His Cousin Was His Real Wife, So I Took My Father's Name Back novel · Chapter 11 of 24
Chapter 11: Joan
I had thumbed my phone to record the moment I heard the stairs.
It sat in my coat pocket now, still recording.
"Say it again," I said. "The name."
"Caroline." Joan set her handbag on the sewing table. "It's a pretty name. I always thought so."
"You took me."
"I carried you out of that garden, yes."
She said it plainly.
"You'd been crying," she said. "You had skinned your knee on the gravel."
"And?"
"I told you your mother had sent me to bring you to her."
"My mother was dying."
"Your mother was dying in an upstairs room, and your father was drunk by noon," Joan said. "I watched that house for eight months, Clara. I saw how it was going to go."
She counted it off on her fingers.
"A ghost for a mother. A drunk for a father. A boy who sat on a wall."
"You were fired for stealing her morphine."
"I was fired for needing it." Joan lifted her chin. "My husband had left. I had a ten-year-old at home."
"So you took mine."
"Your father paid me through the month like a charity. I thought, he won't miss one child."
"He had Simon," I said, before she could.
"He had Simon," Joan agreed.
"You sold me for nine thousand dollars."
"I placed you with people who wanted you. Frank and Dee Mackey had buried a baby."
She looked at me steadily.
"They wept at their kitchen table when they saw you. Tell me which of those years was bad."
"All of them were good," I said. "That's what makes it worse."
She considered that.
"Then I did you a kindness," she said, "and you may thank me whenever you like."
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