Chapter 4The Wedding Before Mine

I hung up.

The phrase "sloppy seconds" must have struck a nerve. He called again, and again, and again. When I didn't answer, he bombarded me with texts. I ignored them all.

In ten days, I was going to marry Liam. These people were about to become ghosts from a past life. I had intended to spend my remaining time here in peace, but Della shattered that illusion when she smashed my father's urn.

His ashes spilled across the floor.

She felt no remorse. Instead, she let her cat urinate on them. Then she looked at me, a triumphant smirk on her face.

"Look, sis. Your dad makes great kitty litter!"

In that instant, every ounce of grief and suppressed rage inside me exploded. I grabbed the baseball bat from behind the door and swung it at her with all my might.

It connected with a solid thud. She shrieked, her face turning sheet-white as she scrambled away.

"Clara! Have you completely lost it? How dare you hit your sister!"

My mother’s voice was Della’s salvation. She scurried behind her, hiding like a frightened child. "Mom, I'm scared," she sobbed. "She's trying to kill me!"

My mother shielded Della like a hen protecting her chick, her fury directed entirely at me. "I've let your bullying slide, thinking it was just petty squabbles, but this is too much!"

She was my mother, yet she always stood against me, defending a girl with no blood relation to her. There was no greater sorrow.

Tears blurred my vision. "She broke Dad's urn!" I screamed, my voice raw. "That was Dad! My dad! Why? Why?"

Why, after I had already yielded so much, did they have to destroy the one tangible memory I had left of him? Why did my own mother not love me?

Della dropped to her knees dramatically. "Mom, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to, I swear! If Clara can't forgive me, then... then I might as well just die!" she wailed.

"Della, you stop this—"

SMACK!

My mother's hand cracked across my face before I could finish my sentence.

"Enough!" she shrieked. "It's just ashes! He's already dead. Is a pile of ash more important than a living person?"

Her final words hung in the air, cold and sharp. "If you bother Della again, you can get out."