Daughter of the Demon (I)

Daughter of the Demon-31-The Wedding Part 1

I couldn’t believe this. I could not believe it. Blood roared in my ears as I mounted the stairs. I was deaf to anything but my own anger. I slammed my door behind me and proceeded to kick my dresser as hard as I could, hurling everything in sight. Glass shattered, wood splintered, and sometime during my rampage I found blood smeared across the knuckles of my hands. I was breathing hard, furious. She was fucking insane. My psychotic mother couldn’t just take me to her fucking mansion in California. I was not going. I couldn’t go . . .

But did I really have a choice in the matter? If Belinda knew . . . had she known all along, but just not told me? Was she trying to protect my sanity, my happiness?

There was nothing else I wanted to pack.

Wait . . .

There was one thing. But I wasn’t packing it.

Without wiping off the blood from my knuckles I yanked open a desk drawer and retrieved the envelope with the letter to Jemma inside. The words said what I couldn’t, and now what I never could. I clutched it tightly in my hands as I left my room.

“I’m dropping this off in the mailbox before we go,” I told her, and the smile she gave me caused my skin to bristle. It was . . . evil. Cruel. It made me wonder if those tears had been fake. If she had been pretending before.

What sick person had my mother turned into?

Or had it always been there, hiding inside her, slowly clawing its way out?

I walked outside into the thick piles of snow that hadn’t melted from the warmer temperatures and stuck the letter in the mailbox, sliding the flag up. I turned reluctantly to my mother.

“Let’s go.”

*****

~Jemma~

I sat on Aunt Clara’s bed, watching her spin around in her wedding dress.

“You look so beautiful,” I told her, gawking in awe at her long white dress, as it billowed around her legs. It was strapless at the top, and the top part looked as if it was encrusted with diamonds. The rest of it flowed down smooth and silky and breath-taking.

“Have you talked to Jacob lately?” she asked, and I rolled my eyes. So like Aunt Clara to bring up my problems and side-track hers. Truthfully, it’d been a little over a week since I’d plucked up the courage and finally kissed him, kissed him for real. I still felt the butterflies every time I thought about that moment.

“No,” I said, flopping back onto the bed, splaying my arms out on either side of me. “Maybe he’s mulling it over.”

Clara spun around and looked at me. “Mulling it over? What’s to mull over? You two have been through way too much crap not to be together. It’s about time.”

I smiled and laughed lightly. “Thanks, Aunt Clara.”

“Come here, Jemma,” she said, motioning for me to join her by the mirror. “I would come over there but I don’t want to wrinkle my dress.”

I stood up and walked straight into her arms.

“Jemma, my baby, you have changed so much. You have blossomed into this beautiful, wonderful young lady and you know what?” She pulled back to look fully at me. “I don’t see an ounce of anything troubling you.”

I shook my head. “It’s true. I don’t feel the least bit . . . depressed.” It felt unimaginably good to say that. I didn’t feel depressed. It seemed like it took an eternity to get to this point, but I was here, and I didn’t want to leave.