Chapter 18: The Cedar Chest

Annalise's POV

Conway got into the truck and sat with both hands on the wheel.

I waited.

"She says your mother carried me out of the hospital," he said. "In a laundry basket."

"That's not possible."

"She said to ask you."

"I was not born yet, Conway. My mother would have been twenty-five."

"I know."

"She cleaned for the Harcourts. She would have been in the building."

"I know."

I looked at the gates, the long drive and the house at the top of it with every curtain drawn.

My mother had never said a word.

She had never said a word about anything.

"Drive me to the cottage," I said.

It was a ten-minute drive.

The cottage had stood empty since the funeral, and the key was still under the clay pot on the step.

Inside it smelled of dust and lemon soap.

The kitchen chairs stood where she had left them.

I went straight to her bedroom and knelt by the cedar chest at the foot of her bed.

Under the winter blankets there was a biscuit tin full of buttons.

At the bottom of the buttons was a white envelope with my name on it, in her round handwriting.

"Annalise," I read aloud. "If you are reading this, I am gone, and Conway has come home."

My hands began to shake.

Conway sat down on the floor beside me and did not speak.

"I carried that baby out of the county hospital myself," I read.

"Mrs. Harcourt was too weak to stand, and she begged me to take him to the groundskeeper's wife."

"That woman had buried her own girl in April."

I stopped.

My eyes had filled.

"Go on," Conway said, very low.

"I walked him out through the laundry door. He didn't cry once. He looked at me the whole way."

I wiped my face with my wrist.

"Eleanor paid for your school after. I let her."

"I told myself it was kindness, and I knew it was not. I am ashamed."

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