First Kiss by Tara Brown

Author:Tara Brown [Brown, Tara]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2013-11-15T10:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

He drives to his house. I point, “Hospital. I need to see Mary.”

He shakes his head, “We need to talk to my parents about this. This is crazy—the authorities need to help Bastion. At the very least, Brandon’s parents need to go and get him. He can’t live up there in the condemned old house. He is batshit nuts.”

I sigh. When we stop at a stop sign, I jump out, “Thanks for the ride.” I slam the door and start to run for the hospital. I can hear him driving after me and shouting, but I cut through parking lots and alleys.

When I get there, the nurses smile at me and walk by. They stay on their side of the hallway, never getting too close. I tap lightly on the door to Mary’s room, a little afraid she will remember me and not Rosie at all.

Her chest is rising and falling slowly and the room smells like her—old. I sit on the chair across from her bed and wait for her to wake up. She stirs a little, lifting her face and squinting at me. She doesn’t look like she recalls me as Rosie. She pauses and my stomach drops. She gives me an uncertain look, “Are you the new nurse?”

I shake my head, “I’m here because of Rosie and Lynnie.”

She scoffs, “You taking her away, finally? I tried everything I could to get her taken from my house, but ain’t nobody listening to an old woman. You all just left her there for me to suffer, didn’t you? Left with the spawn of Satan.”

I try to keep a smile on my face, soft and pleasant, “What does that mean? You tried to get her taken?”

“That one that’s still there, she is not a Lake. I know my kin, I know what we are. Those older girls are not my kin. Never were. Their mother conned me, made me think she was my son’s wife. My son might have impregnated her with the sweet one, Rosie, but those older ones weren’t his. My son left home a long time ago. I tried telling you people—I tried telling you to come and get her. Those girls are not my problem. They took my sweet Rosie from me.”

My jaw drops, “Where is their mother?”

“Died. Kept going up to that old Lachlan house and died there. Hanged herself the day I kicked her out. Left me with them brats according to the law though. The younger one was sweet, but the middle one has a mouth on her. Acting like she’s better than me all the time. Don’t even get me started on the older one.”

I don’t remember any of this. I don’t remember it that way. I don’t know why she would be telling me lies, not to mention the fact they don’t feel like lies.

I pick up a pamphlet about handwashing from the side table and pretend I am reading from it, “So it says here, one of them pushed someone through a window or mirror?”

Her eyes widen, “I tried to stop her.

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