Russell was right. My mother was here, in Kingsport’s finest private sanatorium.
But seeing her felt like having my heart wrenched from my chest.
Gone was the elegant, beautiful woman I remembered. Now she wore an oversized hospital gown, her hair brittle and white, her eyes vacant. Clutching a pillow, she murmured endlessly, "Ivy, my Ivy… Daddy bought your favorite osmanthus cakes… come home…"
She didn’t recognize me.
My presence even frightened her. She screamed, hurled the pillow toward me, and retreated into a corner, trembling.
The doctor said she’d suffered a severe shock—a complete mental breakdown.
Outside her room, I knelt and wept as if my world had crumbled.
It was Russell who lifted me from the cold floor. He slipped off his suit jacket and draped it over my thin shoulders.
"Don’t be afraid," he said. "I’m here."
His embrace was warm, carrying a faint scent of cedar—just for a moment, it gave me an illusion of refuge. I clung to him, a drowning woman gripping her only lifeline.
Russell settled me into one of his apartments.
He was good to me. Unfailingly, meticulously good.
He cooked for me himself. He patiently accompanied me to visit my mother. He hired the best lawyers to file my appeal, even though every door kept slamming shut.
He never mentioned Aaron. He never brought up Shirley.
Shirley… now a rising star in Kingsport’s art scene.
She had taken my place: admitted to the National Academy of Fine Arts, holding her own solo exhibition, marrying Aaron in a blaze of glory to become the enviable Mrs. Aaron.
And me, Ivy?
I was just a forgotten ex-convict, rotting in the darkness.
