With my daughter and my mother both dead, what was left to be afraid of?
Mabel's coy laughter drifted to my ears. "Big sister, are you satisfied with your gift?"
I looked at the woman smiling prettily in front of me. Something savage filled my eyes, and the last thread of reason inside me snapped clean through.
I lunged and locked both hands around her throat, squeezing harder with every breath. "How did you kill my mother, Mabel? Like this?"
"You psycho!" Mabel shrieked beneath my grip, her face flushing a deep, mottled red.
That's right. I had lost my mind.
You murdered my mother. If I wasn't going to lose it, who would?
"Amber! Mabel gave you a gift out of the goodness of her heart, and this is how you repay her? Why do you always have to hurt her?"
The next instant, Guy shoved me to the ground. Pain tore through my lower spine like a blade.
He cradled Mabel in his arms as though she were the most precious thing in the world. The look he turned on me was the one you'd give a piece of trash.
I lay sprawled on the floor. And then, slowly, I laughed.
Ten years.
I had loved this man for ten years.
The first time he looked at me like that was the day Mabel and her mother walked through our door.