Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 115833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 579(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 579(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
“I know.” I sighed, glancing at my little sister again. She gave me a you know what to do look. “I’ll call her tomorrow.”
“See? So easy, girl.”
My mouth twitched just as my doorbell rang.
“Who is that?” Octavia asked, eyeing me.
That was a good question, considering it was nearly eight o’clock at night.
I checked the security camera app on my phone, but when I saw who it was, I grimaced. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
I climbed out of my chair and went inside to open the front door. A woman stood on the other side, her snow-white skin flushed and her hair in a neat chestnut bun atop her head.
Her brows were so thin they may as well have been penciled in, and her eyes . . . well, I couldn’t hate them, because they were just like Lew’s. Hazel and surrounded by thick lashes. It was my former mother-in-law, Gloria Roberts.
I leaned against the frame of the door and folded my arms. “Have you ever heard of a phone call, Gloria?”
Gloria turned her nose up at me. “It’s the first birthday of Lewis’s since he passed,” she stated.
“I’m well aware of that.”
“I was on this side of town and thought I’d visit his grave. That’s when I remembered the photo album with all his baby pictures in them. He asked to borrow it so he could show them to you.”
She looked me up and down in my sweats and hoodie, like she was searching for whatever it was about me that appealed to her son.
“Do you want your photo album back?” I asked, ready for her to get out of my face already.
“I do,” she replied curtly.
I stepped back to let her into the house, and she closed the door behind her. I retrieved the baby-blue photo album from the cabinet of the TV stand and carried it to her.
“None of the pictures have been removed, have they?”
“No, Gloria. I can assure you all the pictures are there.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, then pointed her attention over my shoulder. Octavia was walking inside, her lips pressed and her arms crossed as she looked my mother-in-law from head to toe.
“Is that all?” I asked, and Gloria put her focus on me.
“Yes, that’s all.”
“Good, because we were in the middle of enjoying wine and cupcakes to celebrate Lew’s birthday.”
Gloria’s eyes watered as she averted her attention to the box of cupcakes on the counter. Her throat bobbed, and she hugged the photo album to her chest. I felt sorry for her, and that was a rare thing to feel for a woman like her.
“Would you like to join us?”
She swallowed and swiftly shook her head. “No. I have a busy night. Goodbye, Davina.”
I watched her walk out the door and shook my head. Why couldn’t she be a normal person? Always with her dramatic entrances and judgment.
I hate saying it, but Gloria Roberts was a stuck-up bitch, and though I hated the stigma of daughters disliking their mothers-in-law, I truly did not like mine. She’d made it that way, though, and it’d only gotten worse after Lewis died. She kept telling me I should’ve tried harder for him—that I should’ve been awake when he died, as if I wasn’t carrying enough guilt about it.
When it came to Lew’s wake, Gloria had been the worst. It was common knowledge that she liked to be the center of attention, but that day she made everything about her.
She didn’t like the food, so she ordered a meal from DoorDash she could eat. She didn’t want to see images of me and Lew together inside my house, so she stayed outside the majority of the time, smoking her cigarettes and shit-talking.
She didn’t even say goodbye when she left, but she kept popping by for little things afterward, like Lew’s football jersey from college, or the fedora his dad had passed down to him. It was vintage, and she felt it was important to hold on to.
I had never minded giving her those things. The only thing that bugged me was that she never provided a heads-up. She just showed up at my doorstep like I was meant to be at her service. She’d blamed me for everything that went wrong in Lew’s life, even his cancer.
“You’re the one who’s killing him. You’re the reason he’s so sick!” I could still remember her shouting that in my face when Lew told her about the diagnosis.
“Why is that heffa always popping up?” Octavia grumbled when we were back in our seats on the deck.
“I don’t know, but I swear I might end up going off on her one day. She’s really been testing my patience.”
Octavia laughed as my phone vibrated. It was a notification for a new email, but I had to read who it was from twice, because I thought my mind was playing tricks on me.