I stood there stunned, my hand pressed to my stinging cheek, staring at the woman in front of me—Lucy Wenger, Susan Wenger’s mother. A woman who had once been a mother figure to me for six years before discarding me like a broken toy when she discovered I wasn’t her biological child.
“Why did you slap me?” I asked, my voice calm but cold, demanding an explanation.
Her face twisted with anger as she pointed a trembling finger at me. “You! You are the reason Susan is in the hospital right now! Ever since she came back, all you’ve done is hurt her. Just last week, you hit her with a broom, and now you’ve caused her hand to be injured again. Why are you doing this? Why do you hate her so much?”
I clenched my fists at my sides, biting back the sharp retort that danced on the tip of m
