They Saved My Sister and Let Me Drown, So I Took Hollywood novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Jacaranda

Addie's POV

My mother was waiting at the curb outside the Lumen lot at seven in the evening.

She wore sunglasses and a straw hat, and she held a shoebox and a shopping bag.

I almost walked past her.

She had never once stood on a sidewalk and waited for anyone.

"Adaline," she said.

I stopped.

Behind me, the guard at the gate was pretending to read a magazine.

"Mom."

"I won't take long. I took a taxi so your father wouldn't see the car," she said.

"Is he all right?"

"He's home, and he's bored, and he thinks I'm at my hairdresser." She almost smiled. "May I walk with you?"

We went a block together without speaking.

She stopped under a jacaranda tree, and the purple flowers lay on the sidewalk around us.

"I brought some things."

She held out the shoebox.

Inside were a child's drawings and a pair of plastic glasses with the lenses popped out.

There was also a ribbon from a school spelling bee with SECOND PLACE in gold letters.

I had won it at nine.

My father had said second was just the first loser.

"You kept these?"

"I kept everything. I just never showed you."

I looked up at her.

She took her sunglasses off.

Her eyes were bare and old and sharp, with none of the soft vagueness I had spent my life explaining away.

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