Chapter 4 – [THE ASHES OF A MOTHER’S LOVE]

“Helen, stop!” Dad yelled, lunging forward.

Mom flicked the lighter. The small flame illuminated her crazed eyes. She held it inches from the solvent-soaked canvas.

“Don’t touch me, David!” she screamed. “If you try to take this from me, I will drop it. The whole house will go up!”

Sophie was screaming, trying to run toward the ruined painting of herself, but Margaret grabbed her around the waist, pulling her back.

“Sophie, no! The fumes!” Margaret shouted.

I stood paralyzed. The woman holding the flame was my mother, but she looked like a stranger. The jealousy that had simmered beneath the surface of our family for nine years had finally boiled over into madness.

“Mom, please,” I begged, stepping forward slowly. “You don’t have to do this. We can figure this out.”

“There’s nothing to figure out!” she cried. “I spent my whole life being second best! Second best to Clara’s talent. Second best to Ellen’s favoritism. I built this family!”

“You built it on a lie,” Dad said. His voice was shaking. The man who had defended her every action for a decade was finally seeing the monster he had married. “Put the lighter down, Helen. I’m begging you.”

Mom looked at him. Her hand wavered.

In that split second of hesitation, Dad tackled her.

They crashed into a stack of empty frames. The lighter flew from her hand, skittering across the concrete floor and sparking out.

I ran forward and kicked the lighter under a heavy metal cabinet.

Mom was fighting wildly, scratching at Dad’s face. “Let me go! You’re nothing without me! None of you are anything!”

“Call 911, Emily!” Dad yelled, pinning her arms down. “Now!”

I dialed with shaking hands.

Ten minutes later, the flashing red and blue lights illuminated our driveway. Two officers came down the stairs. They handcuffed my mother, who had stopped fighting and started weeping hysterically, claiming she was the victim.

As they led her up the stairs, she looked back at me.

“You’re a fraud, Emily,” she spat. “When the gallery finds out those paintings are based on stolen sketches, they’ll blacklist you forever.”

The basement door slammed shut.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Dad sat on the concrete floor, his head in his hands, bleeding from a deep scratch on his cheek.

I looked at Sophie. She was kneeling in front of the ruined painting of the yellow dress. The solvent had destroyed her face, melting the oil into a muddy puddle on the floor.

She wasn’t crying. She looked entirely hollow.

“She’s alive,” Sophie whispered to the ruined canvas. “My mom is alive.”

Margaret walked over and knelt beside her. “She is, sweetheart. And she has asked about you every single day for nine years.”

I turned to my aunt. “You knew where Clara was this whole time?”

Margaret nodded sadly. “Ellen found out shortly before she died. She hired a private investigator. We tried to get Clara out, but Helen had secured a permanent conservatorship. The facility wouldn’t let us near her. Helen convinced them Clara was violently unstable.”

“How do we get her out?” I asked.

Margaret reached into her trench coat and pulled out a thick manila envelope.

“Helen just assaulted her husband and attempted arson in front of witnesses,” Margaret said. “Her conservatorship is void as of tonight. I already have a lawyer filing the papers in the morning.”

Sophie looked up, a glimmer of hope breaking through her shock. “I can see her?”

“We’re going tomorrow,” Margaret promised.

Dad slowly stood up. He looked at the room full of stolen masterpieces.

“I have to call the gallery,” Dad said quietly.

I felt my stomach drop. “Dad, wait.”

“Emily, your mother was right about one thing,” he said, turning to me with devastating sorrow. “If those five paintings are based on Clara’s sketches, you can’t exhibit them. It’s plagiarism. If you try to pass them off as your own now, it will destroy your career before it begins.”

Tears stung my eyes. He was right.

I had poured my soul into those canvases, but the bones belonged to Clara.

“I’ll withdraw them tomorrow,” I whispered.

Sophie stood up. She walked over to me and took my hand. Her grip was surprisingly strong.

“No,” Sophie said.

Dad frowned. “Sophie, they belong to your mother.”

“My mother is a painter,” Sophie said fiercely. “And so is Emily. Aunt Helen tried to pit us against each other. She tried to make me hate Emily for being talented, and make Emily resent me for existing.”

Sophie looked me in the eyes.

“You didn’t just color in my mother’s lines, Emily. You brought them to life. You’re not withdrawing from the exhibition.”

“Sophie, I can’t,” I cried. “It’s stealing.”

“It’s not stealing if we co-sign them,” Sophie said.

She picked up a small brush from a nearby table, dipped it into a tube of black acrylic paint, and walked over to a blank canvas leaning against the wall.

She wrote two names in bold, dark strokes.

Clara Vance & Emily Parker.

“We tell the gallery the truth,” Sophie said. “A collaboration between generations. My mother’s vision. Your execution.”

I stared at the names. For the first time in my life, we weren’t competing for space. We were sharing it.

Suddenly, Dad’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

He pulled it out, looked at the screen, and frowned.

“It’s Andrew,” Dad said.

He answered the call on speakerphone. “Andrew? Where are you?”

My brother’s voice echoed through the basement. He didn’t sound arrogant or dismissive anymore. He sounded panicked.

“Dad… Mom just called me from the back of the police car. She told me to go to her study and empty the safe.”

Dad’s jaw clenched. “Andrew, do not touch that safe. It’s evidence.”

“It’s too late, Dad,” Andrew stammered. “I opened it. And you need to come upstairs right now. She wasn’t just selling Clara’s paintings. She was paying someone.”

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