Chapter 2 #3
I laid three cards facedown on the duvet. “Past. Present. Future.”
Margaret hummed under her breath, eyes twinkling.
I flipped the card for the past and stared down at it.
“The High Priestess,” I said, reaching out to trace the faded pomegranates and eyeing the veil behind the priestess, the curtain that hid what lay beyond subconscious view.
“Stillness without spectacle,” I murmured.
“A solid symbol of everything you’ve taught me.
Death is a door, not a wall. That you can look on both sides of the veil and normalize what happens in between. ”
Margaret smiled at my words. “You pass on your wisdom and knowledge that you’ve learned and guarded over the course of your life, and you share it with me.” My throat felt thick. “Presence over performance. It’s basically you in card form.”
“Well, I’m flattered,” Margaret said with a laugh, clapping her hands together. “Present?”
I flipped the next card and let out a heavy sigh.
“The Tower,” Margaret murmured, interest coloring her tone as she tapped it with her worn, withered hands.
I noticed the purple bruises and patches of stained skin, and a moment of terror caught me when I realized I couldn’t remember what her hands had looked like before old age and cancer caught up with her.
“The Tower,” I echoed, sucking on my lower lip in thought. “It’s supposed to be about change. Chaotic and destructive events that set everything that follows in motion. But it doesn’t have to be negative. Not all change is. I mean, the fallout can be destructive…”
I traced the crumbling castle absentmindedly, eyeing the tumbling crown, the lightning, the falling figures, and pursed my lips.
“I don’t think you meant for your death to be destructive, but I think it will be,” I said. I looked back into her eyes, and she nodded once, looking tired. “When there are people like Uncle Bill sniffing around.”
Margaret’s lips pulled into a small smile.
I flipped the final card. “Future.”
“Oh,” Margaret said, surprised, as we both stared at the last card.
Death.
“Well,” Margaret huffed with a grin, “I do have a flair for the dramatic, after all.”
We collapsed into fits of laughter, the seriousness leaving the moment as we shared that last night together.
"Are you lost?"
The oily voice of Uncle Bill pulled me from my thoughts, and I blinked out of the memory, realizing that tears had been freely falling.
I dabbed them quickly with a Kleenex tucked into my pocket and cleared my throat, glancing at him as he stood in the doorway, balding, cold blue eyes, a nose too big for his pretentious face, and an overly expensive suit.
"I needed a minute," I told him flatly.
Uncle Bill hummed softly and stepped farther into the room, hands clasped snobbishly behind his back as he surveyed his treasures. The complete picture of a man at ease.
He wore the look of a man who had already picked the bones clean from the carcass he had devoured.
"You are going to sell that ridiculous shop, right?" he asked, his voice sharp with disapproval. "Once your mother and I get our inheritances, you won’t have such a fat cushion to fall back on when it goes belly up."
My jaw clenched, and I took a moment to breathe before answering. "No."
"Dove, come on," Uncle Bill laughed, shaking his head. "You’re young! You could sell up and travel. See the world, live a little before tying yourself to the legacy of a batty old woman. Why would you want to shackle yourself to some old woman’s fantasy?"
"It’s not a fantasy," I told him stiffly. "She did this her entire life."
"Oh, don’t I know it," he muttered with an eye roll before walking toward a tall wooden cabinet. He ran his fingers along its polished surface with a heavy sigh. "This is where she’ll be, you know."
Confusion washed over me, and I frowned. "What?"
"My mother," he snapped, his lip curling into a sneer. "Right next to Dad."
My stomach churned, and I resisted the urge to launch myself at him and throw my fist into his face. That wouldn’t end well for me. He was exactly the sort of asshole who would press charges against his own family.
"She wanted to be scattered in the Pacific," I told him calmly, as if speaking to a small child.
"Well," Bill said coldly, "that isn’t going to happen."
My blood turned to fire inside my veins. I blinked at him in disbelief, my gaze shifting to the wooden cabinet with distaste. The very thought of her urn being placed next to that man...
"She hated him," I spat, fury rising in my throat. "He was horrible. To all of you. He beat her. He beat you."
Bill’s eyes darkened, and he tapped the table once. "You know nothing of it, Dove."
"I know all of it, you moron," I snarled, curling my hands into fists. "She told me everything! We had no secrets. She wasn’t even married to that asshole for the last twenty years of her life! It was her, Diana and Ida, and she wanted to be scattered in the Pacific, just like Diana was.”
My voice had risen in octaves, and a satisfied smirk spread across Uncle Bill’s face as he got the reaction he wanted. A cruelness settled over him, souring the air between us.
"Yet here we are," he mused. "Guess she and Dad get to spend eternity together after all."
Uncle Bill shook his head in disgust. "My mother could live in perversion all she wanted, but now I make things right. She spent all those years frolicking around with those two women. It was unnatural. Disgusting. My fool of a sister stupidly allowed you to spend time in that world, and now look at you.”
My pulse pounded in my ears as I took a staggering step forward, ready to launch myself at him.
"You are a disgusting, miserable excuse for a human being!" My voice came out louder than I expected, bouncing off the walls.
He rolled his neck lazily. "Listen, you may have fallen for the Mystique of my mother and whatever little stories she twisted and weaved, whatever perversion you also succumbed to, this dating women business, but let it be known that from this day on, Dove Marley, you are no longer welcome in this house.
You will not visit her ashes here. I will not see you here.
Go rot in that shop with those cards and stones and whatever junk is there. The reign of Margaret Porter is over."
His words struck like a slap, burning into my soul. I stumbled back a step, gaping at him in horror, feeling the roundness in my eyes.
No.
Now wasn’t the time for impulsiveness.
I couldn’t make a stupid decision right now.
I had to—
I had to leave.
I couldn’t give him what he wanted.
I swallowed hard, shook my head, and turned to leave.
"That’s it," he called after me. "Run along, you weak little witch."
I halted, gritting my teeth. My eyes caught on the pearly white vase beside me. Without thinking, I grabbed it, turned, and hurled it straight at him.
He let out a bellowing sound as he dodged, and the vase went flying.
Right into the brown cabinet.
The one where my beautiful grandmother would eventually be locked away.
No.
Not if I had anything to do with it.
"You little bitch!" he roared.
Without another word, I stormed out of the house.