Mom Could Remember One Daughter Each Month, but Always Chose My Sister Chapter 04

Mom Could Remember One Daughter Each Month, but Always Chose My Sister Chapter 04

On my wedding day, the bed-and-breakfast courtyard was filled with white camellias again.

Ethan and his friends had worked through the night.

They built the flower arch and glued the shattered sign back together.

The cracks still showed.

But the N Dad had written himself was still there.

Ethan’s eyes were bloodshot, but he smiled and reached for my hand.

“The location changed.”

“Nothing I promised you will be lost.”

After the ceremony, we went straight home.

Waffles was waiting for me.

I had promised him that I would bring him to our new home as soon as the wedding was over.

But when I opened the door to my room, his bed was gone.

His food, toys, and medicine had all been stuffed into trash bags.

A brand-new crib stood where his bed had been.

A card was taped to the headboard.

Welcome, Sophie’s baby.

Sophie wasn’t even pregnant yet.

But Waffles’s place had already been cleared out.

I searched the closets and under the bed, but no one answered when I called.

The security footage showed Mom putting Waffles into a cardboard box and carrying him to a car.

Waffles rested his front paws on the edge of the box and kept looking back toward the house.

He knew Mom, so he didn’t even struggle.

He probably thought she was taking him to find me.

My hands shook as I called Mom.

She was with Sophie at a preconception appointment.

“Waffles? What are you talking about?”

“I don’t remember ever having a cat in this house.”

I stared at the security footage.

“You took him. Where did you leave him?”

Mom was silent for a few seconds.

“Maybe I was having an episode.”

“I thought he was a stray.”

“He’s only three months old. He just had the stitches removed from his hind leg.”

My voice trembled with panic.

“It’s still raining outside. He could die!”

Mom cut me off impatiently.

“Forget it.”

“He’s a cat. If he gets lost, you can just buy another one.”

Sophie tried to calm me from beside her.

“Nora, Mom didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I’m trying to get pregnant. I can’t be around cats right now.”

There wasn’t even a baby yet.

Waffles had already been forced out of his home because of that possibility.

Ethan and I searched three nearby dumpster areas in the pouring rain.

When broken glass cut my fingers as I dug through the trash, I barely felt it.

I called Mom more than a dozen times.

She finally answered the last one.

“Mom, can you come help me look?”

“Waffles can’t handle the cold. He really will die.”

A few seconds later, Sophie’s voice came through the phone.

“Mom, Nora’s still searching around the neighborhood.”

Mom must have thought the call had ended.

She lowered her voice.

“I had the driver take him two blocks farther before dumping him.”

“That cat knows the way home. If we left him any closer, he might come back.”

I stopped in the rain.

Sophie gave a soft laugh.

“You really thought of everything, Mom.”

“If Nora knew we did this because I’m trying to get pregnant, she’d make a scene.”

“That’s why I said I didn’t remember.”

Mom’s voice was full of indulgence.

“She’s married now. From here on out, this house belongs to you and the baby.”

Sophie hesitated.

“But his leg was injured. What if he dies?”

Mom was silent for a moment.

“Then he dies.”

“He’s an animal. How could he matter more than my grandchild?”

She had remembered.

She remembered who Waffles was, that he knew the way home, and that his leg had just been operated on.

That was why she had deliberately had him taken farther away.

Before dawn, we finally found the box at a waste facility two blocks away.

The cardboard had been soaked through.

Waffles was curled up inside, clutching one of my old socks.

His paws were covered in blood.

He must have fought to get out of the box.

But with his hind leg still injured, he hadn’t been able to find his way home.

I rushed him into an animal hospital.

The vet touched his stiff body and shook her head.

“He’d been gone for several hours.”

I lowered my head against Waffles’s face.

“Waffles, Nora came to take you home.”

He didn’t rub against me the way he always had.

He died without ever knowing.

The place he had thought of as home had made no room for him long ago.

I buried Waffles beside Dad’s grave.

Then I went home, took my documents, and left my keys, caregiver card, and Mom’s medication instructions on the table.

Before boarding my flight, Mom sent me a message.

“You can’t blame me for what happened to Waffles.”

“I really didn’t remember.”

She was still lying to me at the very end.

She was sure that if she blamed what happened on her illness, I’d cry and then go on understanding her, just as I had for the past twenty years.

I sent back only one line.

“You don’t have to choose anymore.”

I blocked her and turned off my phone.

The plane slowly pulled away from the gate.

If her memory had room for Sophie and no one else…

Then I’d disappear from her life exactly as she’d wanted.