Page 106 of A Heart So Haunted
Meredith held one end of a hefty cardboard box, eyes wide. Mom grappled with the other end like she was readying to wrestle an alligator.
“What are you doing here?” I blurted. Both women’s attention whipped to me.
Meredith’s forehead glistened with sweat. “Landry, tell your mother—”
“She has Cadence’s things!” Mom pressed. She tugged at the box like a rabid dog. “She can’t just sell them!”
I stalked forward and attempted to wedge my way between my mother and the box. The side ripped. “Mom, let go. I gave them to her.”
She released. The box toppled sideways. Meredith grunted. I stepped between the two, but Mom’s expression had already crumpled into betrayal.
“Why would you do that?” she sputtered. “Her things—”
“They’re mine now.”
Mom drew up to her full height. We were eye level with only a taped box between us. “Landry May Frederick, you listen to me, and you listen good. This is selfish of you. You don’t even offer me a chance to look through her things before you get rid of them?” she spat.
The slightest niggle of guilt worked its way into the base of my skull. I tamped it down—no, I’d asked. I’d offered. I’d sent ashes, I’d tried to have civil conversation, and she’d trapezed over it each time.
“Mom—”
“Who do you think you are, Landry? Is this the person I raised you to be?” she sputtered, cheeks reddening. Meredith stood still behind me against a storage shelf, eyes bouncing between the two of us. “After all I did for you? How ungrateful can you be. I get it, I’m a horrible mother. I did an awful job with you, I ruined you, I ruined your life, but have you ever thought about how you ruinedmine?”
The room became uncannily still. Whatever little pieces of hope, sympathy that congregated in my chest a moment ago suddenly whisked away on a cold breeze.
Mom stepped over another box and stopped inches from my face, angry tears puddling in her lower lashes. “You ran him away, you took my sister, and you took everything she would have left me. You’reso much better than me, aren’t you? Ever since you hit high school, it’s only ever been aboutyou.”
The tang of liquor floated off her breath. I didn’t dare inhale all the way.
This wasn’t my mother talking. I knew it wasn’t. But I’d be lying if I said the words didn’t hurt all the same.
With a final huff and pat of her hair, which dangled at the nape of her neck in a knotted bun, she stalked from the storage room. Something hit the floor with a thud—likely from a display. Then the door jingled.
Meredith sighed. “Well.”
I bit my lip, unsure what to say.
“You okay, Lanny?”
I bit my tongue and willed the lump in my throat down. So many emotions. Too many. What was more exhausting than being reminded of everything that was wrong with your life?
“I’m fine,” I murmured.
She set the box down. I didn’t turn when she wrapped her arms around me; she gave me a sturdy squeeze.
“It’s okay, baby. She’s not mad at you. She just hates life a little bit more than most.”
I let my head fall on her shoulder. “She’s always been like that.”
“I know.”
I don’t know what made the words fall—maybe because it was Meredith, and Meredith felt like a warm place to sleep, like sitting in a chair in the sunshine.
“I was always mad that Aunt Cadence didn’t let me stay with her,” I said.
I felt her sigh. Then nod. A bit quieter, she echoed, “I know.”
“She probably broke a display.”
