My Father Gave Me a New Big Brother, and the Only Man I Could Run To Was the One Who Put Him There novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Dario's Mother

Rali's POV

The yellow house in Homedale had a chain-link fence and a gate that screamed on its hinges.

Mateo stopped at the gate and did not open it.

"I'll wait in the truck," he said. "She wants you alone."

"Come in with me."

"She said alone."

"I know." I pressed my lips together. "I know. I only wanted to say it."

He put his hand along my jaw.

"You're going to be all right," he said. "Whatever she says."

"I'm not sure I want to be."

"That's why you're the right one to go in."

I opened the gate.

The old woman was standing on the porch in a black cardigan with her hands folded.

She was smaller than I had imagined.

For five years I had seen her in the courtroom gallery, in the last row, in a black dress.

She had never moved, and my mind had made her enormous.

She was barely up to my shoulder.

"You are the girl," she said.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Come in. You will stand. You will not sit in my chair."

Her kitchen was cold and very clean, with a table and two chairs and a photograph over the stove.

A young man in a work shirt, squinting into the sun.

I did not look at it for long.

I stood in the middle of her floor with my hands at my sides.

"Say your name," she said.

"Maialen Etxeberria."

"Say my son's."

I opened my mouth.

It stuck.

For five years I had not said it.

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