The blue truck appeared around the curve, the road so tight, too tight for both of them.

Betsy saw the flash of black hair. She had seen a photo of her daughter when she saw her name on the ancestry website and had eagerly looked her up, landing on the Books, Cake, and Tea website. She had been stunned by the likeness. Betsy was looking at herself decades ago.

So now she knew. It was Rose in the truck, her beloved daughter. She was in the premonition she had had all her life, starting from when she was a child, where one of them dies, or both of them, probably, maybe. Betsy made an instant decision, her heart clenching, her eyes filling with tears. She saw Johnny’s face. She saw Kayla, still in high school. She saw Tilly. But she would not lose this child, her oldest, her firstborn. Her love. The child who had never, not for a day, left her heart. Her Rose.

Betsy didn’t hesitate. She turned the wheel of her car hard to the right and headed straight over the cliff. She had sensed death in this shifting, changing premonition; it had been fuzzy, but she would not let Rose die. She was her mother, after all. A mother would die for her child in an instant. Now was her instant.

* * *

My eyes locked on the other driver coming right toward me in the red car. I saw a flash of black hair. I saw eyes like mine. It was Betsy. It was my biological mother. Shock paralyzed me for a second as my truck continued to plow down the road. One of us would die, probably, or both of us. It was foggy, but death hung heavy over this day.

But Betsy had a daughter, Kayla. She was only a teenager. I had no children, and her daughter needed her. She should live, not me. Betsy had also spent ten torturous years in prison. She had endured enough pain and loss in her life. It was my turn.

I turned the wheel of my truck left, toward the cliff. I would go. Betsy would live.

But . . . what in the world? Her red car turned right as I turned left...

Chapter 35

Chapter 35

“All of Serafina’s shiny rainbow scales were now in the glass jar owned by King Koradome. He laughed and laughed when the last scale, a red one, appeared through the waves. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I am the owner of the most beautiful scales in the world. They are all mine, forever mine.’ Then he cackled evilly, which made all the fish and dolphins around him swim off, as they could recognize danger when they heard it.”

“Was Serafina sad?”