While I was on my way home to Niceville the morning after my brother died, Mom, Alice, Amber and their boyfriends went to collect his things from the duplex he shared with his ex-girlfriend. Andrew and Shelly had already agreed on the division of the furniture when they broke up, and my mother was determined to have everything that Andrew was planning to take. Shelly locked herself in the bedroom while they loaded the truck. My mother later described the entire ordeal to me in exasperated tones. She was less than pleased that the storage bins she gave Andrew to keep his things in were filled with Shelly�s belongings. "That girl has so much stuff!" she complained. "Where did she get the money for all of it?"

Apparently a lot of Andrew's things, especially his old keepsakes, were missing. Mom had a thorough inventory in her head, since she had packed it all up for him when he moved out of her house a while ago. Shelly said that he threw it all away, but Mom doesn�t believe her.

My mother was already well on the way to hating Shelly before my brother died. She didn�t appreciate the girl�s lack of moneymaking and housekeeping skills and felt that she put too much of a burden on Andrew. Both Mom and I had heard Andrew say that she bitched at him all the time, though he never gave us the details of her complaints.

Mom�s voice was full of loathing as she described Shelly�s melodramatic sighs and cryptic mutters when she finally came out of the bedroom, and the way she threw herself on the couch as they were carrying it out and begged them not to take it because it contained so many memories for her and Andrew. Mom asked why she cared about the memories, since she had broken up with him.

�I was on my way home to tell him that I loved him and he was the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with!� she said.

�Yeah, right.� Mom said.

Stepdad took Shelly aside and tried to explain what my mother was like, how much she was hurting, and that she wanted to take the couch because Andrew had wanted to take it. Shelly argued that they got the couch from her mother, but Stepdad countered that Shelly�s mother sold it to Andrew for $350. My mother cared nothing for that, she simply kept repeating that Andrew said he was taking the couch, so she was taking the couch for him.