Snow drifted from a steel-gray sky the day my mother was buried, powdering the grid of gravestones and mausoleums in the Montparnasse Cemetery. A few people had rolled out of bed to join us, but their reasons for standing by our side were selfish—they either worked for my family or hoped to ingratiate themselves with Uncle.
"Jarod."
I craned my neck at the sound of my name. Snowflakes hit my dry eyes, melting and coursing down my cheeks, substitutes for my absent tears.
Uncle nodded to the custodian holding a bowl under his arm. For a horrible second, I believed it contained my mother's ashes, and my limbs seized up.
"It's just dirt, son." The cold wind batted Uncle's words to me. "To toss into the crypt."
Mimi tightened her arms around my shoulders before pressing a kiss to the top of my head and releasing me to perform my filial duty for a person who'd forsaken her maternal one.
Steeling my spine, I advanced toward the officiant, took the spoon from his thick, hairy fingers, and studied the crumbly soil a long moment before scooping it out and heaving it into the dark pit my mother would never again rise from.
A pit I'd put her in even though Uncle insisted it was my father's death which had stopped Mother's heart and not the letter opener.
YOU ARE READING
Feather
ParanormalIt was supposed to be a quick mission. The only thing quick about it was how rapidly I failed. With only a month left to earn her missing feathers, twenty-year-old Leigh embarks on a trip to Paris to meet her newest project, twenty-five-year-old Jar...
