The moment I saw my late mother’s pottery shattered across the living room floor, it felt as if time itself had stopped. Every piece — the vases, bowls, and mugs that once held her heartbeat — lay broken in a hundred fragments. My stepmother stood nearby, smiling, completely unaware that she had just walked into her own downfall. Because I’d seen this coming — and planned for it months in advance.
My name is Zep, and there are only two things I would protect with my life: my sanity and my mother’s art. My mom, Lark, was a ceramic artist — the kind of person who could turn lumps of clay into living memories. She made pieces that held emotion in their glaze: a sea-green vase after her first chemo session, a mug molded perfectly for my small hands, a bowl with her thumbprint still pressed into its rim.
When cancer took her, those pieces became more than keepsakes — they were proof that beauty can outlast pain. I displayed them in a glass cabinet at my father’s house after her funeral. That small collection was the one place in that house that still felt alive.
Then my father met Gale.
She arrived with the polish of someone who loved control — perfect hair, flawless makeup, and heels that clicked through the kitchen like a metronome. Two years after Mom’s death, she moved in. Within a week, her disapproval of the pottery was clear.
“It’s so… cluttered,” she said one morning. “You’d have such a cleaner aesthetic without those old things.”
“They’re not clutter,” I told her. “They’re my mom’s.”
Her lips curved into a smile that never reached her eyes. “Of course, sweetie. But they’re a little… rustic. Like something from a garage sale.”
She wanted my mother erased.
Soon, her patience wore thin. “If you won’t share nicely,” she said one afternoon, “you’ll regret it.”
I didn’t answer. But I remembered.
Weeks later, when I returned home from a work trip, I found the destruction. My mother’s art — gone. My stepmother — smug. “I told you that cabinet was unstable,” she lied smoothly. “It just… fell. You should’ve taken better care of them.”
She laughed. “They were just pots, Zep. Move on. Your mom would want that.”
She was wrong — and she was about to learn why.
