The picture frame shattered on the wooden floor, spraying perfect tiny shards across the priceless rug. The broken glass shone like a cracked open geoid, the little crystalline pieces glinting underneath the yellow florescent ceiling lights.

It took me four seconds to realize I dropped the picture of my mother and me. The shock of Leonora's words caused my tense hands to turn useless, allowing the frame to fall out of my grasp.

"Shit!" I cried out and dove down to collect the photograph.

Leonora's hands were already on the picture, her vape balanced between her ring finger and pinkie. She plucked it up and handed it to me. I inspected it immediately, searching for any defects and found one: a thin line of blood dyed the space above my mother's head a dark crimson. My eyes moved to Leonora's hands, where she picked out a glass piece from the pad of her finger.

I shouldn't be mad, but I still growled out my next words. "Thanks a lot."

There was a frown on Leonora's face, a deep line that warped the sharpness of her cheeks. Even like that, she was lovely.

"Elenore didn't tell you anything, did she?"

"Tell me what?" I asked through clenched teeth.

"Can we sit?" Leonora gestured to the wicker couch, where a thick padding of white canvas pillows softened the seat. She didn't wait for me to answer, she just strode to the other side of the room and sat with her legs crossed.

I remained standing, still holding the picture like my mother would come back if only I clutched it hard enough. After a minute of tense silence filling the room, she opened her mouth again.

"When your mother became sick, sick enough that it scared her, she reached out to me," Leonora whispered. She kept her dark eyes steady on me. "She made a deal."

"What kind of deal?" My fingers bent down photograph's edges, dog-earring the memory like the worn pages of my favorite book.

"She made two," Leonora confessed. "If she died after you turned eighteen, you would be in line to receive her entire inheritance of three billion dollars." I forgot how to breathe. That was enough money to buy Lone Pine six times over and then some. "You would gain access to everything our family has— estates, land, attorneys, all of it."

"A-and the second deal?" My lips were numb with the words.

"If she were to die before your eighteenth birthday, you are to live in my custody as my legal child until adulthood. Once you become an adult, you inherit her fortune, and again, reap the same benefits."

"I—" I hesitated; my words were suddenly trapped in the cage of my gritted teeth. "I don't believe you. My mother... she wouldn't do this." She wouldn't lie to me.

"Which part do you not believe?" Leonora asked. It was hard to be angry with the woman, her face was an open book of kindness— wide, doe eyes searching for any kind of pain in my expression, a serious but kind smile on her plush lips, and two gentle hands anxiously petting the black fabric of her trousers. "Your mother was a very, very rich woman. How else could she afford a two-year long treatment at the country's finest cancer care facility?"

"I—I don't know," I whispered. I hated that—feeling stupid. It settled in my stomach like the glass shards on the Persian rug—obvious and sharp. "Insurance."

"A private room at Yarborough Cancer Care Center costs a thousand dollars a night," Leonora continued in a soft tone, as if she were coaxing a baby bird into the safety of her steady hands. "Your mother never touched the money before that moment. Now please, sit." She patted the space beside her. "You look unhealthily pale."

I believed her. All the heat in my face drained to the well of my belly, where it boiled an angry, confused red. But I didn't sit beside her, scared that at close proximity, she would detect the stupidity and shame rolling off of me in ice-cold currents. Instead, I collapsed on an armchair adjacent to her.

"W—what does this mean?" I asked, unable to keep the shaking out of my voice.

"Tonight, we will leave for our family's estate in Daisy Isle just off the coast of Rhode Island." Her cool words struck me like whiplash. "Where we will stay the entire summer, save for a few trips to the mainland."

"No," I rushed out, anger causing my thick brows to pull down in disbelief. "What about the house? My mother's things—the tenants—"

"You haven't had a tenant here in two months, little plum," Leonora said softly, her voice had the same effect as a palm pressing out all the wrinkles and imperfections on a linen bedsheet.

"I—I don't care about the tenants," I replied. Hot tears formed in my gaze, causing the furniture in the living room to blur and morph into moving bubbles of color. "I don't want to leave this place." I don't want to leave my mother.

"You won't be gone forever," she said. With her words, a perfect, baby-soft hand blanketed mine. Leonora leaned close, and in her gaze were the familiar flecks of tawny gold my mother once possessed. "As soon as you turn eighteen, everything that was once your mothers will be yours. You will be free to do whatever you want. Elenore told me you like to read and write, too. You can use this summer to write a draft. We can have it published by December."

I ripped my hand away from her touch. Writing was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to curl into my mother's queen-sized bed, inhale her strange, signature scent of lemongrass and patchouli, and cry, a new ritual I performed for the last six days.

"I understand your anger, at me and your mother," Leonora whispered. My lip trembled. "But I'm not leaving you to mourn alone. You have a family waiting for you. You got two hours to pack, our flight leaves at nine."

***

The only suitcase I ever owned was a cherry-red, vintage Samsonite that smelled identical to an old woman's closet, like mothballs, rotting cotton, and stale air. The interior was covered in once-white silk, but age naturally cured it into the same color of coffee with too much creamer. My mother bought it for me on my sixth birthday, when we spent the entire day together digging through rummage shops and pop-up flea markets. Up until that moment, everything I ever packed was always stuffed into her leather luggage set.

Leonora sat on my mattress beside the open Samsonite, her face scrunched up like she didn't like the smell of my bedroom. Her black outfit was a sharp contrast against my white quilt and dark blue walls. Everything inside this tiny space had an electric pop of color I outgrew in the last year. I never had time to change my décor, always too caught up in hospital visits.

"Is that all you're packing?" Leonora asked when I slid my closet doors shut.

I laid my last two pairs of denim jeans inside my suitcase and ran through everything. Four pairs of bottoms, three long-sleeves, seven short-sleeves, my leather sandals, and the two bras I owned when I opted to wear one.

"It's all I own," I said. "Well, other than this." I wrapped my thumb around the light-wash denim strap of my overalls. I changed out of my funeral clothes and into my mother's old painting overalls. On the breast pocket, bright oil paints created a pattern-less collection of splotches, and above the brass button of my right shoulder, a tiny Monarch butterfly pin stayed nestled close to my heart. The little insect was always my mother's favorite. Beneath it, I wore a cream-colored button-up and paired it with my second pair of shoes—my black high-top converse.

"What's your size?"

I glanced up from my feet to see Leonora typing frantically on her phone, her manicured fingernails tapped away at the screen as if it was an instrument she took years to master.

"My what?"

"Pant size, dress size, shoe size," Leonora continued, still not glancing away from her screen.

"Why?" My voice grew defiant, a tone I had not heard since the early days of my teenhood, when my festering hormones gave way to random outbursts and fights that always began and ended in screeching. Puberty was a mean bastard.

"You are going to Daisy isle," she said. "I love the boho feel you've got going on, but it won't even scrape the bare minimum of what you'll need."

"And what do I need?" I asked through clenching teeth. I never minded having much. In efforts to leave a lighter footprint, my mother only invested in pieces that would last for years. Where my classmates bought new wardrobes with each season, I rotated mine like clockwork, only giving in once the integrity of the piece disappeared from years of wear and washing.

"More than this," she said, but her voice did not hold the same mean note most of the girls at my high school possessed. Instead, she rambled her words like simple facts, no unwelcome attachments or judgments on my decision to live minimally. "Now, sizes."

I rattled them off like clockwork, size ten in jeans, size eight in shoes, and no idea in dress. She looked up at that, her gaze suddenly studious and sharp, and then, she beat her thumbs over the screen. Something told me she didn't need a measuring tape or a tailor to tell what would fit me best.

"If that's all you have..." She trailed off, caught in whatever she typed. "Then we should be good to go, no?"

I nodded. That was all she needed. Leonora grabbed the red handle of my Samsonite and held it proudly between her fingers in the same way girls carried their half-priced Michael Kohrs purses in the crook of their skinny elbows. I followed closely behind, turning off each light in the house as we went, until finally, we stood in the living room once again.

"Do you mind... uh... leaving me alone for one second?" I asked.

Leonora checked the time on her phone and nodded. "Okay, kiddo, but if I leave you in here, you have to promise you're not going to try to split, alright?" I nodded obediently. "You have five minutes."

Once the screen door shut behind my aunt, I turned on my heels and rushed down the hall to my mother's art studio, untouched in months aside for the few times I curiously tiptoed through a maze of art supplies and half-finished canvases. My hands ripped the door open, revealing her leftover mess.

I flicked the light switch on and ran to where my mother hid her journals in the shallow closet on the top shelf. Once, when I was hardly seven, I discovered them all on accident. I was innocently searching for Modge-Podge to seal a painting I completed on the cardboard back of my notebook. When my mother found me trying to decipher her loopy cursive, she spanked me for the first and last time. And then, she made me promise to never, ever read her private thoughts again.

I scooped them into my hands greedily, until seven separate leather-bound books lay in my arms. Some were sketchbooks, others watercolor pages, and one her sacred diary. There was no time to see which were which. I threw them into my old high school backpack and retreated to Leonora's white sports car.

Some promises were meant to be broken. 

AN

Happy Friday! Here is a nice Friday surprise! 

Look for a Saturday update, too! So far, I'm 8,000 words deep into this draft! And I love it already. How do you guys feel about Leonora and our main character, Susanne? 

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below! Please vote!