Standing In The Shadows. Shannon McKenna
“Oh, that’s OK, honey. I’ll do it myself, tomorrow.”
“Promise?”
Barbara patted her daughter’s anxious face. “Of course I will.”
A teabag dangled inside the teapot, fluffy with mold. “How long has it been since you ate, Mom?” Erin demanded.
Barbara made a vague gesture. “I had some crackers a while ago.”
“You have to eat.” Erin rummaged through the clutter for the dish soap. “Did you know about Cindy’s scholarship?”
Barbara winced. “Yes,” she murmured. “They called me.”
“And?” Erin scrubbed the teapot with soapy water, and waited.
No reply was forthcoming. She looked over her shoulder, frowning. “Mom? What’s happening? Tell me.”
“What do you want me to say, hon? The conditions are clear. The scholarship is only valid if Cindy keeps up a 3.0 average. It was 2.1 last semester. Her midterms this semester were a disaster. There’s no money for tuition if she loses that scholarship.”
Erin stared at her in blank dismay. “Cindy can’t just quit school.”
Barbara’s shoulders lifted, and dropped.
Erin stood there, frozen. Her soapy hands dripped onto the floor.
Mom looked so defeated. Now would be the moment to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but there was no money for tuition at a private college. Not even fees from her new client could solve a problem of that size. The CDs were cashed in. The new mortgage had gone to pay for Dad’s defense.
Erin wiped her hands on her jeans. She groped for something positive to say as she gazed at her mother. The impulse sagged and faded into silence. Barbara Riggs had always been so well dressed and perfectly made up. Now her face was puffy, her eyes dull, her unwashed hair snarled into a crooked halo.
Suddenly the messy kitchen was too depressing to endure. “Let’s go into the living room, Mom.”
Barbara flinched. “I don’t want to look at the—”
“There’s nothing wrong with the TV. Once I hook it back up, I’ll show you that it’s as normal as the one upstairs. There’s no space on this table for me to open your mail. Come on, let’s go.”
Erin scooped up the mail on her way in, trying not to notice her mother’s stumbling, shambling gait behind her. She flipped on the lamp in the living room. Something was odd. She hadn’t noticed it before, distracted as she’d been by the disheveled state of the TV. “Why is the clock turned to the wall? And Grandmother Riggs’s mirror?”
Her mother’s blank, startled gaze lit on the stained wooden backing of the antique mirror. The wire that held it to the hook barely cleared the ornate gilded frame. Her eyes widened. “I never touched it.”
Erin dropped the mail on the couch, and lifted the mirror off the wall. It was incredibly heavy. She turned it around.
The mirror was shattered.
Cracks radiated out of an ugly hole, as if someone had bashed it with a blunt object. Glinting shards of mirror glass littered the carpet. Her mother’s horror-stricken face was reflected in the jagged pieces.
Their eyes met. Mom held up her hands, as if to ward off a blow. “It wasn’t me,” she said. “I would never do that. Never.”
“Who else has been in the house?” Erin demanded. “How on earth could you not have heard the person who did this?”
“I…I’ve been sleeping a lot,” her mother faltered. “And a couple of times, I, ah, took some Vicodin for my headaches and my back pain. And when I take a Vicodin, an army could troop through here and I wouldn’t hear them. But God knows, if there’s one thing I would never forget, after everything that’s happened, it’s to lock the doors!”
Erin laid the mirror carefully upright on the floor against the wall and wrapped her arms around herself.
Seven years of bad luck. As if they hadn’t had their quota.
Another thought struck her. She glanced at the grandfather clock, another of the treasures that had come with Grandmother Riggs from England at the end of the nineteenth century. She turned it around.
The face of the antique clock was shattered.
She drifted to the couch and sat down. The pile of mail beside her suddenly seemed much less important than it had minutes before.
“Mom, maybe you should talk to someone,” she whispered.
Barbara’s reddened eyes swam with desperate tears. “Honey. I swear. I did not do this. Please believe me.”
A heavy silence fell between them. Silence that was like darkness, teeming and writhing with terrible possibilities.
Erin shook herself and got to her feet. “I’m going to clean up that broken glass. Then I’m taking the frame and clock to Cindy’s room until we can repair them. And then we’re going to clean up your kitchen.”
“Don’t worry about it, sweetie. I’ll do it.”
“No, you won’t,” Erin said.
Barbara tightened the sash of her bathrobe with an angry tug. “Do not take that tone with me, Erin Katherine Riggs.”
Her mother’s sharp response made her feel better, oddly enough.
She murmured a garbled apology and hefted the mirror, shaking as much glass as she could out onto the floor. Busy was better. Activity blocked thinking, and she didn’t want to think. She preferred to scurry around, hauling the mirror and clock upstairs, gathering up slivers of glass from the carpet and putting them into a plastic bucket.
That was better than chewing on the two possibilities available to her: Mom had done it and didn’t remember doing it, or Mom hadn’t done it. Which meant that someone else had.
She wasn’t sure which notion terrified her more.
She shouldn’t leave Mom at a time like this, but she couldn’t afford not to go to Silver Fork. They needed that money so badly. Her mind ran over the problem the way the vacuum cleaner was running over the rug. Each time she thought she was done, she heard another little ting. Always more of them, hidden in the deep pile carpet like tiny, cruel teeth awaiting unwary bare feet.
Barbara ran a sink full of hot, soapy water, and was washing the dishes when Erin came back in from emptying the garbage. It was bad enough to have admitted to those hallucinations, or whatever they were, but to have her daughter think she was so far gone as to smash family heirlooms…that was unthinkable. Heaven knew, if she were to smash a Riggs family heirloom, she would damn well remember doing it.
Erin leaned against the porch doorway. Barbara’s heart ached at the pinched, anxious look in her daughter’s face.
“Thought I’d get to work on this mess,” she said awkwardly.
Erin looked relieved. “Great idea.”
“I’ll just load up this dishwasher and set it running. Maybe we can nuke a couple of Budget Gourmets. Have you eaten?”
“I should get home. I have to pack for my trip tomorrow. Let’s put one in for you.” Erin peered into the freezer. “Swiss steak and chicken teriyaki are your choices, Mom.”
Barbara’s stomach lurched unpleasantly at the thought of food. “Leave them for now, hon. I’ll have one later. What’s this trip of yours?”
“I’m going to the coast. Another consulting job for Mueller.”
“Oh, that’s lovely! You see? Cream always rises to the top, no matter what happens. You’re going to do just fine, sweetie.”
“We all will, Mom,”