My Mother’s Perfect AI Lied And Left Me For Dead Chapter 23
“Do you still go every day?”
“Not every day,” he said. “I can’t walk that far anymore. Only when the weather is good.”
I looked at his trembling hands.
“In your post, you wrote that you would spend the rest of your life carrying this.”
“Yes.”
“Telling the story isn’t the same as carrying it.”
Westley’s face went pale.
He nodded slowly.
“I know. So I also take the hotline’s overnight calls. I go with parents who need help to the hospital. I call the police for children who are too afraid to speak up. None of it cancels out the door I left closed.”
When he said *closed*, his voice went hoarse.
I didn’t comfort him.
The memorial garden was quiet.
A small bouquet of fresh daisies rested beside the photograph. Morgan’s name was carved into the stone, along with the years of her birth and death.
I had thought I would feel fear. But standing there, all I felt was a distant sadness.
That was my name, and it was no longer my name.
Westley stayed far away on the path.
I crouched down and touched the corner of the headstone.
A gust of sea wind passed, and I saw a flash of that drawing—the one without Ava. The little girl had used bright crayons and drawn her father’s and mother’s hands very large.
She had thought those two hands would protect her forever.
“What happened to the drawing?” I asked, turning back.
Westley jerked his head up.
“What?”
“The drawing on the apartment wall. The one with only three people.”
Tears flooded his eyes.
“It’s in the safe at the community center. After the case ended, it was the only thing I took from the house.”
My husband’s hand came to rest on my shoulder.
Westley still didn’t move.
“That was never in my public post,” he said.
“I know.”
None of us spoke.
Then footsteps sounded on the gravel path behind us.
A thin woman carrying a bouquet of daisies had stopped at the entrance.
Her hair was almost completely white.
The instant she saw me, the flowers fell from her hands.