Chapter 274 143

Chapter 274 143
AMELIA'S car turned into the street four minutes later.

Hazel and her friend were now out and standing at the small veranda when the headlights swept across the pavement, and she watched her mother step out of the car, running across the lawn to meet her daughter.

"Is something wrong? You said you wanted to show me something... Did someone hurt you? Did you..." Amelia trailed off as she searched around Hazel's body for any sign that she was hurt.

"No, it's not that." Hazel said slowly. "It's actually about you, mum. About Charles, actually. There is something you need to hear, but promise me you won't get mad or cry." The corners of the girl's eyes shimmered with unshed tears.

They looked at each other across the pavement.

"Show me," Amelia said.

Hazel held up her phone and pressed play. Amelia stood in the fading afternoon light and listened to the recording from beginning to end without speaking, without moving, without any change in her expression except for one moment... when Charles laughed about neither of them going anywhere.

When it finished, she handed the phone back to Hazel.

"How much of the conversation did you get?" she asked calmly, holding her daughter's hands in hers.

"Most of it," Hazel said. "I started immediately I recognized his voice. I knew that something wasn't right."

"You got the key parts?" Amelia asked again to be sure.

"All of them."

Amelia nodded slowly. She looked at the lawn of the house, then at the street, then back at her daughter. 
"How are you?" she asked.

Hazel blinked. Of all the things she had expected her mother to say, that was not among them. 
"I'm okay," she said. "I'm just..." She paused. "I'm angry for you. After everything you have been through, now this... It's..."

"I know," Amelia said gently. "Thank you."

"What are you going to do? That's his house," she pointed at the bungalow. 

Amelia looked at the house for a moment. Then she said, "I'm going to end the relationship. Tonight, if possible." She looked at Hazel, and did not elaborate that she already knew about it. "But not here, and not now. You go home. I will handle this."

"Mom—"

"Hazel." Her voice was soft but absolute. "Go home. To your father's house and take care of your brothers. I will be back before nine."

Hazel studied her mother's face for a long moment. She knew that expression. It was something akin to the calm before a storm. Like she had already made her decision and there was nothing anyone could do to change her mind. She had seen it before Shantel was arrested. She had seen it before Charles was made to listen to the recording from Shantel's house. It was the expression of a woman who was done deliberating and had arrived at action.

"Okay," Hazel trusted her mother on this, but she knew she would tell her father once she got home. But when she ruminated on it, she didn't know if that was the right course of action to take. She felt really helpless at this point.

Amelia nodded once, then reached out and squeezed her daughter's hand briefly. Then she got back into her car and called Charles.

He answered on the second ring, his voice warm and easy. 
"Hey, baby. Everything okay?"

"Can you come over?" she said softly in a way that always got Charles. "Tonight? I need to talk to you."

There was a brief pause. 
"Of course. Is something wrong?"

"Just come," she said. "I will explain everything to you when you get here."

She ended the call before she looked at the ring on her finger. She caressed it for a few seconds before she took it off and placed it on her palm. Then she put it in the pocket of her blazer and drove home.


Charles arrived at seven-fifteen, easy and unsuspecting in the way of a man who had recently received two cheques and believed the world was operating in his favor. He knocked and she let him in, and he kissed her cheek and said she looked tired and should she sit down, which she thought was an extraordinary thing for him to say given the circumstances.

She let him settle on the couch while she remained standing.

"I need to play you something," she said.

"Okay," he said, slightly puzzled but not alarmed.

She pressed play on Hazel's recording and held the phone toward him. She watched his face...

It was, she thought, the most honest she had ever seen him. Every layer came off in sequence — the initial confusion, the creeping recognition, the attempt to arrange his expression into something innocent, the moment that attempt failed, and underneath it all, the look of a man who had just realized the conversation he was in was not the conversation he had prepared for.

When it finished, he said nothing for several seconds.
"Amelia—"

"I want you to listen to one more thing," she said.

She dialed Sandra's number. She had told Sandra to be ready at seven-thirty, and she answered on the first ring.

"Put him on speaker," Sandra said without greeting.

Amelia did.

"Hello, Charles," Sandra said calmly.

The silence that followed had a texture to it.

"How long have you two—" his eyes grew wide as he sat on the edge of his seat in shock.

"Long enough," Amelia said dryly. She reached into her pocket and placed the ring on the coffee table between them. "It's over between us, Charles."

He stared at the ring on the table.

"I want you to leave," Amelia said quietly. "And I don't want you to come back."

He looked up at her. Something moved across his face. It wasn't remorse, she didn't think, but the devastation of a plan collapsing completely. He opened his mouth once, then closed it.

Then he picked himself up off the couch, walked to the door, and left without a word. The door clicked shut.

From the phone on the table, Sandra's voice came through.

"Well," she said. "That was satisfying."

Amelia looked at the ring on the coffee table for a long moment.

"Yes," she said quietly. "It was."

"But do you think this would trigger him to make his move?"

"I know it will.”