When the Billionaire Begs novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: Paint the Chair

My mother was sitting up when we came in the next morning.

Veronica followed me in without flowers, in a plain gray coat, and stopped inside the door.

She looked old in the daylight.

The freckled nurse stood by the window and did not leave, and I did not ask her to.

"Mom," I said. "She asked to see you. You can say no."

My mother turned her head slowly on the pillow.

She looked at Veronica for a long time.

Neither woman spoke.

Stellan waited in the corridor with his back against the wall, as he had waited at every door of this hospital.

"Mrs. Farris," Veronica said at last, very quietly. "I wrote to you for eleven years. I never once said what I meant."

My mother's good hand tightened on the blanket.

"I loved him," Veronica said. "That is the whole of it. I loved my husband, and I did not know how to hate him, so I hated you."

A long breath, and my mother's lips shaped a word.

"Me."

Veronica frowned.

"Me... too," my mother said.

Veronica's face crumpled.

She put a hand to her mouth.

It was the first time I had seen her without a smile in place.

"I was wrong to hurt your daughter," she whispered. "She was never in it."

"No," my mother said.

"I will go. I will go anywhere you like. I only wanted to say it to your face."

My mother lifted her hand off the blanket and pointed at the door.

"Go," she said.

It was clear, and flat, and final.

"Thank you," Veronica said.

She bowed her head to my mother, and then, after a moment, to me.

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