My Fake-Dead Husband Came Crawling After I Became an Heiress novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Mother at the Gate

Maureen cries in the rain, apologizes, and hints that half of Hallie's inheritance would be a kind gift to the Fenns; Hallie plays the loyal daughter and invites her to the front row. Dalton is watching from a car across the road.

I put the phone in my pocket and wiped my face until it was clean.

"You don't have to go out there," Zane said.

"Yes, I do."

"Then I'm coming."

"Stay by the door," I said. "If she sees you, she'll know I have someone."

He did not like it, but he stayed.

I walked down the drive in the rain without a coat.

My mother stood at the gate with water running off her silver hair.

She held a shoebox against her chest.

The mother who had slapped me in front of forty people was gone, and the one in her place was crying.

"Hallie," she said. "Oh, baby. Look at you."

I opened the gate.

She dropped the box and held onto me so hard her pearls pressed into my neck.

She smelled like the same lavender soap she had used my whole life.

Every muscle in my body wanted to go stiff.

I let my arms go around her instead.

"I'm so sorry," she said into my shoulder. "I was out of my mind that day. I lost two children and I had to blame somebody."

I did not say that she had lost no one.

I looked past her head at the empty road and said nothing.

"How did you find me?" I asked.

"Mr. Appleton's lawyer called to confirm you were alive. I got the address from his office." She leaned back and held my face. "I couldn't sleep. I had to see you."

She was a good liar.

I had grown up next to it and never learned how to see it.

"Come inside," I said.

"Oh, I couldn't."

"You're soaked."

I took her into the gatehouse, a small stone room with a lamp and a kettle, and put a towel in her hands.

She picked up the shoebox and set it on the table.

It was full of pictures of me.

The two of us at the lake when I was nine. Me at my high school graduation, holding a diploma. Me in my wedding dress.

She had kept these.

I wondered, for one stupid second, if there was any real feeling in her at all.

"I kept every one," she said. "Cora's in the other box. I can't open that one."

"Cora's box."

"It's been three years, and I still can't."

Her voice shook perfectly.

I turned over the wedding picture so I would not have to look at his face.

"Hallie," she said. "Did you ever think about Dalton?"

"Every day."

"If by some miracle he were still alive. If he came back to you." She watched my face the way a cat watches a bird. "Would you take him back?"

It was the exact question she had practiced.

I thought of the two gurneys, and the sheets that stayed down.

"I'd give anything to see him once," I said.

My mother's eyes filled up again, and underneath the tears she looked pleased.

"I know you would," she said softly. "You were always such a loyal girl."

She patted my hand.

Her fingers were cold.

"The Fenns lost so much," she said. "Dalton's mother hasn't been the same."

"I'm sure."

"She'd never ask. But a woman in your position could do something for that family."

"What kind of something?"

"Whatever you think is fair." She smiled. "Half is always a nice, round number."

I kept my face soft and my hands around the mug.

She had said it so lightly that Zane, listening at the door, would have missed the whole thing.

I did not.

"Mom," I said. "I'm signing Mr. Appleton's papers on Friday, at Appleton Hall, in front of the press."

"I heard."

"I want you there."

She went very still.

"Me?"

"In the front row. I want you to see it."

She laid her hand over her heart.

"Oh, Hallie. I'd be so proud."

"Then you'll come."

"I wouldn't miss it for the world."

She kissed my forehead at the door and went out into the rain, without her umbrella, because she had never brought one.

I watched her cross the road and disappear.

Then I took the shoebox and went back to the house.

Zane was waiting on the porch with a towel and a mug of tea.

He took one look at me and put the towel around my shoulders himself.

"She believed you," he said.

"She always believes the part where I'm sorry."

"Hallie."

He tipped his head, and I looked where he was looking.

A grey rental car sat on the far side of the road with its lights off.

The engine was running.

Behind the windshield, a man's face lit up blue from a phone.

He lifted his head and looked straight at the house.

It was Dalton.

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