try therapy. She said she had tried everything."
"And Dorian?"
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