When Mom Wants Me to Join Her in Death

My whole body was shaking, uncontrollably. The tears stinging my eyes froze on my cheeks the instant they fell.

I yanked the blanket tighter around myself and told the bodyguard to turn the heater all the way up.

Even when the room temperature climbed to a stifling 95 degrees Fahrenheit, I was still shivering, while the bodyguard in the same room had gone pale and was sweating through his shirt.

A cold dread curled in my gut.

"Where's Claire?" I asked.

The bodyguard dropped to his knees with a heavy thud. "I'm sorry. She's..."

I closed my eyes. My last bit of strength was swallowed by fury.

"Are you all useless? I'm paying you 18,000 dollars a month, and you still can't keep track of her? If you don't want the job, then get out!"

I reached for the lamp on the side table to throw it at him, but my hands were so numb from the cold that it slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor.

"What are you still kneeling there for? Get out and find her! Or do you want me to say please?"

The stunned bodyguard seemed to finally snap out of it and bolted from the room.

I pulled out my phone with stiff fingers. The tracker app I'd installed on Claire showed her little dot already sitting at the southernmost point of the map.

I dialed her number, and the call connected at once.

On the other end, all I could hear was the roar of a brutal wind.

In that same instant, it felt like that wind was cutting straight through my bones.

"Claire, stop right there! Come back! Go find shelter now! Don't stay outside!"

Her voice wavered through the line, shredded by the freezing wind. "I can't, Maeve! Mom said this is her last wish! Once I finish this for her, she can finally move on!"

The wind rushed into my mouth. It was so cold that I could barely force the words out. "You... You knew..."

The line cut off with a dead beep before I could finish.

I stumbled and crawled to the drawer where I kept her passport and ID. My numb, shaking hands knocked everything onto the floor. Papers were scattered everywhere.

The passport and ID she'd handed to me that day were fakes.

So, she'd known all along that every harm would end up being doled out on me. She'd prepared for it, right down to forged documents.

And right up until now, she'd played dumb as if none of it had anything to do with her.

She really was trying to kill me. But I didn't understand.

We were both healthy. There was no dispute over what we'd inherited. Why would she want to kill the only blood relative she had left?

I collapsed on the floor and let out a hoarse, broken scream.

That was when a single sheet of paper slipped into my line of sight.

The moment I saw it, every scattered detail I'd ignored before clicked together.

In that instant, I finally understood why Mom only appeared in Claire's dreams, why every injury that was meant for her ended up on me, and why she had been so determined to kill me.

Every last piece of the truth finally fell into place.