For Our 10th Anniversary, My Husband Gave Me a Green Dress and My Sister a Baby novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: No Drawers

My mother had me through the stairwell door before Travis reached the nurses' station.

We went down three flights without a word.

I heard his voice once through the steel, warm and tired, saying, "Shelby, sweetheart, I came as fast as I could."

Then the door at the bottom let us out into the cold, and the parking lot lights hummed.

At eleven that night I sat in my mother's kitchen with my hands around a mug I hadn't touched.

The box of envelopes was gone. Dolores had taken it.

My mother stood at the stove and didn't turn around, and this time I knew exactly what her back meant.

"I'm going to say it once," she said, "and then you can say whatever you like."

"Mom."

"I should have told you at your wedding. Or after the first transfer failed, when you cried on my sofa." She turned. "I had a hundred chances, Lena. I let all of them go."

"Why?"

"Because if you knew I held the paper, you would ask why I never used it to leave him."

I waited.

"I wanted to keep the house, the shop and the church pew more than I wanted to be rid of him," she said.

"That is the true answer. I was proud, and I was comfortable, and I told myself it was for you."

I looked at the mug.

"You let me think I was made of that."

"I did."

"You watched me say sorry to Travis, over and over, and you had the exact sentence that would have stopped me."

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