Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 114419 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 572(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114419 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 572(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Oh, Mirabelle.
She returned the photos and coins to the box and walked dazedly back to the kitchen.
She stopped in the doorway, her eyes going to a cookbook on a stand on the counter, closed but with a bookmark sticking out of the top. Her breath halted, and she moved toward it and flipped it open to the marked location, her breath gusting out in a sudden rush when she saw what was contained within. A folded piece of paper. Her heart hammering, she unfolded it, already knowing what it was and who had written it. Him.
He’d been here.
Sienna’s eyes flew over the words, her heart sinking like lead.
Yes, Mother was gone for good, or so I thought. And then one day, I turned on the television and there she was. Mother.
She was in the audience, cheering for another boy as he dominated in poker. I stood, watching. Absorbed. My mind whirled. Buzzed with . . . memories. Not dreams. And then, understanding dawned, like a black sun rising over a colorless sea. She was real, not the figment of my imagination I’d convinced myself she was. No . . . she’d been very real. Alive. She’d been living a double life. She’d been hiding, and she’d never stopped.
Once I found Mother, I could no longer pretend. I had to come to terms with the way things had really been.
The way things were.
It took me a long time. Years.
I looked for Mother in the audience as the other boy played his game, so much pride glowing in her eyes. I went to an event the big winner himself was advertised to be at, and Mother was there too. I followed her to a dingy little trailer, where she’d been hiding. How long had she been there? So close and yet so very far away.
There were pictures inside of both the boy and a girl growing up through the years. Mother was in the pictures too. Hugging the boy. Arms wrapped around the girl. Smiling. So much smiling. There were pictures of the boy and the girl together, the boy staring at the girl like she’d hung the moon and all the stars. Where was she now, I wondered. Where had she gone? Mother had obviously loved her like her own child.
Loved her in a way she hadn’t loved me.
No photos of me hung on her wall or decorated the table next to the sofa. Not a single one. It was as if, to Mother, I’d never existed at all.
Later, the big winner bought her a huge fancy house. How happy she was. How satisfied with her life. How little she missed me or felt sorry for what she’d done.
Oh yes, I understood now. And I grew angry.
I realized that maybe Father was right about Mother. Maybe I was the one who’d been wrong.
I thought about it all the time. I thought about it when I went home at night, eating dinner alone at the table where I’d once been raped, sitting in the chair where Father and Mr. Patches had sat as I stabbed them to death. I thought about it when I cleaned other people’s toilets and emptied their trash.
And I began planning.
I kept tabs on Mother, my anger and confusion keeping pace with my loneliness. The big winner, my brother, achieved more and more success as he strategized and built his empire.
I had no empire. I had no success. I had nothing and no one. I had only memories that still sometimes made me scream in the middle of the night. Screams that went unheard by anyone other than the decaying bag of bones in the room three doors down.
I watched Mother, the pride in her eyes as she gazed upon her son. The one she’d chosen over me. The one she protected.
In some ways I understood why she’d chosen him. She must have seen in him all the things I lacked. He had her sky-blue eyes and her easy laugh. He was a master of cards just like her. He’d inherited the ability to effortlessly keep track of the ones that had already been played and intuit the likelihood of what would be drawn next. I watched him—I recognized what he was doing because I’d watched Mother do it too. Once upon a time. Long ago. I had tried. I’d practiced. But I simply didn’t possess that talent.
He was a game master.
He was a big winner.
He was who I wanted to be.
I was nothing but a hack.
An embarrassment.
Yes, no wonder Mother had chosen him and left me behind. But I had something he didn’t. I had Father’s ruthlessness. Or I could if I tried hard enough. I knew I could. Because the boiling heat I felt inside me was rage at her abandonment when I’d still needed her. Rage at the man who’d lived the life I should have lived.