Burning Books by Sharon Gerlach

Author:Sharon Gerlach [Gerlach, Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kindle Press
Published: 2017-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

∞3∞

She busied herself in the attic, because reading the third book made her think of Cary, and she suspected she’d done enough of that for the time being. A man like him could easily become an obsession. Ninety boxes of emotional trauma should be enough to dispel any lingering effects of his overwhelming presence.

Her mother’s boxes were clearly marked ELOISE in black, block letters. How melancholy to have lived so vibrantly, only to be reduced to a stack of cardboard crates collecting dust in your own attic. Molly selected one and breached the seal, brutally forging forward despite her mind shrinking away from the task. Each item she removed hit her heart like a bludgeon. Ever so slowly, though, she amassed a small collection of items to retain as keepsakes, stowing the rest back in the box to give away.

By the third box, a river of tears soaked her face, blurring her vision to the point she could barely see. By the sixth, her heart bled. The ninth box held Eloise’s silk blouses. A puff of sandalwood and ginger and orange blossom enveloped her as she folded back the flaps, engulfing her in a wave of longing so acute, she couldn’t draw breath. Longing to feel her mother’s arms around her; to breathe in that Armani Code for Women, warmed and rendered potent by her mother’s skin; to press her face to that silk-draped bosom and weep for all the things she suspected she’d lost in the missing year. Things like her moral values and her respectability.

She curled up on the dusty floor on her side, clutching silk to her breast. Tears flowed over the bridge of her nose, pooling with those from her other eye and dripping onto the floor. Eloise hadn’t had an easy motherhood, parenting a child with Magnus’s challenges. Magnus’s quirks caused a few in Molly herself, such as Molly turning to her mother for the bond so lacking between her twin and herself. Clingy and insecure until she’d been old enough to understand her brother’s challenges, and then pining and bereft because he couldn’t be what she desired, and then motherly and patronizing when Eloise could no longer be there. Suffocating sister. Mollycoddling Molly. How many mistakes had she made with Magnus since Eloise and Kenneth died? Many. So very many.

A loud bang somewhere on the lower floors brought her out of her semidoze. The sun had progressed past the window, leaving behind the cool blue of twilight. Molly raised herself from the floor and brushed dust from her clothes. Thick mats of it fell to the floor where she’d lain. Really, she’d have to offer Annis a bonus to come up here and suck the neglect into the vacuum.

Halfway down the attic stairs, she paused, one hand on the railing, the other still clutching her mother’s pale-blue silk blouse. Her head cocked as she listened for movement. Her tongue clung to the roof of her mouth, reluctant to call out. It could just be Magnus or Annis.

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