Page 5 of Ashes of Saints

Now I get to decide how this plays out.

Said the spider to the fly...

CHAPTER TWO

AURORA

Four hours earlier

“Thank you. It will be beautiful.” I smile and squeeze the ball of tissues in my hand.

I finally cried.

I’m sure funeral directors are used to grief—there’s a box of tissues on every surface in his office—but I wasn’t expecting this to be the moment I finally allowed myself to cry.

Perhaps it’s because talking about her final resting place makes it all so much more real.

I had an interesting relationship with my mother, so it’s been a confusing few days coming to grips with her passing. I don’t miss her and feel a lightness now that she is gone, which took me by surprise. Like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

Like I have my life back.

What does that mean?

I was homeschooled and raised differently than most kids, but she wasn’t a smothering mother. Strict, yes. But if I had to describe her in one word, it would be mysterious.

Or secretive.

I do not know who my father is and now I never will.

I hate her for that.

God, here I am disrespecting her, even in death. After all she did for me. Ugh. Mary-Anne Whitlock’s words are still in my head.

After all I’ve done for you.

Does it make me a bitch when I can’t think of a single thing my mother did for me outside of what is expected of a parent? Are we born to praise and thank them for feeding us, loving us, providing for us?

It’s not wrong to be grateful for your parents or thank them, but the constant manipulation in that statement all my life has been...odd.

“You’ve chosen well. The oak is lovely.”

“Thank you.” I take the folder from the funeral director and head toward the door. The feel of the heavy paper in my hand is a reminder of all the lies and deceit that I’m going to bury next week.

How dare she not tell me she was sick? Six months ago, she’d had a stroke, and the second one had killed her.

I know why she never told me. Mom knew I’d push for answers, which she hated me doing. Any time, as a young girl, I began to ask anything, I was slapped across the face. That stopped when I was sixteen. I threatened to call the police.

Now she’s dead and everything she owns belongs to me. I will be searching through everything to find some of the answers I deserve.

At least I think it’s all coming to me. Her last will and testament is being read next week. I’m her only child, so who else is she going to leave her estate to?

What’s in the estate is also a mystery. She lived, for the past six years, in a large penthouse in Manhattan that I never knew she could afford.

We grew up in the suburbs of New York—at least an hour from the city—in a modest neighborhood. She told me she was an accountant. I don’t remember her ever going to work.

When I left home and she purchased the penthouse, I asked her about it. “You can’t afford this place, Mom. Are you crazy?”

“Aurora do not speak to me like that. I saved hard and was smart with my money. Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. It’s none of your business.”

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