Chapter 19: The Trade

The sheriff's deputies took Tiffany down the hill in a truck, still crying, and my mother let them.

She stood in the snow with her hands pressed flat to her coat until the taillights were gone.

Then she turned and looked at me for the first time in a week.

"We need to talk," she said. "Not out here."

The producer's trailer was the only warm room on the ridge, and she cleared it for us without a word.

My mother sat on the cot. She was fifty-six, and I had her chin.

I had never noticed that until now.

"Your father is on the phone with the lawyers," she said. "He wanted to come, and I told him no."

"Why?"

"Because he'll shout, and I'd like to ask you something."

I stayed standing.

"Tiffany will be charged," she said. "The poison, the rope, all of it. She's twenty-two, Susanna. She'll be a felon."

"She tried to kill me."

"She's a child who was frightened." Her voice shook. "I'm not asking you to forgive her."

"Then what are you asking?"

"Say on air that you believe she was unwell. A doctor would write the same. It would change what the judge hears."

"And what do I get?"

She looked startled that I had asked.

"The house," she said slowly. "Your room back. The trust your father froze."

She leaned toward me.

"Your name on the company, Susanna, as a Brantley, in front of everyone."

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Left Her to Bleed, So She Healed the Untouchable from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.