I didn’t expect revenge to come wrapped in silence, or justice to arrive wearing coffee and pearls. But when my stepmother tore up my mother’s scarves, something broke, and something else finally healed.
My name’s Emma. I’m seventeen now, and if you’d met me a year ago, you probably would’ve thought I was the quiet one who kept her head down and stuck to herself.
I don’t blame you. I kind of was.
I live in a small suburb in Michigan, where the most exciting thing on a weekend is whether the high school football team wins or if the new donut place runs out of sprinkles. My world used to be brighter when Mom was around.
She was the kind of woman who lit up a room just by walking in, not because she tried to, but because warmth seemed to follow her naturally.
Her name was Sarah. She was all soft edges and laughter. I was eleven when she died of cancer.
She fought it for almost two years, not in the way people often describe as fierce or loud, but with grace.
It was a quiet, steady kind of courage.
And there was one thing about her everyone remembered: her scarves.
Silk ones with floral prints, chunky knitted ones in earthy tones, soft pastel cotton for spring, bold stripes in the fall. She didn’t just wear them. She lived in them.
“Scarves are like moods, sweetheart,” she’d tell me, tying a mint-green one around her neck as she looked in the mirror.
“You pick the one that makes you feel alive.”
Even during chemo, when her hair started thinning, she didn’t wear wigs. She wore her scarves. Sometimes in big, elaborate wraps.
Other times, it was just knotted casually at the side of her neck. But always with that same smile.
“A scarf isn’t to cover who you are,” she whispered once, tugging gently on the end of a soft lavender wrap. “It’s to remind you that you’re still here.”
After she passed, her scarves stayed in a floral box with pink hydrangeas on the lid.
It sat high on my closet shelf, just out of everyday reach. I didn’t open it often. But when I missed her more than usual, I’d take it down, lift the lid, and let the scent of jasmine and vanilla fill my chest until it ached.
Sometimes I swore I could feel her hands smoothing back my hair.
After Mom was gone, it was just me and Dad.
He tried, he really did.
He cooked, though heating frozen lasagna was more his style, and he asked about school, kind of. But grief does strange things. He grew quieter, more tired, always buried in work or busy fixing things that didn’t really need fixing.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
