Forgotten Groom in the Back Alley novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Mother

I did not call her.

I handed the phone to Hazel across the breakfast table and let her read the message twice.

"She wants to talk to you," Hazel said.

"She raised Yvette."

"She wrote I'm so sorry." Hazel buttered a slice of toast, steadily. "Nobody who raised a monster writes that to the man the monster wrecked."

Dot set down a plate of eggs in front of me without comment.

She had looked at my face and at Hazel's face when we came down, and she had said only, "I'll need the guest sheets changed," and gone back to her stove.

I took a bite of egg and wrote back with my thumb.

I'm at Shanahan Hall, Dawson Street. Come alone.

She was on the front step at two.

She was a small woman in her sixties, in a navy coat and sensible shoes, with her handbag clutched against her chest.

She had Yvette's green eyes, and they were red-rimmed.

She didn't say hello.

She said, "I held your hand in that photograph. Not yours. I held his."

"I know who you are, Mrs. Hargrove."

"I'm not sure I want to be."

I led her into the empty ballroom, where chairs were stacked against the wall for the weekend, and Dot brought a tray of tea and then left us alone.

Yvette's mother sat on the edge of a gilt chair and set her bag on her knees.

"I watched the video the night after," she said. "Somebody's phone. I saw you come up the aisle in that dreadful suit, and I saw her put her arms around Brodie and not look at you."

"Yes."

"I raised her on Sundays and good manners." Her voice thinned. "And I stood in a garden four years ago and watched my daughter marry one man while another believed she was away at a conference."

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