Chapter 4: The Highway of Regrets**
The shoulder of Route 4 was a treacherous strip of slush, broken glass, and frozen weeds. Every passing semi-truck sent a wall of freezing, dirty water spraying across Victoria, drenching her from head to toe.
She didn't care. She wrapped the tattered coat around her shoulders, not for warmth, but out of a desperate need to feel close to the woman she had so brutally discarded.
As she walked, the heavy weight in the coat's right pocket bumped against her hip. Victoria reached in, her frozen fingers brushing against a small cardboard package wrapped in brown butcher paper and tied with rough jute twine.
It was the gift she had refused to even touch.
Under the faint beam of an oncoming car’s headlights, Victoria pulled the package out. The butcher paper was soaked, but the careful, uneven handwriting remained legible:
*“To my beautiful Vicky. Happy 32nd Birthday. I knit this with the softest wool I could find, just like the blanket you loved when you were seven. Wear it so you never get cold in that big house. Love, Mom.”*
Victoria collapsed onto the wet gravel, clutching the wet parcel to her chest, letting out a raw, guttural sob that ripped through her throat.
How had she become this monster? When had a silver plate and an invitation to a charity gala become more valuable than the woman who gave her life? She remembered Mary’s rough, calloused fingers carefully winding yarn in the corner of her tiny one-bedroom apartment, staying up until dawn after an eight-hour cleaning shift, just to make something special for her daughter’s party.
And Victoria had called her a maid.
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Suddenly, through the curtain of rain half a mile ahead, Victoria saw a set of red hazard lights flashing on the shoulder near the bridge over Blackwood Ravine. Beside the car, a pair of figures were bent over the guardrail, looking down into the darkness.
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