Page 16 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
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 alongits 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, "thatisn’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 beatyou."
