My mother was dead.

The insistent thought followed me around since last Friday, when I left the Yarborough Cancer Care Center still in shock. There was no need to come back and identify her body. I was already there, as I was every weekend night for the past month.

I glanced to the passenger seat of my 1999 Ford Taurus. Technically, the car belonged to my mother. On the gray fabric seat, a cardboard box held my mother's keepsakes from her hospital room— three separate pictures of me, two clean changes of clothes she never had the chance to wear, and one green crystal vase from some distant relative that never had the decency to call, much less visit. That was it. Her whole life summarized.

Looking at the box made a sick feeling fester in my empty stomach, so I turned my attention back to the half-empty cemetery parking lot. My mother, Elenore Bradshaw, was once a well-liked fixture in our tiny town of Lone Pine, Arkansas. The land sat in the middle of the Ozarks, meaning no matter where one turned, there was either thick green canopies or rolling hills to block their view. Lone Pine was a haven for hippies, which is why Elenore ran straight to this place after my birth seventeen years ago.

For the last decade and a half, we lived in a historical, two-story home we shared with a handful of different tenants each year. Nearly each private room—aside for my bedroom, my mother's bedroom, and the sunroom she used as an art studio—was rented out for $120 per month. It was enough to cover the bills and survive on, at least that's what my mother always said.

Now, I wasn't so sure what would happen to our home and the people who lived there. My life went as far as the end of her funeral, which was ten minutes ago.

I placed my forehead on top of the leather steering wheel and prayed the fog on my window was thick enough to hide me from view. The tears I had been so adamant to hide during her ceremony now flowed down my cheeks. Snot and a dry mouth followed, which would ensure an aching migraine in a few short hours.

I wanted my mom back.

A sudden knock on my driver's window shocked me enough to propel me into a straight sitting position. Although it just turned May, thick humidity hung in the air, covering all inhabitants of the state in a second, sticky layer of skin. That included my car window. Opaque condensation layered over the glass like bubbling, white paint, making it impossible to identify whoever stood on the other side.

"One minute," I called out in a watery voice. I pointed the rearview mirror to my face and discovered my hazel eyes were framed in puffy red skin. I wasn't stupid enough to wear any kind of makeup today, but no matter what I did in the next ten seconds, my tears would still be obvious. "Get it together, idiot," I whispered to myself.

I reached down to the plastic crank to my window and reeled it slowly down. The entire time, I stared at my lap, too ashamed of my tears to directly face whoever stood on the other side.

"Hello, Susanne?" A stranger's voice, low and definitely female, spoke from above me. "Susanne... uh... Bradshaw?"

I shrugged my shoulders and nodded. My curtain of strawberry-blonde hair hid my heated face from the woman's eyes, but I could see her hands. She folded them over the frame of my window. Two freckled hands, long slender fingers, ten nails shaped into perfect ovals and painted a pale everyday pink, and one glinting diamond ring on her left ring finger. The precious stone was the same size as my thumbnail. That finger alone possessed more net worth than the entirety of my shit car.

"I am... terribly sorry about your mother's death," she said.

I shrugged again. They all were. But no matter how many sorry's I received, my mom was dead, and that sharp new reality still dug into my ribcage like a dull kitchen knife.

"I... I'm afraid I have no idea how to say this," the woman paused. She clenched her hands up into a tight fist. Her voice was older than her hands—they were supple and almost pore-less. Maybe she had work done. "Susanne..." Her fingers morphed into a rigid flatness, as if she practiced these words in front of a mirror before. "I'm your mother's sister. I'm your Aunt Leonora."

I was not expecting to hear that.

"No," I whispered. "You definitely aren't."

As an only child, what little remained of my mother's side died when both her parents passed eighteen years ago. And whatever was of my father's side—well, I didn't want anything to do with him. Since he hadn't bothered to show up for even my birth, I had a strange sense that our feelings were mutual.

"Susanne," There was my name again. "Goddammit, Elenore," my mother's name followed her curse. That made me mad, only because 'GD' held the same weight as even the worst curses in the Bible Belt. "Of course, you don't tell your damn kid who I am. Just look at me, Susanne. You really think I am lying to you?"

So, I did.

I turned and saw the face of my mother. Well, the face she had before cancer whittled away at her features. When she died, Elenore was little more than a skeleton, freckled skin hanging off her like a threadbare sweater on a plastic hanger.

Leonora was tall and hourglass-shaped like my mother. She stared with the same wide, caramel brown eyes I spent most of my life wishing I inherited. Her nose was short and upturned at the very end, unlike mine, which was straight and tipped down at the very edge. Her brows were the signature Bradshaw woman's—thick, dark and completely unruly. She shared the same spattering of orange freckles like me, and when she opened her mouth to speak, I recognized the centimeter's-width gap between her two front teeth. I had her identical smile.

I didn't know what to say, so I reached down to turn the keys in the ignition. When I caught my reflection in the rearview window, I saw a girl as white as a blank sheet of copy paper.

"Susanne—" Leonora wrapped a hand around my freckled wrist in a weak attempt to stop me from throwing my Ford in reverse.

I just said goodbye to my mother. Looking at Leonora was like reopening her casket. It fucking hurt.

"Please don't leave," Leonora rushed out. Her voice held a strange, quick curl that wasn't like mine, which was unintentionally slow like most other Southerners. Over the years, I heard the same accent from my mother's lips, but only when she turned angry and allowed it to slip out.

"What reason do I have to stay?" I sneered. The words were harsher than I meant them. I ignored the glimmering, wet sheen that filmed over her dark eyes. She had no reason to mourn a stranger. "My mom is dead. I don't want to sit in this parking lot and waste the rest of this shit day crying in front of you," I said 'you' like it tasted bad on my tongue. "So, please, and I mean this as kindly as I can, leave me alone. Don't contact me. Don't visit me. Just get out of Lone Pine."

"As much as I would love to leave this place, I can't." Leonora's manicured fingers wrapped around the window frame until her freckled knuckles turned a bleached white. "I have business here. I assume you know Elenore's last Will and Testament and what it says?"

"Yes, I do," I lied through my teeth. "It doesn't have your name anywhere on it. If it's money you want, you won't get anything." We had barely anything, just our home, this well-loved Ford Taurus, and my mother's watercolor paintings.

"You misunderstand me—"

I cut off Leonora's words by starting my car. Instead of a roar, it released a pathetic, metallic tick, like it was coughing from beneath the hood. I placed the gear in reverse and turned my attention to the gravel lot behind the Ford.

"Either you want to help me, or you want something of my mother's," I said to Leonora without looking away from the empty lane. My feet were just barely on the gas, allowing the vehicle to smoothly back out from the parking spot. "I don't want your help, and my mother has absolutely nothing to give you."

I didn't look to see Leonora's reaction. Instead, I pushed my car into drive and drove ten miles above the speed limit until the cemetery was nothing more than a tiny speck in my rearview mirror. 

AN: 

Yes, I did start a new book right after finishing RED! And if you haven't checked out RED, please give it a try! Please vote, follow, and comment! Every bit helps!

What do you guys think so far about our protagonist Susanne and her mysterious new Aunt Leonora? 

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