Reborn: I Let My Mother Suffer the Price of Her Favoritism novel · Chapter 8 of 32

Chapter 8: Nothing Hidden

I came out of the bathroom with the receipt folded small in my fist.

Everett was sitting on the edge of the bed with my bag open on his knee.

"I was looking for your charger," he said. "Your phone's at three percent."

He held up the blue tin in his other hand.

"What is this?"

I could not make myself say a single word.

"Callie. What's the number twelve on the tape?"

"It's Sloane's tea."

"And the paper in your hand?"

I had not noticed that he could see it.

I opened my fingers.

He took it, read it, and set it carefully on the bedspread next to the tin.

"You've known something for twenty minutes," he said, "and you told me you were tired."

"I didn't know what it meant yet."

"We said nothing hidden. We said it eight hours ago in front of three hundred people."

"I know what we said."

"Then why am I finding it in your bag?"

His voice had not risen.

That was what frightened me.

"Because I wasn't sure," I said. "Because you'd just watched me almost fall apart in a lobby, and I wanted to be sure before I put one more thing on you."

"That isn't your decision to make."

"It was my family."

"It was your family," Everett said, "and I sat at their table three times, Callie."

He stood up.

"You had a bruise under your makeup at the first dinner. You said you'd caught your arm on a cupboard. At the second it was your wrist. At the third you didn't lift your left arm to pass the potatoes."

His jaw was tight and his eyes were bright.

"I saw all of it. I asked once and you changed the subject, and I let you. I told your mother she was a wonderful cook and I took a second helping."

"Ev."

"I'm not angry at you," he said. "I'm angry that I let you carry it."

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