Page 68 of Sinful Promises

“Love you too.”

“Oh, you can hear me now?”

“Bye.” I ended the call with a smile on my face. Zali always did that—including when she was hitting me with some seriously tough comments.

I tucked into my pasta, and even once I’d eaten everything on my plate, I still couldn’t decide if Mother’s treatment of my childhood was justified. If anything, I understood her reluctance to celebrate birthdays, as that would’ve brought up some truly horrific memories. But the moving around all the time—that was a different story. If she hadn’t wanted to do it for herself, surely, she should’ve wanted her young daughter to have a nice home.

It was a question I was determined to have answered tomorrow.

Chapter Fourteen

Repeating the previous day’s agenda, I started at the coffee shop and ordered another double-shot cappuccino but chose the orange and poppyseed muffin this time. I ate and drank my breakfast as I walked to the caravan park and was at Mother’s trailer by nine-thirty.

I entered the van, surprised by all the windows and curtains being open and the lights on. In my haste to leave yesterday, I’d obviously left it like that. It was a wonder there was anything left. Then again, there was absolutely nothing of real value in here. You would have to be very desperate to want to steal anything from this trailer.

Still feeling a little hungry, I opened the pantry, hoping at least for a muesli bar. No such luck. The fridge was no better. If I’d wanted some cheap cask wine or what looked like leftover Chinese, then I would’ve been in heaven. Opting for a safer option, I went for a cup of tea instead. I popped on the kettle and headed into Mother’s bedroom.

The contents of that drawer were still all over her bed. Sitting on the side of the mattress, I picked up a chunky bangle and slipped it over my wrist. But it was way too big for me and slipped right off. I put it back into the drawer and grabbed another. This one was a series of rectangular glass stones held together with two elastic ropes. It looked homemade. Knowing Mother, she probably bought it from a market or someone she’d befriended.

I picked up the Walkman and pressed the play button, but it didn’t move. I flipped it over and popped open the battery compartment. It was empty. I put the machine in my backpack and made a mental note to buy some batteries before I went to the hospital. A few tapes were there too; Michael Jackson’s Bad; George Michael’s Faith; Kick, by INXS. They probably didn’t even work.

My eyes snagged on the newspaper again. It was so out of place with all the other trinkets on the bed. I picked it up and went to the kitchen. Sitting at the same kitchen table where I had been told I was conceived during an orgy, I sipped the tea and read the newspaper.

The article in the corner was about a jewelry store robbery that’d gone wrong. Four thieves had broken into a jewelry store in the Queensland regional city of Toowoomba. According to the report, the store owner had stayed back after closing to get a head start on a stock take they were performing the next day.

The thieves had tied up the owner, and after ransacking the jewelry cabinets, one of the robbers had hit the owner over the back of his head with a paperweight. The article ended with a sad description of the fifty-eight-year-old man being in a coma surrounded by his wife and three young children.

A memory from my childhood spilled into my brain like battery acid. I had been seven or eight, not much older. Mom and Dad had been fighting. There was nothing unusual about that. But it was what they’d fought over that rattled my memory.

Mother had been dressed in tight-fitting jeans and a revealing top. But she’d also been wearing a diamond-studded necklace. It was the first and possibly the only time I’d ever seen Rob lay a finger on her. He hadn’t hit her; he’d snatched the necklace so hard it’d snapped and some of the diamonds had pinged across the table.

Mother had sobbed as she’d crawled around on the floor, trying to find all the jewels.

I never did see those diamonds again.

My eyes shot to Mother’s top drawer. I stood and strode to the bedroom, yanked the drawer all the way out, and upended it on the bed. I was possessed. Obsessed. I dug through the scrambled collection of junk, yet I had no idea what I was searching for.

I took out the next drawer and the next, tossing everything onto the bed. I pulled out her hanging clothes, went through her shoeboxes and makeup pouches. Caravans had all sorts of tiny cupboards where things could be stored, and one by one, I yanked them open and rummaged through the contents. There was so much crap, and the pile on the bed grew bigger with each drawer I upended.

I stood on her bed, and it took all my might to slide open a cupboard hovering above the pillows. Grabbing yet another shoebox from the shelf, I popped open the lid. My breath caught. Inside was just one thing—a black velvet pouch.

My heart was in my throat as I tugged on the two silky ropes that sealed the bag.

When a diamond-studded necklace spilled onto my palm, my heart died.

By the time my brain had cleared enough to think, it was after lunch. But it wasn’t food I was after. It was answers.

Mother was lucky that it took so fucking long to get from her trailer to the hospital. If it had been much shorter, my fury probably would’ve had me strangling her with my bare hands to get those answers.

But thanks to the blessing of time by myself in the taxi, I had worked through that rage and had a plan of attack. I wanted all the answers today, and I had five hours until visiting time was over. I intended to use every single one of them wisely.

I arrived at her bedside to find her asleep again. How she could sleep after her lifetime of lies was beyond me. Unlike yesterday, I didn’t want to leave her in peace. Time was ticking, and contrary to that damn clock that had been ticking in my head in Europe, this one had even more dire consequences.

Trying to be as noisy as possible, without being so extreme that I woke Mother’s sick neighbors, I dragged the chair to her beside. I unzipped my pack and wrestled the wooden box from it and placed it at my side. I even cleared my throat a few times. When none of that woke her, I reached over and placed my hand on her shoulder.

Mother’s eyes fluttered open, and her head rolled toward me with a strained smile crawling across her lips. “Daisy. It’s so lovely to see you.”

“Hi, Mom. How do you feel?”

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