Severed Mother-Daughter Ties novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: Tea at the Pavilion
The cafe on the Pavilion's ground floor had white tablecloths and a view of a fountain nobody sat beside.
Colleen picked the corner table, and the waiter brought her tea without being asked.
"Chamomile," she said. "I haven't slept properly since the first hospital said no."
I ordered black coffee and left it alone.
"Thank you for sitting with me," she said. "I know you're busy."
"I have ten minutes."
"That's all I'll need." She stirred her tea, and the spoon never touched the cup. "Lacey likes you. She doesn't like people. Do you know how rare that is?"
"She's good company."
"She gets it from her father. I was a quiet child." Colleen smiled. "Where did you grow up, Doctor?"
"On a farm, a long way from here."
"A farm. What kind?"
"The kind with a lot of ditches."
She laughed softly, and her eyes stayed on my face.
"I had a daughter," she said. "Before Lacey. You may have seen the poster downstairs."
"I saw it."
"Annie-Rose. She'd be thirty-five this year. You're about that age, aren't you?"
"I'm thirty-five."
Her cup clicked against the saucer.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I do that. I look at every woman her age, and I do the arithmetic. Forty-one women have sat where you're sitting, and I've been kind to every one of them. It's the only thing I can give them."
"How did you lose her?"
"At a mall. We were at the food court for her birthday. I turned my back for one minute to buy her a present."
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