Reborn: I Let My Mother Suffer the Price of Her Favoritism novel · Chapter 12 of 32
Chapter 12: On the Lawn
Dale was gone before the sheriff's cars turned onto Alder Lane.
Nobody had seen him leave.
His chair in the dining room was still pushed out, and the front door stood open on the porch.
"He ran," Everett said, quietly, at my ear.
"He'll be back," I said. "He always comes back when Mom's in trouble."
Two sheriff's cars and an unmarked sedan pulled up along the curb.
Our neighbors had already come out.
The man from next door stood on his lawn in his Sunday shirt, and the couple across the street had stopped halfway through washing their car.
The deputy who came up the walk was the officer from the hospital.
He looked at the porch, at the open door, and at me.
"Ms. Haldane," he said. "Mrs. Lund. I have a call about a notebook."
"It's in the front room," I said. "The pastor's wife has it."
"She does," said the pastor's wife, appearing behind me.
She held it against her chest in both arms.
Her face was blotched and wet.
"Officer, I've known Maureen Haldane for twenty-two years," she said. "I sat on the altar guild with her for eighteen. I want you to take this, and I want every woman in that room to tell you what they heard."
"Thank you, ma'am."
He took the notebook and the three amber bottles and slid each one into a clear bag.
Behind him a second deputy walked past me into the front room.
My mother was still standing in the middle of the cream carpet.
The altar guild ladies had backed away from her, one by one, until she stood in a wide empty circle.
"I'm not going anywhere," she told the deputy. "This is my house. My daughter has set a trap for me in front of my friends."
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