Page 131 of A Heart So Haunted
Please, I mouthed, forehead creased, face flushed with embarrassment.
His jaw clenched, nostrils flared, with the faintest flash of yellow over his eyes. But he didn’t move.
I turned to Mom. Eased closer. She swayed again. Whatever she’d taken was starting to hit, hard, and there I was, the truth molding itself to my lips: “Mom—I know where the jewel—”
I tried to grab her wrists, but she swung an empty candleholder. I hissed when it clipped my cheekbone; immediately, a heady iron scent filled the room, my skin on fire.
I held my hand to my burning cheek as she filled her pockets with anything she considered valuable.
When she reached for the new mirror I’d bought for the mantel, something overtook me.
“Landry—” Hadrian started.
“Mom, that’s enough.” I tried to grab her waist, but she had a hold on the bottom of the frame. It jerked forward, sending all the decor to the floor. She tried to bat my hands away, but I held fast. The two of us stumbled against the closest chair.
I heard the crunch before I felt the grind of a box under my foot. I glanced down—the wooden box I’d set on the mantel lay partially shattered, it’s latch now broken, contents spilled around Hadrian’s feet.
Three teeth had fallen on the floor—and I’d just stepped on two.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Mom slumped against me. I staggered and grabbed for the chair—kicking the last tooth across the room. Hadrian’s arms wound between us, wrestling my mother away from me with a firm grasp. The remnants of shattered teeth crunched under my heel, stuck to my shoe.
“Let me go!” Mom screeched. Her words slurred, the sudden, narrow-minded focus she’d been grasping starting to slip. Outside, the distant sound of police sirens grew louder.
“Stop fighting,” Hadrian growled, mouth curved in a pained frown. The veins in his arms protruded the longer he held her still.
“You,” Mom snapped. She flung her head back. Narrowly missed Hadrian’s nose. He jutted his chin up, keeping the fragile parts of his face away. “You’re why she ain’t with Ivan, aren’t you?”
Hadrian’s jaw feathered but he didn’t speak.
She mumbled under her breath, limbs calming, only to shove and claw again.
My hands shook. I picked up a few of the sharper items she’d tried to pocket, careful where I stepped, while Mom struggled against Hadrian. He ground his teeth and held fast while she kicked and scratched, but nothing broke his composure.
I couldn’t tell if it was me, the room, or if it was Mom’s screaming, but my blood sizzled in my veins.We’d found the teeth.And here Mom was, in the house, falling apart.
This was everything I’d never wanted.
Everything had just been perfect.
Tears welled in my eyes. I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood and gathered the trinkets into my shirt, then picked up the broken teeth parts and the box and stuffed them into my pocket. I trembled from head to foot. Where was the last one?
Mom groaned, slumped out of my peripheral. She used her weight against Hadrian, dropping limp, but he held her up anyway. Her shirt road higher, higher, until a sliver of skin shown around her midriff. Her hipbones poked out over her belt loops.
I stilled. The skin was bruised, almost translucent. Little marks all over her skin.
It hit me, then. She wasn’t just my mother. She was struggling. She was human, and she’d made choices, and those choices were wrong, sure. But she was no different from me or Hadrian or Emma or Sayer.
Her choices were bad choices, and they had consequences. But seeing her, as an outsider, slowly inhaling the whole picture instead of just the section of life where she’d failed me—she’d probably been failed somewhere, too. And she was hurting.
It wasn’t just people that hurt people.
Hurtpeople hurt people.
Dad was right. She needed to help herself. I couldn’t expect someone that couldn’t take care of themselves to feel sorry for never taking care of me. As a child, I was failed, but as an adult, I knew Mom was broken, and I couldn’t change that.
She’d have to.
