Chapter 5
Chapter Five
I didn’t sleep well for days.
The call from the funeral home iced the cake. I shouldn’t have forgotten—I knew the ashes would be ready at any point, but I’d gripped the reminder as well as an oiled hand caught water.
I’d forgotten to get Aunt Cadence’s ashes.
To make matters worse, Mom called. Nine times in the span of two minutes.
On the final ring, my resolve broke.
“How could you forget to pick her up?” she snarked over the phone.
“They called me while I’m at work. Do you know how embarrassed that made me feel?
” Every other word seemed emphasized, like they carried their own personal exclamation point.
A teeny, tiny knife, just large enough to poke at a sliver of my exposed guilt.
I huffed a strand of hair out of my face as I slammed my car door shut. Phone pinned between my shoulder and ear, I retrieved Aunt Cadence from the back seat. I bumped the door shut with my hip.
I hadn’t realized urns could be so big.
The urn fit her personality. Larger than normal, a standout of green and white marble with a little dragonfly atop the lid.
David, the funeral home director, had told me prior to her service that she’d purchased the urn nearly ten years ago, just in case.
“Didn’t expect to fulfill it in my lifetime, but people have a way of surprising you,” he told me.
It felt like a sign that I’d picked that same green for the kitchen.
“I’ve been busy,” I told Mom. My steps were sharp up the porch. I didn’t bother looking at any of the windows—scared of what I would find looking back at me, even in daylight. I told myself I was watching my step so I didn’t drop Aunt Cadence.
“Maybe if you organized your schedule like I’ve told you to do, we wouldn’t run into problems like this.”
My nostrils flared. Yes, because my mother was the queen of planning.
I used my elbow to wedge the screen door open, careful to hold Aunt Cadence close and firm. Once inside, I gingerly set her down on the foyer table, which was already crowded with a few sample paint cans and Sayer’s satchel. I shifted the phone from my shoulder into my hand.
“You know, if you were down here helping go through Aunt Cadence’s things, maybe I wouldn’t be so forgetful,” I snapped. “You didn’t even come to the funeral.”
“The tone isn’t necessary,” she quipped. “And that’s mighty high coming from someone who stole all my sister’s things out from under me.”
I stood ramrod straight. My jaw buzzed with adrenaline.
She hated this place. She hated the wide-planked floors, the memories embedded in the wallpapered bathrooms, the empty rooms that begged for guests. She wouldn’t have wanted any of it if she had been willed it.
“I didn’t steal anything from you, Mom.” Defeat edged my words. Then, the longer the silence stretched between us, guilt rubbed around my legs like a forgotten cat, ready for dinner.
Mom hadn’t had a choice in getting the house. Aunt Cadence had willed it all to me—not her. If I were in her shoes, wouldn’t that make me mad, too?
I pinched the bridge of my nose, thinking. But the money.
What would she do with it? There was no telling.
Upstairs, the hum of the portable speaker lowered to a murmur. Sayer’s long strides followed, then he peeked around the corner, paint and dust all over his jeans. The skylight, far above on the third floor, made his thinning hair look even thinner.
His brow quirked, mouth pinched. A silent question.
I only gave a tight head shake, then I turned my back to him so he couldn’t read my lips.
“You should be here,” I said, voice narrow. “You know that.”
“I will not step foot in that place,” she retorted. “Do you know what I went through in that house?
I pinched the bridge of my nose again. I didn’t want to diminish what my father had done, because we all knew he didn’t make the best decisions, but neither had she.
But this had never been her house. I knew she only badgered me about the house because she didn’t get it, but the thought of arguing with her over what was and wasn’t true drained my energy just thinking about it.
“Do you not remember what I told you about that man?” she said. “He gaslit me, he abused me—”
“Mom—”
I could practically feel the fire blowing from her lips when she said, “You, little girl, will not tell me what to do. Do you know all I sacrificed for you? All I made sure you had? You had a roof over your head and food in your stomach and you had a great mother. I know you like to idolize Cadence because she was the fun one to be around, but that house won’t be a home any more than the one I gave you was. ”
My chest blossomed into flames. Every joint in my body locked.
I never expected Harthwait to be a home. That’s why I was selling it. I didn’t need a home, I didn’t need anyone, including her. It all needed to go.
All of it.
