Read Online Shattered by Melody Carlson - Free Book Online

heavy?
    More than anything I long for an escape, a way to stop the never-ending pain gnawing away at my insides. I feel desperate and frantic... like I’m holding on by a frazzled thread. Lola has called and left several sweet messages, but I’m afraid to return her calls. Afraid that I’ll let the truth slip out, the real reason my mom died. I have to push Lola away from me now. It’s too risky to be friends anymore. As hard as it is, it’s a good thing she lives so far away.
    A little before two o’clock, Dad and Aunt Kellie are about to leave for the mortuary to make the arrangements for my mother’s funeral. I opt out of this appointment, and neither of them questions me. Instead they look at me with sympathetic eyes, as if I’m the biggest victim in this pool of pain. They do not suspect that I am nearly as guilty as the murderer, maybe even more so since the murderer didn’t specifically choose my mother to kill and rob. He probably just went for the easiest target. I was the one who set my mother up for him.
    Knowing I’m alone in the house for a while, I go into the master bedroom and into the walk-in closet my parents shared. I stand amid my mother’s clothes, inhaling the aroma that still smells like her. It’s a clean mix of her favorite perfume, Miracle, and the smell of freshly pressed clothes and something else, something indescribable, something that is simply the essence of her.
    But the smell of that perfume, a spicy floral blend, gives me an idea. I slip into their bathroom, and there on the counter is the rectangular pink bottle. I pick it up and almost spray some, but my dad might come in here and smell it... and that would probably just depress him even more. Instead I remove the lid and take a quick sniff, and I’m immediately transported to the day she and I found this particular fragrance.
    We were clothes shopping for me, the summer before I started high school, and it was the first time my mom had been out after having knee surgery. We stopped by the perfume counter so she could sit and rest for a bit. That was when I urged her to try out some new perfumes. I wanted her to get something for herself since, as usual, she’d been focused on me. And when she smelled this Lancome fragrance, she instantly liked it, so I talked her into splurging.
    “It smells so good that I’m almost light-headed,” she admitted as she squirted herself again. “I think it might be more effective than my pain pills—and cheaper too.” The salesgirl and I laughed at that, but my mother bought the perfume and it became her signature fragrance.
    I take another whiff now, wishing that my mother’s Miracle perfume would miraculously take away my pain and make me light-headed too. But instead it makes me feel like I’m going to sneeze. I wipe my nose with a tissue. Knowing full well that I’m way out of line, I open my parents’ medicine cabinet and stare at the myriad items stored there. Might there possibly be something here to take away my pain?
    I pick up a brown prescription bottle, but it’s for my dad’s allergies. I put it back, in the exact same spot. But as I dig a bit deeper I find that, just as I suspected, my mom’s old prescription for Vicodin is still here. I open it to discover that the bottle is about half full. I pour all but a few of the pills into a tissue, then wrap them up and pocket the bundle, returning the nearly empty bottle back to the exact same spot.
    My hands are shaking and my heart is pounding as I hurry to the hall bathroom and pop a pill into my mouth, washing it down with lukewarm tap water. I stand there looking in the mirror, waiting for it to take effect. I know this is wrong. And yet I know that everything else about my life is even more wrong. So somehow, this wrong doesn’t really seem to matter as much.
    As I stare at the image of the girl in the mirror, I am certain she is a stranger. The long blonde hair that needs washing is dull and lifeless. The complexion