THE HEIR'S REVENGE

chapter 61

I decided that I was going to visit my mum's cementation today. I had literally had the best time with Yemi on Sunday and that same evening, I heard the most heartbreaking news.

Victoria was leaving.

I knew that a lot of people would expect her to go to another country but not me. There was no way Victoria was going to leave her home because I was a threat?

I just needed to clear my head, before anything else. Things were still uncertain from how it looked. I didn't know what exactly Victoria would be doing.

For the past few days, even before dinner, I had been feeling something weird so I decided that maybe all I needed to do was see my mum.

It wasn't fear or anxiety, the way I knew it. What I was feeling was more quiet, more uncertain, like a feeling you get when everything is not fine.

I woke up the next morning, anxious. I was glad it was 5am so I got up and went downstairs knowing I was not going back to sleep.

The house was very quiet. I just stood and took sips of water as I glanced at the house.

become worse without warning. This was different. Quieter. More like the feeling you get when something very large and very important is almost over and the almost is the hardest part.

I stood in the kitchen for a while.

Then I picked up my keys.

I hadn't planned to wake anyone before leaving but I stopped at Lily's door on the way out.

Lily was awake when I pushed the door open and we looked at each other in the dark.

"Where are you going?" she asked. Her voice was small and soft.

"To see my mother," I said.

She was quiet for a moment. She was very assertive. This must have been the first time she ever heard me talk about my mother.

Then she sat up.

"I want to come," she said.

"Lily, it is very early."

"I know." She was already reaching for her rabbit. "I still want to come."

I looked at her sitting up in her bed in her pajamas with her rabbit under her arm and her hair pressed flat on one side from sleeping and I thought about saying no.

I could not say no.

"Get dressed," I said. "Warmly. It is cold outside."

She was out of bed before I finished the sentence. Soon she was ready, which was faster than I had expected.

She wore a purple coat over the clothes she had one

She was ready in seven minutes which was faster than I expected.

She was carrying her rabbit and a small paper bag that she had picked up from her desk on the way out.

I did not ask about the bag.

We went downstairs quietly together. I left a note on the kitchen counter for Henry because Henry would notice we were gone when he got here early in the morning and I did not want him to worry.

The note said that I and Lily had gone to Sarah's grave and that we'll be back before nine.”

I looked at the note wondering if all was actually well. Victoria had literally escaped from her home.

I sighed and we went out to the car.

The Cemetery where Sarah was buried was called Greenhill. It was not too far from where she worked and lived for years.

She just had a simple headstone and the people who put her name on put her name Sarah Pierce on it because it was the name everyone knew her with.

But everything changed when I was found

Henry had arranged for a new headstone.

It said Sarah Blackwell. Beloved daughter. Beloved mother. Finally home.

I had seen it once before. On the day it was installed. I had gone alone that day and stood in front of it for a long time and said nothing because I did not have the words yet.

Today I thought I might have them.

Greenhill cemetery was quiet and cold at six thirty in the morning when we arrived, probably because nobody else was there.

We found my mother's grave at the end of a path near a row of oak trees.

The headstone was exactly as I remembered it. I bent down and placed the flowers I had bought. I remember vividly how my mother loved white flowers. I remembered one day she had stopped outside a flower shop and glared at a flower hut we couldn't get because we were so poor then.

She had just looked at them for one quiet second. I was seven years old and I still remember it.

I stood up.

Lily stood beside me holding my hand and looking at the headstone. She read the words slowly the way she read things that were important. Moving her lips slightly. When she finished reading she was quiet.

I stood there for a moment without speaking.

The city was waking up slowly somewhere beyond the cemetery walls. A distant sound of traffic starting. A bird beginning somewhere in the oak trees above us. The frost on the grass caught the first thin light of the morning.

Then I started talking.

"Mum," I started.

My voice came out differently than I expected. Not tight or formal the way I had been afraid it might. Just my voice. Ordinary and honest.

"I came before the trial because I needed to tell you some things while I still had the chance to tell them to you without already knowing the ending." I paused. "I know that probably doesn't make complete sense. But I needed this to be a real conversation and not just a report."

Lily stood very still beside me. She did not say anything. She just held my hand.

"Victoria is in custody," I said. "She has been charged with what she did to you. The poisoning. The years she took from you. Lily's parents too." I stopped for a second. "She is going to answer all of it in two days. In a courtroom. With evidence that cannot be argued away." I paused. "I made sure of that. I spent months making sure of that."