Chapter 3: Chapter 3

I suddenly felt enormously hurt.How could she assist Dennis in something as shady as dumping a dead body? Did she not love me enough to treat my body with at least a little respect?I felt my eyes water, but I clenched my jaws and forced those salty pearls back to where they’d come from.

If that’s the way she wanted it, then that’s the way she’d have it!

As it turned out I hadn’t died at all. In their panic they’d obviously made a mistake. But if my own mother cared no more for me than to leave my body to the crows—and on, what must have been by that time, my eighteenth birthday, then I’d forget all about her. I was an adult now. Legal. I could make my own way in the world and that’s just what I’d do.

I surveyed the way before me once again, but could see little on that dark, moonless night.

“Hello down there.”

It was a man’s voice and it had come from above me. I searched the boughs of the mighty oak.

“Who’s there?” I called back.