And if anyone thinks they can treat her like an accessory…
They’re going to learn what it costs to take something from me.
Chapter 18 - Lucy
The apartment is peaceful in the careful, hopeful way it only ever is when Mom is having a good morning. Not a perfect one. Not a miracle. Just… better.
Like the very room was holding its breath, relieved and anticipatingwhat we know always comes. She’s asleep in her bed, bundled under her favourite quilt with the curtains drawn against the late-fall light. Her breathing is steady. Even. This kind of morning makes me think, maybe today won’t fall apart. That’s the only reason I let myself sit at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee and my laptop open, pretending I’m just another woman with a Saturday morning and nowhere urgent to be.
No doctor calls, pharmacy alerts, or crises.
I check my phone and still nothing from Julian.
I tell myself I don’t care.
I check it again anyway, but I only see the last message he sent."Good."
Em’s door is closed down the hall. After the week we had, I don’t blame her for sleeping in.
I’m halfway through an email to a florist when there’s a knock at the door.
Panic creeps in.Who would be here this early on a Saturday morning?
I stand, moving quietly so I don’t wake Mom, and open the door.
Two men in dark jackets stand in the hallway with a rolling cart stacked with large, immaculate, white, glossy boxes. Each one is tied in thick red velvet ribbon and labelled with my name in elegant black script.
“Lucy Bennett?” one of them asks.
“Yes,” I say with a croak catching at the back of my throat.
“We have a delivery that requires a signature.”
I stare at the boxes.
“How many?” I ask faintly.
He stares at me with a faint smile. “All of them.”
I step aside, heart starting to pound, head feeling a little light, and they wheel the cart in. As the first box is handed to me, I have to sign for it. And the next. And the next.
Every signature feels like a i'm being tied to something, but to what I am not sure.
Every box feels liketoomuch.
From down the hall, a door creaks open.
Em appears, her wavy brown hair a disaster, sweatshirt twisted crooked on her body, looking like a raccoon that fought a wine bottle and lost.
“What in the hell... Did no one get the memo that it's Saturday...” she starts, then stops.
Her eyes go wide.
“Oh my God.”
I swallow. “Don’t.”
“Oh my God,” she repeats, louder. “Lucy, is that… are those...”