I opened my mouth. Stopped. Closed it.
I wanted to say it. But I couldn’t bring myself to remind her of the years I’d waited for her to come home after work, only to have to eat boxed, stale cereal with water and get myself ready for school the next day because she’d gotten strung out in someone’s living room.
Couldn’t bring myself to remind her of the times Mrs. Tomes had taken me aside and asked if everything was okay at home because I’d worn the same clothes to school for three days that week.
I couldn’t repeat her hissed threat when I’d found her in the bathroom the night before the divorce anniversary: If you tell anyone where I’ve been, I’ll tell them you’re a liar, Landry May. Do you want to know where liars go?
I shook my head. But could I blame her? Truly?
I knew how she’d treated me was wrong. But she was my mother.
Mom and Vince had met in college. From what little I’d been able to piece together—through her inflated, ever-changing stories and the tidbits of information I’d gathered from Aunt Cadence or other adults in my mother’s life over the past few years—they had been the toxic couple that should have broken up long before I had been born.
They’d bonded over drugs, then were on-again, off-again until one had convinced the other that getting married would change things.
Then The Affair happened.
I didn’t blame her for spiraling. She’d sunk into depression, refused help, and turned to substances, which she’d racked up a probation for after I was born.
She’d taken his child support money and blown it without a second thought, then cried herself to sleep every night while I curled on my bed, knees to my chest.
There was no custody battle. No arguments over vehicles. Only child support and the removal of both my mother and me from his life.
Vince didn’t take me on weekends. He didn’t come visit on my birthday. He sent one Christmas card when I was ten, only for Mom to shred it like it held the plague. I reached out once a year on his birthday.
The last time he’d called was my college graduation. Asked me to come over for lunch. I’d let myself gain a teeny, tiny bit of hope as I’d driven four hours to his coastal home. Maybe seeing me as an adult would make him realize how much he’d missed. Maybe he regretted his lack of involvement.
That evening he’d offered to pay off my tuition loans. He was a lawyer. Had plenty of money, he said.
“I don’t need it,” I said.
One, because the money would only be a consolation for all his missed time. And two, because I couldn’t guarantee that Mom wouldn’t find a way to take it before I managed to move out.
And if I took it, I would be indebted. I couldn’t pay back something I didn’t possess, let alone from someone who wouldn’t deign to see me half the time.
“We already agreed to pay Emma’s, Lan,” he’d gone on, in his marble kitchen with his stainless-steel appliances, while his phone vibrated on the counter every couple of seconds.
I wondered if it was a mistress calling him. If Emma was there, she’d have written it down in her notes and dissected it later.
“No,” I’d said. “I can pay for it myself.”
“Student debt is no easy feat to pay off,” he urged, distracted. He unwound himself from his perch on the barstool when his phone started to vibrate again. “Just promise me you’ll think about it.”
He didn’t look up when he retrieved the phone, pressed it to his ear, and walked away. I was left sitting on the recliner arm, purse cradled in my lap, eyes stuck to the spot he’d just vacated.
He opened the sliding door to the back patio.
“Hey, no, I’m not busy.” It closed.
Was it bad that I wanted him to argue with me? To make me take the money? To tell me I was being ridiculous, to take the handout, to just let him be a father for once?
But he didn’t say anything about being a father. Only that he’d paid for Emma’s, therefore he must pay for mine.
An emptiness settled in my bones.
Emma hadn’t told me. It shouldn’t have hurt. But for some reason, it did. Maybe she figured if she was to suffer a continuous broken home, why not take what he offered?
Did that mean I was spiteful because I hadn’t taken it?
I pulled myself back to the present. The phone whispered in my ear—not a deadline, just the sound of my mom waiting. Simmering.
“Do you want me to send you part of her ashes?” I asked, voice small.
One, three, five fiery heartbeats.
Mom’s single-word answer twisted the knife further. “No.”
The line went dead.
Birds chattered as my box cutter ripped through the packaging tape.
The kitchen smelled of primer, newspaper, and hot Lowcountry air.
A final, neatly arranged assortment of decorative roosters stood at attention in the breakfast nook to my right.
Somewhere upstairs, a faint procession of thuds vibrated through the walls.
Sayer was taking action on one of the guest bathrooms, trying to remove the shelving unit from above the toilet so we could stain it with the cabinets tomorrow.