5 The shadow of the dollmaker
It was six months until my eighteenth birthday, and the last year or so had pushed my sanity to its limits. I felt like I was lost in the eye of the storm, the tornado of my life whooshing around me and there was fuck all I could do to neither stop it nor understand it.
Youri had proposed to mom on their European holiday, as I had predicted, and she was busy planning their wedding.
They were hoping to get married in the spring.
She had wasted no time doing podcasts about wedding planning and her subscribers thought it was so romantic and well deserved, and that she should be granted happiness after all that had gone on.
She was less concerned about the neighbors, but all of her old girlfriends had come out of the woodwork because they wanted to be invited to the social event of the year, but Mom didn’t want them there.
It was going to be filmed for her channel, and the guest list would be a chosen few from a competition on her page, whereby the winner would attend the wedding and win a wellness hamper.
Also in attendance would be the camera crew and the mansion staff .
Mom and I were like strangers. She no longer cared if I did well at school or about anything that was happening in my life.
I could drop dead, and she wouldn’t notice.
I reminded her of dad and her failed marriage, so the sooner I moved out, the happier she’d be.
It was like she was counting down the days until my graduation.
The mansion felt suffocating in spite of its size and no longer felt like my home.