Uncle Mortimer's Mansion

Uncle Mortimer's Mansion--o5

“Eileen!” I heard my mother’s voice call to me as I stepped inside the house.            

“Yes?” I called back to her, stepping into the lounge to see her stretched out on a couch.       

      “Where’ve you been Eileen? I knew that you were sleeping in the morning, but I went to go check on you an hour ago, and you weren’t there,” my mother said, sitting up.   

          “I was out by the lake, playing board games.”        

     “You were playing board games? With who?”       

      “Trey,” I said after little hesitation.      

       I watched as my mother’s dark eyes snapped. “With the Kempton boy?” she asked, sounding furious.       

      My eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Yes, and he’s not a boy, mom, he’s twenty-three.”       

      “Twenty-three is a kid, no matter which gender.”     

        I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms, waiting for her to continue.       

      “You should not be hanging around with those Kempton’s, darling. I’m telling you they’re bad news. Can you believe that they think that they deserve the estate? My god, they’re just delusional, aren’t they?”     

        “No, they’re not delusional, and I’m twenty-three years old, I will spend my time with whomever I please,” I snapped back at her. How could she just think that she still controls my life? I moved out five years ago.      

       “Oh, please, Eileen. You know that I only want what’s best for you. And at the moment, you should not be hanging around with any of those Kempton’s, let alone the boy who’s trying to take the estate away from your brother!”      

       “He’s not trying to take the estate away from Jeremy!” I shouted, angry now. “If you spent any time with him, you’d know that! You don’t know anything about him! How do you know that Uncle Mortimer even left the estate for Jeremy?” I yelled, pulling at my hair in frustration.        

     “Who else would Uncle Mortimer leave the estate to? He didn’t have any kids.”       

      The simplicity of her answer bothered me.    

         “My god, mom, can you ever look past the surface? Trey was like family to him—it didn’t matter that he is related to his dead wife and not him, it doesn’t matter at all! Don’t you think that he would leave his fortune to whomever he liked the most? He hardly even saw Jeremy at all! Especially in the past eight years when Jeremy moved out for college and hardly spent any holidays with us!”

            My mother sighed a long, dramatic sigh. “Listen, I don’t control your actions. Just please, try and stay loyal to the family.” She then got up, and silently left the room, leaving me standing there in the middle of the lounge.       

      I should’ve been the one to do that. I shouldn’t have lost my cool like that and just freaked out at her, but she really got on my nerves. She’s right, she doesn’t control my actions, but hanging around with Trey does not make me disloyal to the family. Why is she so simple minded?      

       I plopped myself down on the couch, and kicked my feet up on the coffee table, moaning in defeat. I lazily leaned over and grabbed a book off of the bookshelf, and cracked it open. I sat there, drowsily half-reading the book, picking up on some of the story line.