CHAPTER ELEVEN

LEONA’S POV“She gets paid more money than she’s ever seen in her life to come,” Mara said, already pulling me toward the car. “Then, I suggest you ask better questions later but right no? We move.”I didn’t argue, I climbed into the car, and the second the door shut behind me, I felt relief, disbelief and grief all tangled together so tightly I couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began.“Where are we going?” I asked, staring out the window as the institution shrank behind us, finally leaving this shit hole.“Somewhere safe… for now.” Mara didn’t look at me, eyes fixed forward, scanning the road like she expected trouble at every turn. “Tomorrow you’ll meet her.”“Say what now?.”“Octavia.” Mara’s mouth curved. “Your grandmother.”I let that settle over me slowly, the weight of a word I had never had reason to use in my entire life. Grandmother, like I was someone with family and like I was someone worth crossing this many lines to save.“Why does she want me?” I asked quietly.

CHAPTER TWELVE

LEONA’S POVI didn’t sleep again that night either, I laid in that soft bed staring at a ceiling I couldn’t see in the dark, turning Octavia’s words over and over till the words started to hurt my eyes. A reason she would rather raise you in poverty with a man who beat you than risk you ever setting foot in this house.What kind of house does that? What kind of family makes a mother choose violence over her own blood.Even as I turned it over, my mind kept sliding sideways and I wondered if she was sleeping right now, wherever she was or if the headaches Mara mentioned were keeping her up too, both of us were awake in the dark for entirely different reasons.I pressed the heel of my hand against my sternum. I haven't touched her in weeks nor have I heard her voice but here I was, lying in a stranger’s house discovering I had a grandmother and none of it meant anything to me at all except for the fact that Maddison Alaine might wake up tomorrow and never think of me at all.*****Mara

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

LEONA’S POVI let a week pass before I confronted her, a week of restless nights, of turning that overheard conversation over and over until I couldn’t stand carrying it alone anymore.Octavia was in the same room I first met her in, standing at the same window, like she never left.“I heard you,” I said, before she could turn around. “You and Mara. A week ago and I have been trying to decide since then whether I actually wanted to know, or whether it was easier to keep pretending I didn’t actually know shit.”Her shoulders went stiff upright before they relaxed a bit.“I assumed you might.”“Then stop making me wait for it.” My voice shook. “Tell me exactly what you did.”She turned slowly, and she looked older than the version of herself she’d been presenting, “Sit down.”“I don’t want to sit down. I want the truth.”“Sit down, Leona,” she uttered.“You’ll want to be sitting for this.”Octavia lowered herself into the chair across from me, hands folded in her lap, she said nothing at

Alle Kapitel von The Last Vermont: Loving Maddison Alaine (GL): Kapitel 11 – Kapitel 13

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN