Chapter 11: Ridge to Ridge

Jessamine met us at the curb outside the penthouse with a garbage bag from the hospital.

"I never gave you this," she said. "Your coat and your shoes from that night. They sat in the admitting office, and nobody knew who to give them to."

I dug through the pockets of the grey wool coat in the back seat of the car.

My left pocket held a lip balm and a hair tie.

My right pocket held something small and hard.

I took it out and held it in my palm.

It was a sliver of red plastic, the size of my thumbnail, with one edge broken in a jagged, ridged line.

I had picked it up off Route 9 the night they told me about my mother.

I was seventeen, and I'd kept it in a tin ever since.

Then I'd carried it onto a wet curb the night I was hit, and I hadn't known why.

"Lydia," Stefan said.

I closed my hand.

"Drive," I said.

At the Alder Road gate the driver stopped the car.

"I'll wait here with Jessamine," he said. "You'll go in alone, because you asked me to. But I have to tell you, she'll try to say things."

"Then I'll hear them from her."

"Lydia, please..."

"Rule one," I said. "Is there anything you want to tell me before I go in?"

He looked at me for a long time.

"Yes," he said, and his voice shook. "But I'm too much of a coward to say it first."

I got out of the car.

The house at the end of the long, gravel drive was white, with columns.

Sybil opened the door before I knocked.

She wore the cream gloves with a lavender dress, and she smiled at me.

"Darling. You're early."

"I thought I'd help with the tea."

She took me to the kitchen and put a kettle on, and I sat at the big oak table where, apparently, I'd eaten Sunday dinners for three years.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Unforgiven: The Billionaire's Amnesiac Ex-Wife from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.