Saved From Suicide, Sold Into a Lie novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Gate Call

Joanna walked down the center aisle with the boy by the hand.

Three hundred people turned their chairs to watch her come.

She did not look at me.

She stopped ten feet from Leanne, and her voice rang off the brass plates.

"She was paid, Connor. Ask her about the money. Ask her what she told me the day I left."

Leanne stood very still beside me.

"What did she tell you?" I said.

"She called me at the airport," Joanna said. "She told me to go. She said you'd be better off without me, and that she would look after you for a price."

The hall murmured.

At the head table my mother had both hands over her mouth.

Joanna lifted her chin at the faces around her.

"She took four thousand a month for five years," she said. "That woman sold her own sister's husband. Ask who the villain is."

Leanne let go of my hand.

I almost reached for it again.

"Leanne," I said.

She did not answer me.

She looked at the room instead, row after row of dress blues and black dresses and staring children.

"That isn't what I said," she said.

Her voice was small.

Then she cleared her throat and tried again, louder.

"That is not what I said, Joanna."

"Prove it," Joanna said.

Leanne opened her handbag.

She took out the old phone, the one from the drawer, the one with its battery at one hundred percent, and held it up so I could see it.

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