Page 57 of Sinful Promises

“Don’t yell at me.”

“I’m not yelling.” It was true. I wasn’t. Which was a miracle because that was exactly what I wanted to do. The only thing keeping me from screaming at her until my throat hurt was the poor patients in the other beds.

“Yes, you are.”

“See? You’re lying now.”

She clamped her jaw and pouted her lips.

“My thirteenth birthday. We were in a trailer at the Lennox Head caravan park. The morning of my birthday. Do you remember?”

She shook her head, and I was already wondering if she was lying.

“I’d made my own breakfast, like I always did.”

“Nothing wrong with that. You were clever. And independent.”

Ignoring her attempt to flatter me, I continued, “While I was eating my cereal, you came out of the bedroom with two men. Two. Neither of them were the man who’d pretended to be my father. You spent more time kissing them goodbye than you did with me the entire day. You remembered my birthday the next day when you emerged from your stoned-out fucking fog.” Clamping my jaw before I spewed out another depressing memory from my childhood, I glared at her.

She blinked a few times and her blank expression made it impossible to ascertain if she remembered that moment, or even what she was thinking. That hadn’t been the first time she’d had two men in her bedroom. It was, however, the first time she’d done it on my birthday.

Mother huffed out a sigh. “I cannot undo the past, Daisy.”

Her words were like a noose around my disjointed memories, tugging them all together. I clenched my fists. “No. I guess you can’t. But you can help me understand.”

She smiled, but it was all jagged edges and worrisome eyes. Mother was walking on eggshells. She didn’t want me prodding any further, and that only served to make me want more. It also convinced me there was something she didn’t want me digging into. Something worse than what had been revealed already.

If it meant digging until I hit fucking China, then I was going to do it.

I was determined to get to the bottom of it. Even if it meant shattering my fucked-up childhood even more.

When Mother reached for the white sheet around her legs and tugged it up to her chest, the rings on her fingers twinkled in the light. I stared at her hands again. She had a ring on every finger. Except her wedding finger. She used to. Many, many years ago.

One of my unanswered questions slapped me in the face like a dead fish. It was a question that’d crossed my mind several times.

When I aimed my gaze at Mother’s eyes, she may have sensed I was about to ask something she didn’t want to answer. Because she suddenly gasped for air, clawing at her throat, and making wild sucking noises.

Her eyes bulged. Her legs thrashed.

I lunged for the button the nurse had pointed at and strangled the thing. But nothing but a tiny light came on over her bed.

Mother was fighting for air—drawing it in like every breath was caustic.

I raced out the door and dashed along the corridor I’d come in through. “Nurse. Nurse. Help.”

Two nurses came running toward me.

“It’s my mom, Patricia Chayne. Room 519. She can’t breathe.” I led the way and burst into the room like a tidal wave. Racing around the bed, I kept my distance, letting the nurses do their job. But Mother’s eyes were on me, fixated like I was going to be the last image she ever saw.

The nurses were calm—checking tubes attached to Mother’s wrist, studying monitors. This was an everyday occurrence for them. It seemed like forever before Mother settled, but it was just minutes.

Mother closed her eyes, and with her breathing restored, she looked peaceful.

When the nurses left the room, I grabbed my suitcase and backpack and followed behind them. “Excuse me, nurse.”

One of the nurses stopped and turned toward me with an expression that was almost blank, devoid of emotion.

“Hi, sorry. But . . . but what was that?” I flicked my thumb over my shoulder, toward Mother’s room.

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