Smore nodded like the confused boy he was. “Okay, Mommy... Um, I will listen to everything Mommy says, so please, no more being mad?”Arianne ruffled Smore’s hair. “Oh, Mommy isn’t mad at you, silly. But! I would love it if you play with Granny and be nice to Granny more often from now on, okay? I know Grandaunt has been treating you very kindly, but it would hurt Granny a lot if you stop hanging out with Granny just because of what happened right before. Granny would feel so hurt and even cry in sadness, you know?”While they were talking, Mark pushed open the door to their bedroom and greeted, “Hello! Giving Smore the washing, huh?”Arianne, who was denied the freedom to blow up in Aunt Shelly’s face, instantly decided that Mark was to be the proxy recipient of her fury. She shot him a nasty stink-eye without answering him.The poor man was perplexed. “What the—? What did I do this time?”She sneered. “Oh, you didn’t do anything, alright. Your beloved aunt did it for you. I didn
With a smile, Aunt Shelly rose from her seat and climbed the stairs.Arianne interpreted her approaching footsteps as Mark returning. She was about to call out to him to grab Smore’s towel from outside when she espied Shelly’s white fluffy indoor slippers falling into step before her.Shelly noticed Smore nearing the end of his bath and grabbed the boy’s towel herself before personally wrapping him with it. “Who’s all cleaned up and fragrant, hmm?” she cooed. “Come, let Granny inspect you and see if you’re as squeaky-clean as you look! Sniff, sniff—oh, you smell downright wonderful, sweetie! Smore is the cutest, best-smelling-thing in the whoooole wiiide wooorld!”Smore did not laugh or break a smile. Instead, he looked at his mother, watching her expression closely.It honestly stunned Arianne a little. Who knew that a child this young could so early learn how to read other people’s faces before acting?After her little play with Smore, Shelly turned her attention back to Arianne
Mark’s action had been slight, but Shelly noticed it. For a split-second, despondence flitted across her eyes—and then it was no more, gone before anyone could catch it.All that was left instead was her voice turning as sharp as a knife when she bristled. “What did I tell you? I’ve told you, you cannot be the sort of simpleton who lets a woman lord all over him! What she’s doing right now is just beyond the pale! This house belongs to the Tremonts. And she? She’s just an orphan adopted and raised here thanks to your magnanimity. How dare she treat you like this? She can put on airs around me, but she has no right to do that to you. Honestly? I’ve been putting up with her for your sake all this time, but she thinks she can do whatever she likes because Mr. Tremont loves her soooo damn much, isn’t it? Well, enough’s enough! I’m gonna teach her a lesson—if someone has to sleep in the guest room tonight, it’s gotta be her and not you!”Mark deadpanned. “Aunt Shelly, stop. This is how we
Arianne could not even be angry. It was a misunderstanding, after all, and one that might require a lengthy explanation at that.In resignation, she dragged a chair and sat. “With all due respect, Aunt Shelly, methinks you’re reaching,” she began. “You’re right. My dad was an innocent victim who didn’t need to die in that plane tragedy. But the burden and pain that incident brought weighed more on Mark than it ever did me, and it would be unreasonable of me to judge him as the sinner and take him out as my revenge. And also, I call him ‘Mark’ out of deadset habit! Doesn’t mean I don’t love him.“Frankly, you shouldn’t be making these baseless, paranoid accusations. I’ve been with him for years, Aunt Shelly. Smore’s already past his second birthday. If my intention had always been to murder him, I have had many, many chances. For goodness’s sake, he sleeps with me every night. What’s keeping me from seizing the chance the first time it presents itself? A simple slit across his neck, a
Shelly trembled in fury. She stormed out of the room and slammed the door on her way out.Arianne plopped down on her bed and let out a long breath that she had been holding. If she were to be honest, Shelly raising her hand at her had been a pretty terrifying moment. Had that woman went through with it, this debacle would immediately escalate beyond a simple tiff right there and then. Being the middleman, Mark would then face one of the most knotty quandaries in his life yet.It seemed that the only reason why Shelly stopped herself was to save Mark from the storm her action would have incurred. In a way, it proved just how much Mark meant to Shelly.Aunt Shelly’s absence during breakfast the next morning was conspicuous.Arianne ordered their babysitter to check on her upstairs, but the girl came down alone a few moments later. “Mrs. Leigh said she’s skipping both breakfast and work today. Um… her eyes are kind of puffy, Mr. and Mrs. Tremont. I think she might have just recently
“I didn’t feel a tinge of sadness when my husband died. In fact, I just felt elated; I was emancipated. There’s nothing I wanted more than to flee there, and I stopped for no one and nothing until I finally made it home. But then I realized something—I can’t stop hating him. He’s dead already, and yet I can’t cease to hate. Hell, I wish I had defaced him and crushed his bones into powder. And that’s when I learned, you can’t dissolve and let go of real hatred so easily; it’s nigh impossible. So, how could Arianne stop hating you? How is it possible for her to not only transverse hate but to come to love you? I don’t understand. I don’t believe it…”By this point, Shelly seemed to have lost control over her emotions, devolving into a crying mess.Mark took a piece of tissue for her. “I understand now, Aunt Shelly. It’s alright, trust me. I’ll talk to Arianne about this, and she’ll definitely understand you—she’s very rational,” he comforted gently. “Aunt Shelly, you should let go of t
Mark let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, so that’s why! In that case, it’s fine. Go ahead and rest. I’ll be off to work.”Everything added up—Shelly’s fib about her buddy-buddy relationship with his mother excluded, of course. Everything else made enough sense, and if Mark was being honest, he did not care to dive deep into the age-old drama between his mother and his aunt. Whatever that was, it was a feud of a generation before him. There was no need to drag it out from under the dust.Besides, what sort of catastrophic enmity could possibly be bred between an ordinary pair of sisters like them?En route to the Tremont Tower, Arianne asked while in the car, “So, what did your aunt tell you? If it involves anything that I’m not supposed to hear, you could skip that part.”Mark turned to face her. “Why do you think there’ll be such a thing? You’re entitled to hear everything, Arianne. Anyway, it turns out that her capriciousness and predisposition for extreme actions are all products of
Arianne scanned the room while gesturing to Tiffany to shut up. “Are you crazy? We’re in the office here! Don’t shout so loudly at a moment like this. What’ll happen if someone overhears you, huh?”Tiffany’s sensibilities finally caught on, and she lowered her voice. “Oop! I was just a little too shocked, okay? Like, I was so surprised, I forgot to control my volume. But come on! Being together in a room with an aunt like that? It really is a brand new hell every day… Sucks to be you, girl. Guess no one could beat Jackson’s mom in being The Best Mother-in-law Ever, huh? She has never so much as raised her voice at me, let alone rage at my face.”Arianne pursed her lips. “Okay, okay, I concede! Your mother-in-law is the best in the whole wide world! Honestly, all I’m asking her right now is to let me live every day in peace. I just want Mark’s aunt to stop being so hostile with me, and let everyone carry on with their lives without any more fights. I really can’t stand how much she lo