Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
She doesn’t give a shit about honoring her dying wish, because that would require her caring about someone other than herself.
Don’t get caught in her web, sense whispered in my ear. Remember everything you learned about dealing with narcissistic abusers. Remember that no matter how much you wish, beg, plead, want them to... they never change.
Just tell her to go.
“What is it?” I turned around and snatched the folder from her grip. “A letter from Omma that you wrote yourself? Pictures from the bad old days? Or is it...?” I trailed off, reading four uppercase words across the top of the document that shut me down better than an explanation.
LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT
“What is this...?” My whole body went numb.
“Read what it says under Disposition of Property.”
My hands moved of their own accord, flipping through the pages, they took me to the second to last page.
“She’s leaving it all to you.” Sue’s voice whispered against my ear. “Yes, all that she has. Omma made some bad investments in the last couple years, and that was before she found out about the cancer. Between the chemo and experimental trial after experimental trial, she doesn’t have much, but still, she’s leaving it all to you. Ten thousand dollars, her car, and even Halmeoni’s necklace.
“We bought the house from her to help her cover the medical bills,” Sue confessed. “That belongs to me now, but you get her book collection and most of her furniture. You can keep it or sell it—up to you.”
She didn’t have to tell me that. I could read it all in fine, black ink. All of Omma’s earthly and monetary possessions bequeathed to my youngest daughter, Sarang Kim.
“It’s not fake,” Sue blurted out in the stretching silence. “You can see for yourself that she and the witnesses all signed it. It’s her real will.”
Sue didn’t have to tell me that either. I once dreamed of becoming a lawyer until Sue saw to the end of that. I knew when I was holding a legal document in my hands.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Sue asked when again I didn’t speak.
“Yes,” I rasped, holding the papers in my trembling hands. “It means Omma did something she’s never done in the eighteen years I lived in her house. She... admitted she was wrong.” I raised my head, gazing at her for the first proper time since she walked into my life. “And not even your lies, schemes, or tricks could ever get her to do that.
“She really is dying.”
She nodded. “So... will you come?”
My grip tightened on the will, crumpling the paper between my fingertips. “Why now?”
“She’s on hospice. The doctors have her on so many meds to stop the pain, they’re making her loopy and confused. Some days she doesn’t know what year it is or even who she is,” she said. “She’ll ask where you are, forgetting that she sent you away, and then when she remembers... she cries.” Sue looked away, her jaw clenching tight. “She’s just reliving one of the worst days of her life over and over and over, and it’s hell.
“Omma is already in enough pain. She doesn’t need to carry the regret of never making it right with you to the grave as well.” Sue snapped back to me, glaring. “I know you think I’m some kind of monster, but not even I can watch my own mother suffer like this. I can’t do anything to help her, except bring her you. So,” she barked, making me stiffen. “Are you coming or not?”
I stared at her—my expression blank but my mind racing.
Why should I go with her? My own mother didn’t believe me when I told her through snot-covered lips that I wasn’t some psychopath who left innocent people paralyzed for life. She threw me out onto the street with nothing, ignored my calls and letters, hasn’t spoken to me in ten years, and now that she wants to make up, instead of reaching out herself, she sends the last person on earth I’d ever want to see to be her message girl.
I owed Omma nothing. Less than nothing. I played the good, dutiful daughter for eighteen years, and it didn’t save me from living under the constant cloud of her disappointment and its acid rain of her impossible expectations. The truth was, Ha-eun Kim was never anything approaching a good mother. I gave up on her long before she gave up on me.
“Yes,” I said, turning off the stove. “I’m coming.”
Chapter Two
“Are you done now?”
Her superior tone clenched my jaw.
“How much more time are you going to waste?”
“I’m not wasting time,” I snapped over the wheezing engine. “I’m trying to get my car to start!”
Sue stood outside my window, hands on hips and tapping her Gucci boots. She watched me try, and fail, to start my car with a mixture of annoyance and amusement.