Chapter 3

A woman's voice whispered, thick with gossip, "Hey, do you think that woman in the supermarket really stole that lollipop? She didn't look the type to me."

After a few seconds, another woman stammered, "A-Actually, I saw what happened. It wasn't her. It was the person next to her. The lady with her slipped it into her pocket. She was on her phone and didn't notice a thing."

The first woman gasped, asking why she hadn't said anything earlier.

"Are you kidding? Better to stay out of other people's business."

The sound of their footsteps faded into the distance.

My hand stayed frozen on the door handle. I was in total shock. Why would Mom do that to me?

But even as my mind screamed that it was impossible, memories of Mom's strange behavior began to flood back.

Her insistence on going to the snack aisle and that sudden bump…

For years, every time I went out in public with her, some kind of trouble found me. The suspicion was becoming undeniable.

Suddenly, the words of an old traditional doctor flashed through my mind.

The doctor was over 90 years old. He'd looked at me with a look I couldn't quite place and warned me that my problem might not be physical.

At the time, I didn't feel anything was off. But now…

I was desperate to prove my theory.

I forced myself to stay calm as I stepped out of the restroom.

Mom was standing a short distance away on the curb, the sunlight making her look radiant.

It hit me then that for as long as I'd been alive, Mom's face hadn't changed. For over 20 years, she'd looked exactly the same—youthful and untouched by time.

I controlled my breathing as I approached her. Making up an excuse about a leaf stuck in her hair, I leaned in to get a close look at her face.

Sure enough, the fine line at the corner of her eye was gone again.

A sharp pain shot through my chest. I couldn't bear to face the truth staring back at me.

Making an excuse about a work emergency, I fled.

But I didn't go back to the office. Instead, I sought out a local seer. The verdict was exactly what I'd feared.

He told me I'd been cursed many years ago. Someone was feeding off my negative energy to nourish themselves. It was a slow-acting drain that required the person to be constantly by my side.

My first thought was Mom. I'd almost never been away from her.

I was supposed to go to boarding school in junior high, but she'd said she couldn't bear to see me struggle, so she sold our downtown apartment and moved us right next to the school.

When I got into a college in Baldemar, she moved there with me.

What I once thought was love had been stripped away, revealing the source of all my suffering.

Tears blurred my vision.

Why?

Because of this face, I'd cried to her countless times about my pain. She would always just smile gently and tell me not to care what others thought.

She wasn't comforting me. She was admiring her handiwork. The more miserable I became, the more she flourished.

Pure hatred began to simmer in my soul.

I wasn't going to just take this. Why should I be the only one to suffer? If she never saw me as a daughter, then I no longer had a mother.

At that moment, a thirst for revenge took hold.

Since Mom was so fond of telling me to ignore what people think, I hoped she'd be able to follow her own advice when she became the victim.

I wiped the tears from my eyes. Then, I turned and headed home.