I thought the end of the world had come when I found my late mom’s priceless pottery collection broken all over the floor of my living room. My stepmother didn’t know that her mean moment would turn into her worst fear, though, because I was three steps ahead of her the whole time.
There are two things in the world that I would protect with all my heart. My name is Bella. The first is that I’m crazy. The second is the collection of pottery my mom left me when she died five years ago.
Mom made things out of clay. She had saved for three years to buy a kiln and set up her workshop in our garage. Each thing she made had a story behind it. The vase she made in sea green the day after her first cancer treatment. I used to hold that coffee mug every morning when I was six years old. It had a small heart pressed into the handle. The bowl still has her mark in the clay on it.
After she died, I put everything in a tall glass cabinet in our living room and wrapped everything in bubble wrap and tissue paper. After Mom died, I moved back in with my dad. It wasn’t because I couldn’t afford my own place, but because his house was so quiet that it could swallow you up. We were both important.
It worked for a while.
Then Dad met Karen at a meeting for work. She wasn’t like Mom at all. Imagine having your nails done, your hair styled by a professional, and wearing expensive clothes. Two years after Mom died, they got married.
I tried to make changes. But after a few weeks, I knew Karen and I would never be friends.
She didn’t like Mom’s art.
“There’s so much stuff here,” she said one morning. “You really should think about minimizing. Clean lines are so much more elegant.”
I checked out the cabinet. “They’re not cluttered. They’re my mom’s memories.”
She smiled very hard, but not all the way to her eyes. “Of course, sweetie. I just mean… they’re a bit rustic, aren’t they? Like something you’d find at a yard sale.”
“My mom made them.”
Karen said, “I know that,” but she wasn’t really listening. “I’m just saying, maybe you could put some in storage?”
She would say something about something every few days. “These really don’t match the aesthetic I’m going for.” Also, “Don’t you think it’s time to let go of the past?”
Then, Karen sat me down in the kitchen one afternoon while Dad was at work.
“I’ve been thinking. You have so many of those pottery pieces. Would you mind if I took a few? Some of my friends love handcrafted items. I’d save so much money on gifts.”
What I just heard shocked me. “What?”
“Just a few. You wouldn’t even miss them.”
“I have 23 pottery pieces. And no, you can’t have any of them.”
Her face changed quickly. The friendly mask broke. “Don’t be selfish, Bella. They’re just sitting there collecting dust.”
“They’re all I have left of Mom.”
Karen’s eyes got smaller. “Fine. Keep your precious little pots. But if you won’t share it nicely, you’re going to regret it.”
Her shoes clicked like gunshots as she walked away.
“You’ll see,” she said to herself behind her.
After three weeks, my boss sent me to a three-day meeting in Chicago. I didn’t want to go, but I had to.
After I was done, I took a late trip home on Saturday night. It was almost 11 p.m. when I got home. The porch light was the only light in the house.
I quietly opened the door and took my shoes off.
That’s when I knew something was off with the smell. The coffee from Dad, Mom’s lavender soap that still smelled, and the earthy clay smell from the pots all gave our house a certain smell. The smell of clay was gone now, though.
It made my stomach hurt.
I went into the living room. When I turned the corner and saw the cabinet, my brain didn’t believe what my eyes were telling it.
The glass door was left open. There was nothing on the shelves. And there were pieces of clay all over the floor. There were pieces of pottery in every color Mom had ever used all over the place, looking like awful confetti.
Saying “No, no, no…” I got down on my knees and put my hands over the broken things, afraid to touch them.
The heels were then heard.
Press. Press. Press.
Karen walked in through the opening wearing silk pajamas. Her hair looked great. Even though it was almost midnight, she had makeup on her face. She smiled and looked at the floor after looking at me.
She said, “Oh!” in a voice as light and sweet as poisoned honey. “You’re home early.”
“What did you do, Karen?”
She looked at her nails, which were bright red and had just been painted. “I told you I didn’t like how cluttered they looked. I was dusting, and the shelf was unstable. Everything just… fell.”
She told a lie. I could tell by the way her mouth curled and the small sparkle of happiness in her eyes.
“Total accident!” she said with a bigger smile.
I felt something snap inside me and said, “You’re a monster.”
Her face turned serious right away. “Watch your tone, Bella. Your father won’t appreciate you calling me names. And honestly, they were just pots. You’re being dramatic.”
“Just pots? My mother made those. Her hands shaped every single one. They had her fingerprints on the clay.”
Karen just shrugged. She turned to leave, but stopped. “Had being the key word.” “Oh, and you might want to clean that up before your father sees it. He’ll be so upset that you were careless with your storage.”
I was left alone with my mother’s broken body as she walked away singing something.
I was on the floor with tears running down my face. I was so angry and sad at the same time that I couldn’t tell which was which.
But something else was taking shape beneath it all. Something very cold, very sharp, and very clear.
Because Karen had done something very wrong.
She thought I was stupid.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” I told the room that was empty.
What Karen didn’t know is this.
It’s been about two months since I first became suspect. She kept going around that cabinet like a shark, always finding a reason to dust near it and saying how much space it took up. I’m not naturally anxious, but I’m also not a fool.
I did two things.
First, I bought a camera that was hidden. That kind of plant cam that looks like a cute little flower but records everything in HD. I put it on the desk across from the cabinet at a perfect angle and didn’t tell anyone about it. Not you, Dad. Not my best friend. No one.
Second, I switched out the pottery. This is the part that still makes me feel like a criminal genius.
That cabinet was full of fake things.
I had to look at street markets and estate sales for three weekends before I found cheap pottery that looked like it was the right size. Obviously not the same, but the shapes and colors are close. I may have paid $50 all together. Then I took them home, got coffee grounds and dust on them to make them look old, and put them back exactly where Mom’s pieces had been.
What I really had was locked up in a cabinet in my bedroom closet. It was wrapped in the same bubble wrap and paper towels I used five years before.
So Karen ruined what she thought was my mother’s legacy when she smashed everything. What she really did was destroy copies.
I wasn’t going to tell her that, though. Not yet.
I took out my phone, which was still lying on the floor next to some fake pottery pieces, and opened the camera app. That evening’s time stamp showed that the video was already there.
Around 7 p.m., I saw Karen walk into the room. I think she looked around to make sure she was the only one there. She then went straight to the closet, opened the door, and began taking the pieces off the shelves. She grabbed the fake sea-green vase and threw it at the floor so hard that I could hear it hit through the speaker on my phone.
She broke every piece one by one. The plates, bowls, and mugs. She used her heel to stomp on the bigger pieces to break them up even more.
She then looked straight at the empty cabinet and said, “Let’s see how much you love your precious mommy now, you pathetic little girl!” That was the best part.
Three times, I watched the movie to make sure it was saved right. After that, I called my dad.
“Hey, honey,” he said, sounding sleepy. “Everything okay?”
“I’m home. Can you come downstairs? We need to talk.”
“It’s almost midnight…”
“Now, Dad. Please.”
He showed up in his bathrobe, and Karen was following behind, looking angry.
When they saw me on the floor with pots all around me, they stopped moving.
Dad went pale and asked, “What happened?”
Karen jumped in. “Oh, Dave, it’s awful. I came down for a glass of water and heard a crash. The cabinet must’ve been unstable… everything just fell.”
“That’s not what happened,” I said.
I gave my dad my phone. “You should watch this.”
Karen’s face jerked. “Watch what?”
Dad hit “play.”
I saw his face change as he saw Karen carefully breaking down each piece. When she stomped on the pieces, his jaw got tight. He jumped at her last word.
The quiet after it was over was unbearable.
Karen said, “Dave, I can explain…”
“Explain what? Explain why you destroyed my late wife’s artwork on purpose and tried to blame Bella?”
“I didn’t… it’s not,” I said. “This is fake. You changed it.”
I laughed. “You did this all by yourself.”
Her face turned funny. “Fine. I’m sick of living in a shrine devoted to a dead woman. She’s gone, and you both need to move on.”
Dad’s hands were shaking. “Get out.”
“What?”
“Get. Out. Pack a bag and leave. Tonight.”
It’s not possible, Karen screamed.
“Actually,” I told you, “I have a better idea.”
They both looked at me.
“You’re going to fix this.”
Karen’s eyes got smaller. “What?”
“You broke them, so you’re going to glue every single piece back together. Every shard, every fragment.”
She laughed. “You’re insane.”
“Maybe. But you’ve got two choices. Either you spend however long it takes to repair what you destroyed, or I file a police report. I’ve got video evidence of vandalism. Criminal charges. And I’ll make sure everyone in your book club and volunteer committee sees exactly what you did.”
Her face lost all of its color. “You wouldn’t.”
I opened my email, put in the address of the police department, and raised my phone. “Try me.”
She opened and shut her mouth. She finally hissed, “Fine!”
I put each part in a box and spread them out on the dining room table the next morning. Karen just sat there for weeks. Her nails were broken. She didn’t make it to her hair shop, book club, Pilates class, or spa trip.
I would walk by with my phone every time she tried to stop. “Need me to call the police yet?”
Dad didn’t talk to her much. She begged him to stop, but he told her, “You did this to yourself.”
The pieces didn’t fit right because they were just any pottery from anywhere. But she kept trying, even though it made her more angry and tired.
After twenty-eight days, she called me in.
She said, “There,” her hands shaking. “It’s done. Every piece is… glued. Are you satisfied?”
I looked at her work. The “vases” had bumps in them. The lines on the “mugs” were clear. Colors that shouldn’t have been together were stuck together in strange ways.
“Wow! You actually did it.”
“Now can we move on from this?”
I smiled. “Sure. Just one more thing.”
The real sea-green vase came out when I opened the wooden cabinet in the corner. The whole and perfect.
Karen’s face loosened up. “What… how..?”
I took out one more piece. One more. All 23 originals are still whole.
“I switched them out two months ago. The pieces you destroyed were fakes from estate sales. Cost me about 50 bucks.”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
“So you spent four weeks gluing together junk that was never going to be useful?” I put Mom’s real pottery on new shelves. “Kind of poetic. You tried to destroy what mattered most to me, but all you destroyed was your own time and sanity.”
Karen’s face turned white, then red, then purple. “You set me up.”
“I protected what was mine. You chose to be cruel. I just made sure your cruelty cost you something.”
She took her bag. “I’m leaving. I’m going to my sister’s, and I’m not coming back until you’re gone.”
“Have a safe trip!”
She walked out in a rage. A week later, my dad told me she had asked for a breakup. He had to decide, she told him.
I was picked by him.
“Good riddance,” my dad said, putting his arm around my shoulders.
Karen has been gone for three months now.
My dad and I put in a new cabinet with a lock and stronger glass. There are real pieces of mom’s pottery inside, and they are all in the right place. When the sun comes out in the afternoon, the glazes will sometimes catch it and glow.
Karen is still with her sister. Once, she tried to come back and said she wanted to “fix our relationship.” But her dad told her the ship had sailed and sunk.
The papers for the divorce should be completed next month.
A friend from Karen’s book club brought a dish over last week. People learned about what took place.
“I always thought something was off about her,” she stated. “Too perfect, like she was performing for the cameras.”
I showed her my mom’s stuff. She cried for a long time while standing in front of the closet. “These are extraordinary. Your mother was an artist.”
“Yeah. She really was.”
Dad is feeling better. He laughs more. He asked me last Sunday if I would like to go to the community center with him to take a pottery class.
Yes, I said.
When I got home that night and saw pieces on the floor, I felt like the end of the world had come. The sadness was real, but the clay wasn’t.
For those who want to erase someone’s thoughts, the truth is that you can’t. Even if you break the things, the love that’s behind them is stronger than any closet.
Karen put something together that was never whole in the first place for a month. She worked herself up trying to fix what she had broken, but she didn’t see that the damage she was doing to herself was worse.
She thought that by ruining my mom’s art, she could erase her. She stopped being a part of our lives and spent her last days in our house putting trash together while the real treasures were locked away.
The pottery that Mom made is back where it belongs. What about Karen? She’s where she belongs: dead, forgotten, and living the rest of her life knowing she was tricked by a daughter who loved her mother more than she ever thought possible.