What Once Was Hers Novels & Stories

Her tone was light, but there was a little pause before *departure* that told the truth: she’d enjoyed every second of the erasing. Daire’s jaw flexed. “You didn’t have to strip it,” he said. “There was no need to—” “There was every need,” she said sweetly. “The Tribunal had cameras. We couldn’t have them asking awkward questions about little… "side nests.” My fingers dug into the doorframe. Hard enough the wood bit into my skin. This place had never been *mine* in the legal sense. No name on a deed. No shared closet. But it had still held my clothes, my few books, my sleep-warmed pillow.

She snapped the wallet shut and held it out to me, making a joke — "You and Vanessa are something else. Born two days apart — she's June first, you're June third." "No twins are born two days apart," she added, going to hand it back. Then her smile just stopped. Froze completely. She was staring at me.

The small amount of silver my parents kept hidden in a loose stone behind the fireplace. I avoided looking at the blood on the floor, I was good at avoiding things. By the time I made it to the town square, the sun was already beginning to set again. I'd lost an entire day without realizing it. The events of the previous night felt simultaneously fresh and impossibly distant, like a dream I'd had about someone else's nightmare. Millbrook was gone, not completely gone. Buildings still stood, streets still ran in their familiar patterns. But what had been a town of maybe two thousand people was now a necropolis, a place of ghosts and ash.

"I've lived here for a year. I'm the one who paid the rent and utilities. I'm the one who bought the gold bracelet for your mother's birthday. "I bought the suit you wore for your promotion. I even bought the outfit for your company's team-building event." I paused before continuing, "The most expensive thing you've ever bought me was a 99-dollar lipstick." Wendell's pale face flushed crimson. "Are you seriously making this about money? You're actually keeping score?" I jeered. "I am. Enlighten me then. If this isn't about money, what is it about?" He was stumped. I crouched back down and went back to packing my belongings.

She was the undisputed, unlisted heiress to an empire that no longer had a throne. "Mamma..." she whispered, her tiny hand reaching up to touch the cold, salt-encrusted skin of my cheek. Her voice was single-layered now, completely clear of the old corporate Queen’s malice, but carrying an ancient, terrifying weight of absolute sovereignty. "The... the ledger is perfectly balanced now. The old house is dead." "The old house is dead, baby," I whispered back, my hot tears finally falling onto her smooth forehead, washing away the gray granite dust of the city we had burned to the ground.

All the things in the past that she had done is just studying and playing around. She had never touched any house chor or her own work. Last time when she was dragging baggage she had broken her ligament of foot. And this time when she was dragging heavily loaded baggage she had, again and again, stepped on the foot causing many small scratches and wound on her foot. Now while doing all the work on her own, she missed Mrs. Kun, lily, and daniel so much. But every time she said to herself " anna it's ok there is no more kaasan, lily, and daniel in your life and you are no more princess you have to do it all on your own.

My face darkened when the memory of my past life flashed across my mind. "As you know, a lot of girls were running behind me only for my status. They all need my money, they need a reputation in society so that they can afford a wealthy life and they used my name saying I was theirs. But the only fact is I am not theirs. I'm For Her. For her only." I shut my eyes for a while. "She made me alive when I thought I was dead for the world. She brought a new life inside me. Did you know what I did when I was told I lost my memory?" Truth to be told it was not pleasant to reminisce at all.

He'd gotten down on one knee beside me and clasped my hands, saying tenderly, "I love seeing you like this, Maeve." I'd saved him and trapped myself in a horrible nightmare ten years ago. Ten years later, he personally broke my finger, and with it, the last thing that tied us together. … As I lay in the abandoned warehouse at three in the morning with my fingers splayed in awkward, broken angles, my men hurried in with medical equipment. The warehouse behind me was set ablaze. As the fire burned and ravaged the building, I leaned into my seat and called the person coordinating my plans.

How she fought to expand the shelter budget without ever taking credit. How she used to ask me—every single night—if I had eaten, if I’d slept, if I was okay, even when I’d spent the day treating her like she didn’t exist. Now I can’t even reach her. I sat there in the quiet, still in my day clothes, the scent of Nerissa’s cooking drifting faintly through the walls. The wine. The dress. The table. Her touch. All of it felt like a scene I was forced to step into.

If only I could rip it out! He drew her close. "It's ours now." She squealed. "I've never been, but I've see the pictures. I can't wait to re-do the garden." Peacock Hollow was my mother's estate. It was my private sanctuary where all of my memories of my mother still lived. They were headed to it, but I didn’t need to follow them. I blinked and I was standing outside the warm little cottage, imagining them there defining every inch of my childhood the way they’d defiled my adulthood.