Her 20-Year Silence Ended When Her Daughter Came Back for Revenge novel · Chapter 9 of 24
Chapter 9: The First Word
I stood outside the iron gates with my bag at my feet and watched the rain run down the lamp.
I had no ring, no job, and no money except the cash for Maud's burial bill, which I had not yet paid.
I had not cried in front of Lavinia.
I let myself cry now.
It was not a good cry. It was short and ugly, with my forehead against the cold bars.
Behind me, on the gravel, someone was walking.
I wiped my face and turned.
The housekeeper was coming down the drive.
She had no coat and no umbrella.
She walked fast, which I had never seen her do, with one arm held against her chest, and her gray hair came loose from its pins and stuck to her face.
She stopped on the other side of the gate.
"Go back," I said. "She'll see you. She'll fire you too."
She did not go back.
She lifted both hands to the buttons at her wrists, and she began to undo her cotton gloves.
I watched her do it.
Her fingers fumbled, and she tugged each glove off with her teeth, and let them fall in the wet gravel.
Her hands came out into the lamplight.
I had never seen anything like them.
The skin of both was ridged and shiny from the wrists to the knuckles, pulled tight, white in some places and dark red in others. Two fingers on her left hand would not straighten.
They were the hands of someone who had held something burning and not let go.
She pulled the gate bolt with her ruined fingers, and the gate swung open.
She stepped through and stood in front of me.
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