Chapter 79

• EMMA QUEEN.
• I open the door. I am grateful that no one has me locked up by force and it is open. I walk straight out to the hallway on the second floor. Stealthily, I walk like an animal afraid. Then I see a woman coming up the stairs. A woman who is not my mother. She is a lady with short gray hair full of curls stuck to her head. She is wearing a knee"length light green skirt and a jacket of the same color."
• Someone shouts something to her from the first floor and she lets out a forced laugh that fades as soon as she sees me. I step back. Or at least that's what my brain processes because I am actually petrified.