When I found my late mom’s irreplaceable pottery collection shattered across my living room floor, I thought my world had ended. But my stepmom had no idea that her moment of cruelty was about to become her worst nightmare… because I’d been three steps ahead of her the entire time. I’m Bella, and there are exactly two things in this world I’d protect with everything I have.
The first is my sanity. The second is the pottery collection my mom left me when she died five years ago. Mom was a ceramic artist.
She had a studio in our garage with a kiln she’d saved three years to buy. Every piece she made told a story. The sea-green vase she made the day after her first chemo session.
The coffee mug with the tiny heart pressed into the handle that I wrapped my six-year-old fingers around every morning. The bowl with her thumbprint still visible in the clay. When she died, I packed everything with bubble wrap and tissue paper, then displayed them in a tall glass cabinet in our living room.
I’d moved back in with Dad after Mom passed not because I couldn’t afford my own place, but because the silence in his house could swallow a person whole. We needed each other. For a while, it worked.
Then Dad met Karen at a work conference. She was everything Mom wasn’t. Picture polished nails, professionally styled hair, and designer outfits.
They got married two years after Mom’s death. I tried to adjust. But within weeks, I realized Karen and I were never going to be friends.
She hated Mom’s pottery. “It’s so cluttered,” she said one morning. “You really should think about minimizing.
Clean lines are so much more elegant.”
I looked at the cabinet. “They’re not cluttered. They’re my mom’s memories.”
She gave a tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Of course, sweetie. I just mean… they’re a bit rustic, aren’t they?
Like something you’d find at a yard sale.”
“My mom made them.”
“I know that,” Karen said with false patience. “I’m just saying, maybe you could put some in storage?”
Every few days, she’d comment about something. “These really don’t match the aesthetic I’m going for.” Or, “Don’t you think it’s time to let go of the past?”
Then one afternoon, Karen cornered me in the kitchen while Dad was at work.
“I’ve been thinking. You have so many of those pottery pieces. Would you mind if I took a few?
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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