Castles on the Sand

Twenty-Five

I get ready to defend myself. Kailie's gone and it's my fault and he's going to use his position on the Municipal Council to make my life miserable, I just know it.

“Thank you for finding my daughter.”

For a moment I don't know what to say. “Well... you're welcome.”

He shakes his head. “We had the situation under control, you know. She was starting to see things our way until you took her in overnight.”

“No,” I say, “maybe she was starving to death and putting up less of a fight, but-”

“I don't expect you to understand how we run our household. Your mother would let you deal drugs from a drive up window cut into the side of this house if you wanted to.”

“Maybe, but I don't. I'm not like that.”

“Kailie always wished she could have your life. Have your freedom.”

“Okay...”

He pats the wall hanging, which he's slung over our couch. “Listen, this isn't easy for me, but there are two truths that we need to deal with. One is that your mother's art does not sell, and given her rate of production, she takes up more and more of our inventory space, and we can't justify it anymore. There are other artists who apply and can sell ten, twenty times the volume your mother does.”

“So you're going to pull my mom's art from the gallery and kill her career.”

“The other is that we can't hope to make things work with Kailie while you are still here. You're the worst influence possible.”

“I have only ever been nice to her.”

“I'm sure that's how you see it. I know you can live in these houses on a shoestring, but you can't live on nothing. I think it's time you and your mother moved on. Go set up a new life in a different town. And I'm going to ask you to never contact my daughter again.”

“We don't have to leave, even if you do take her art out of the gallery. I earn an income, and if I wanted to, I could quit school and work at Jacksons or something. We'd get by. You can't run us out.”

“I'll do whatever it is I need to do to save my daughter.”

“I am not the problem.”

He lifts his chin at that and anger flashes in his eyes, but he holds it back. “I'll have the rest of your mother's inventory delivered later on this morning. You have a good day.”

As he lets himself out of the front door, I hear the back door open too. Mom was in the kitchen, eavesdropping. She left me alone with Mr. Beale and cowered in the other room. Thanks, Mom, I think.

I hear the sound of pottery shattering.

“Mom?” She breaks things on purpose sometimes, to make shards for windchimes for example, but more crashes follow the first. She's not just breaking one pot.

I go out the back door and make my way to the shed, the prickly weeds digging into the soles of my feet. I don't want to stop to get slippers because I know something is seriously wrong. Sure enough, Mom, with a hammer, is systematically breaking her inventory. “Mom, stop. It's all right. Mom.”

She whirls around and for one insane moment, it seems like she's about to hit me with the hammer, just beat me down until I fall to pieces like her pots. Her gaze holds mine for what feels like minutes, but is probably no more than a fraction of a second before she grabs a whole shelf of drying pottery and slams it to the concrete floor of her shed.