Fox's Glade It was a perfectly good grand piano

<3

He sympathized with her, even when Arlette's words dripped bitter from her mouth. Scathing against their mother -- accusations Merrit found hard to accept, considering his sister's thick emotion.

She's overreacting, he thought to himself, though outwardly he remained impassive. His mother had only ever loved them, cared for them, best she could... and had he not toed the line, so many times more?

If she thinks of Arlette as nothing more than trash, imagine what she thinks of you.

The words were quiet, penetrating; he did not fully register that he had thought them, but they nestled themselves into some lonely crook of his mind and stayed there, sitting like a funnel spider at the mouth of his webbed cocoon.

He didn't argue against her. Instead, he latched onto the most tangible piece of the words she offered: I've had enough.

"Where will you go?" He had never thought Arlette as living anywhere but Easthollow. She had been the one to hold on, even after Stark had gone. But now the brightness of their haven had faded to something cracked and blurred at the edges; bleached, as by the sun. A hazy remnant of better days that had fled a long time ago.