Out of Time: The Family That Lost Me novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Night Shift

The garage door opened, and my mother stood in it with her coat over her arm.

"Colt," she said. "Get in the car."

My brother let go of my sleeve and walked past her without looking up.

She watched him go.

Then she looked at the paper in my hand.

"Give me that."

"No."

"It's addressed to me."

"It's addressed to the woman who spent Dad's deposit on a truck."

Her face did not change at all.

That was the worst part.

"Yes," my mother said. "I borrowed money for this family. Do you know what that costs a person? Do you know how many nights I've lain awake?"

"How many nights did you lie awake while I paid your mortgage?"

"You offered."

"I was twenty-one. You told me Dad was going to lose the house."

"He was."

"And then you told everyone I was petty."

She stepped closer and lowered her voice.

"Listen to me carefully, Mallory. I have sat on the church board for eleven years. I know every woman in that room. By Monday morning, every one of them will have heard that you drained a sick man's savings and abandoned him before surgery."

"That's a lie."

"It's a story," she said. "And I tell it better than you."

She took the notice out of my fingers.

I let her.

I had already photographed it.

She folded it into her purse and walked back into the house, humming the hymn they'd sung that morning.

I drove to the clinic because it was the only place in the world that did not want anything from me.

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