My Family Wants Me Gone, I Take Their Luck With Me novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: Two Families Before

The hospital cafeteria was in the basement.

We sat at a table by the vending machines. I bought her tea.

She held it and didn't drink it.

"How do you know Clarissa?"

"She lived with us. In a town four hours up the coast." She turned the cup in a slow circle. "My husband had a hardware store there. Thirty years."

"When was this?"

"Four years ago. She was eighteen when she knocked on our back door."

My skin went cold.

"She said she'd just aged out of foster care. No family, nowhere to go. She had a little suitcase with a broken wheel."

I knew that suitcase.

It was in Clarissa's closet at home.

My mother had offered to buy her a new one, and Clarissa had cried and said it was all she had.

"We'd just had the best year of our lives," the woman said. "The store was full every day. My husband said we were the luckiest people in town."

She laughed, very quietly.

"Clarissa said it too. All the time. You're so lucky. You're so lucky."

"What happened?"

"She stayed. We adopted her that spring. You can adopt a grown child, did you know that? A judge signs a paper."

"She was so sweet," the woman said. "She called me Mom by the second week. She had a bad stomach. Attacks, she called them. Every time my husband and I had a night out planned, she had one."

I closed my eyes.

"Every time?"

"Every single time. We stopped making plans."

"Then a big hardware chain opened by the highway. In six months the store was empty. My husband sat behind the counter all day, waiting for customers."

She put the cup down.

"Clarissa was gone in five weeks. She left a note on the kitchen table. It said she needed to find herself."

"And the money?"

The woman looked up.

"How did you know?"

"Because I know her."

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