The Daughter They Abandoned Twice novel · Chapter 11 of 24
Chapter 11: Paid For
"What did you say?" I asked.
It was the only thing I could say.
Marlene's chest was heaving, and her hair had come loose from its rollers.
She had stepped off the church steps and onto the grass, and the crowd had left her a clear circle.
"Twelve thousand dollars," she said.
Her voice shook with rage and with something close to relief, the relief of a person who has held her breath for twenty-two years.
"Twelve thousand, in cash, for a four-year-old in a grocery lot. Do you know what that was for us? The van payment. The first month in the motel. You weren't even a pretty one, you cried for a week, and Garner almost took you back."
"Marlene," the sheriff said quietly. "Stop talking."
"No, she wants the truth." She spat the name, and then she looked at the people around her. "She's not mine. I never had a child. We took her out of a parking lot in Kansas with a bag of groceries in her hand, and I taught her to work. I fed her. I braided her hair. Do you know what a girl like that costs?"
The sixteen-year-old with the phone had stepped closer.
His hand was not shaking.
"She was the first one we kept," Marlene said. "You think I'd let somebody feel sorry for her? She was a useful little thing. She learned the puppy story in one night."
I could not feel my hands.
All I could hear was the word kept.
The woman in the plaid scarf made a high noise in her throat.
Behind her, a man had gone very white, and a second woman was crying.
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