Please Come Back, My Love novel Chapter 152

Chapter 152

Elena: POV

The night before we left, Mom and I sat on her bedroom floor surrounded by half-packed duffel bags and crumpled lists.

“Medications,” I said, checking off another item. “Pain pills, anti-nausea, the supplements Dr. Smith prescribed-”

“Elena. Mom’s hand covered mine. “We’re going on a road trip, not preparing for the apocalypse.”

I looked at her-really looked. The hollows under her cheekbones had deepened in just the past week. Her wrists were so thin I could see every bone.

Six months. Maybe less.

‘I just want to be prepared,” I said quietly.

She squeezed my hand. “I know, sweetheart. But let’s not forget to pack the fun stuff too.”

I forced a smile and added her favorite shawl to the pile.

We worked in comfortable silence for a while, folding clothes and organizing toiletries. I tried not to think about how this might be our last trip together.

Our last anything.

“What about snacks?” Mom asked, her voice deliberately cheerful. “We’ll need road trip snacks.”

“Crackers for you. The bland ones.”

‘Elena-

“Mom. I met her eyes. “You can barely keep anything down. We’re packing/what your stomach can handle.”

She looked like she wanted to argue, but instead she just nodded.

I added granola bars, ginger candies, and bottled water to the pile. Everything easy to digest. Everything gentle.

Everything for someone who’s dying.

I shoved the thought away and kept packing.

Later that night, after we’d finished packing, I picked up the small silver box from my bedside table. Inside, the locket lay nestled in white tissue paper-the

one Mom had given me a few days ago. The rose pattern caught the lamplight, and I could just make out the initials A.M.H. engraved on the back.

I lifted it carefully, feeling the weight of it in my palm. Mom had said it was mine, that it had been with me when she found me. The only connection to the

people who’d abandoned me on the side of a highway twenty-four years ago.

As I held it, my fingers unconsciously went to my throat, touching the thin gold chain hidden beneath my shirt. The chain that held Julian’s wedding ring

But we re already divorced, and I’m still wearing this damn necklace.

1/3

Chapter 152

pelt she chain out from under my shirt. The ring slid into view simple band, nothing special.

“You’re my wife. You belong to me.”

“I don’t know if I want this baby.”

“You killed my child.”

My throat tightened.

I should throw it away. Toss it in the trash or out the window or flush it down the toilet like the piece of shit it was.

But I couldn’t.

My fingers closed around the ring, then I unclasped the chain. I walked to my suitcase and shove, the ring into the inside pocket. Zipped it shut. Out of sight.

I turned back to the locket in my other hand.

A.M.H.

Who were they? The people who’d left me on the side of a highway like trash?

Were they cruel? Desperate? Young and stupid and terrified?

Did they think about me? Wonder what happened to the baby they abandoned?

Or did they forget I ever existed the moment they drove away?

Twenty-four years, I thought. Twenty-four years, and they never came looking.

If they had a good reason-if there was some tragic story that forced their hand-wouldn’t they have tried to find me eventually? Wouldn’t they have wanted

to know if I was okay?

But there was nothing. No letters. No calls. No tearful reunions.

Just this locket and three initials that meant nothing.

I fastened the chain around my neck. The weight of it settled against my sternum-cool and unfamiliar, but somehow right.

I don’t want to find them, I told myself firmly. I don’t care who they are or why they did it.

Mom is the only mother that matters.

But even as I thought it, a small voice whispered:

What if they had a reason?

What if they loved you?

୮

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify