My mom has been dead for two years now.
And her so-called best friend is my stepmom.
Everything finally exploded on the night she threw a party on my mom’s death anniversary.
Cancer took my mom.
One month before her diagnosis, we were arguing in the hallway because I never folded towels the “right way.” She stood there with her arms crossed, rolling her eyes, saying, “You fold like you’re angry at the towel.”
Two months later, a hospice nurse sat at our kitchen table explaining morphine schedules while my mom stared at the ceiling and tried not to cry.
Life didn’t ease us into it. It shoved us.
She was only 49.
Carol was there from the start.
Her name is Carol. She didn’t come out of nowhere. She was my mom’s colleague, her lunch buddy, her best friend. I grew up with Carol at our kitchen table, kicking off her heels, gossiping about work, drinking coffee from our mugs like she lived there.
She hugged my mom when Mom got the diagnosis.
“You’re so strong,” Carol said, squeezing her tight. “You’re going to beat this. I just know it.”
My mom smiled the way she always did when she didn’t fully believe something but didn’t want to fight.
“We’ll see,” she said softly.
But sometimes, when Carol’s name popped up on her phone, I’d catch a look in my mom’s eyes.
Not jealousy.
Worry.
My mom didn’t beat it.
She went from “early stage, lots of options” to “we’re talking months” so fast my brain never caught up. One day she was making lists and labeling folders. Two weeks later she was too weak to sit up without help.
She died on a Tuesday afternoon.
I was holding her hand.
She squeezed my fingers once and whispered all the right things. The things moms say when they know they’re leaving.
After the funeral, my dad wasn’t really here anymore.
He moved like he was underwater. He’d stand in the kitchen holding a mug he never drank from. He’d sit on the couch staring at a blank TV screen.
I tried to help. I cleaned. I cooked. I sat near him.
Nothing worked.
That’s when Carol started showing up.
At first, it made sense. She cried at the funeral. She worked with Mom. She said all the right things.
She brought casseroles. Soup. Banana bread wrapped in foil. She washed our dishes without asking. She touched my dad’s arm when she spoke to him. Tilted her head like she was listening very closely.
She started calling every night.
Their calls got longer.
I’d walk past the hallway and hear my dad laughing softly. Something he hadn’t done in weeks.
Once, I stood there too long and heard him murmur,
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Carol.”
My stomach dropped.
Less than a year after my mom died, Carol moved in.
“You don’t have to be alone in this,” she told him gently. “We’ve both lost her. We can help each other.”
Then came the backyard wedding.
Small. Quiet. “Respectful,” my dad said.
Carol wore a pale blue dress and smiled like she’d won something.
From day one, she went after everything that reminded us of my mom.
“Grief has an expiration date,” she’d say if I left a picture on the table.
“She wouldn’t want you stuck in sadness,” she’d add while boxing up Mom’s things.
Once, she took my mom’s chipped coffee mug right out of my hands.
“At some point,” she said calmly, placing it on the top shelf, “mourning turns into attention-seeking.”
My dad would flinch. Then smooth it over.
“Carol’s just trying to help us move forward,” he’d say. “We all need that.”
So I shut up.
For him.
The only place Carol never touched was the old barn behind the house.
It used to be for farm stuff, but by the time I was born, it was Mom’s space. Binders. Boxes. Files. Everything labeled. My mom trusted paper more than people.
Carol hated it.
She called it “a depressing hoarder shed.”
Going inside made her “itch with dust and old grief.”
So she stayed out.
She had no idea what was in there.
When the first anniversary of my mom’s death came around, I planned something quiet.
A candle. A photo. Maybe a glass of wine. Just me and Mom.
I came home early from work that day.
Before I even opened the door, I heard bass shaking the windows.
Music.
Laughter.
I froze in the doorway.
There were people everywhere.
Carol’s wine friends. Coworkers. Random guys in polos. Bottles on the counter. Beer cans on the floor.
My living room looked like a midlife crisis.
And in everyone’s hands?
My mom’s vintage crystal wine glasses.
The ones she kept wrapped in tissue. The ones she said would be mine someday.
Carol spotted me and raised her glass.
“Oh good, you’re home!” she said brightly. “We decided to have a celebration of life instead of a depressing death anniversary.”
One of her friends laughed.
“Yeah, funerals are such a downer. This is way healthier.”
CRASH.
Two glasses shattered on the tile. Wine splashed everywhere.
The guy who dropped them laughed.
“Oops.”
Carol didn’t even look.
“Well,” she shrugged, “they’re just things. People cling to objects when they can’t let go.”
My jaw clenched so hard it hurt.
Then I saw the dresses.
Carol was wearing my mom’s navy wrap dress.
Her friend spun past in the green dress my mom wore to my graduation.
Wine sloshed onto the fabric as they danced.
“These are way too nice to rot in a closet,” the friend said. “You’re doing this stuff a favor.”
I walked up to Carol.
“Can you stop?” I asked quietly. “Please. Today of all days.”
She leaned in, smelling like wine and perfume.
“It’s a celebration of life, not a memorial,” she whispered, smiling. “She’s gone. I’m here now.”
Then she tilted her head.
“And if you can’t handle that,” she said softly, “maybe you’re the problem.”
Something inside me went flat.
I turned around and walked out.
Straight to the barn.
The air inside was cool and dusty. It smelled like old paper and my mom’s perfume.
I went to the metal cabinet in the back.
Mom had shown me the key once.
“Only if you really need it,” she’d said.
My hands shook.
I opened the box.
Documents.
Printed emails between my dad and Carol. Highlighted. Calendar pages with “coffee” dates circled.
Notes in my mom’s handwriting.
“Carol inserting herself again.”
“She keeps asking about the house.”
“Strange how quickly she bonded with [Dad] after my diagnosis.”
Under that was something thicker.
Legal papers.
Six months before she died, my mom changed her will.
The house wasn’t my dad’s.
It was mine.
With one condition written over and over:
If my dad remarried Carol, she got nothing.
No rights. No profit. No claim.
I took photos of everything and emailed my mom’s lawyer.
Then I went back inside.
The party was louder.
I walked over and shut off the speaker.
Silence slammed into the room.
“You’re killing the vibe,” someone groaned.
Carol turned.
“Oh my God, relax.”
I handed my dad an envelope.
“Dad,” I said. “You need to read this.”
He opened it.
His face went white.
“She… planned this,” he whispered.
Carol lunged forward.
“No,” my dad said sharply. “You’ve done enough.”
“The house isn’t yours,” I said calmly. “And after tonight? You’re trespassing.”
Two weeks later, Carol was gone.
No police. No screaming.
Just paperwork.
On the second anniversary of my mom’s death, I lit one candle.
I poured wine into one of the crystal glasses she couldn’t break.
I raised it to her photo.
“I kept it,” I said. “Like you wanted.”
The silence didn’t feel heavy anymore.
It felt like peace.
Like the house was finally ours again.