So Many Times

Death by Fruitcake Chapter 4

Mom usually calls me every day, but I haven’t heard from her in over a week.

I’m worried, so I drive to her house. I search downstairs and upstairs, but can’t find her. Then I look outside. She stands on the little pier overlooking the frozen lake at the back of their house, dressed only in a light summer dress.

“Mom! Mom!” I yell out the window, but she doesn’t turn around.

 I run outside. “Mom, what are you doing?”

One end of a thick rope is securely tied around her waist. The other end of the rope is looped through three fruitcakes, stacked on top of each other. The stack teeters on the edge of the pier.

“It was all my fault, you know.” Mom stares straight ahead. “I should never have made those fruitcakes.”

I stand in front of her and put my hands on her shoulders. “Mom, there was no way for you to know.”

“Oh, I knew. A mother always knows.” Tears dribble down her cheeks. “I can’t live with myself anymore.” She pushes me aside and runs into the stack of fruitcakes with the full weight of her body.

My right ankle is clear of the rope, but not my left. My mother, me, and the fruitcakes break through the ice covering the lake and shoot downwards. I untie the rope from my mother’s waist, and she floats up to the surface. But I can’t break free of the rope twisted around my ankle. Who knew fruitcakes could be so heavy?