Chapter 3

James came from a good family.

I didn't want him to see where I came from. But he insisted on meeting my mother, even a mother with a "difficult personality."

I couldn't talk him out of it. I drove him to the studio I'd rented for Linda.

The moment we entered the stairwell, I smelled it. Rot and waste and disinfectant, all tangled together.

We knocked for a long time before her voice came through the door: "It's open…"

I pushed inside.

Linda was lying on a cot. Around her, half-eaten instant noodle cups and empty pill bottles were piled up in every direction.

She'd wasted away. Her cheeks were hollow, her cheekbones jutting.

The sheet under her was damp. The kind of damp that comes from something drying and being soaked through again.

James pressed his hand over his nose. His brow furrowed. He took a step back.

"Ellie… is this… your mom?"

I rushed to her and ripped the blanket back.

"Linda! What the hell is going on?"

"Where is the fifty thousand? All of it?"

"You let yourself get like this on purpose? Are you trying to humiliate me?"

Linda squinted against the sudden light. She spotted James standing behind me, and something flickered in her eyes — a split second of alarm.

She struggled to reach for the blanket, to pull it over her legs. The legs that had shriveled away.

She wheezed. "It's… it's gone… the gear in the game was expensive…"

"Ellie, can you give Mom a little more… I want the roast duck from downstairs…"

"Gone?" I shouted. "Fifty thousand dollars. In one month?"

"Did you gamble it? Are you on something?"

I tore through the room looking for evidence of where the money had gone.

Under her pillow, I found a box.

It was the packaging for a game controller.

"Give me that."

Linda erupted. She threw both arms around the box and her eyes went fierce.

"That's mine. Nobody touches it."

"That's your whole life, isn't it? A stupid game console matters more to you than your own daughter?"

I yanked it away from her.

"Give it back! Ellie! Please, give it back!"

Linda rolled off the cot. Those completely deformed hands clawed at the air, her nails raking across my forearm.

"Ow!" I cried out and shoved her backward.

She hit the dresser with a dull thud and stopped moving.

"Ellie, stop wasting your breath on her." James had seen enough. He took my hand. "Find the documents and let's go. A mother like this — you're better off without her."

"You're right. Better off without her." I caught my breath, staring at the woman still twitching on the floor, trying to drag herself back toward the box.

"Linda. Starting today, you are not my mother."

"I'll arrange for you to go to a care facility. Whatever happens after that — don't call me."

I pulled the document from my purse — a formal written declaration of severance — and slapped it on the table.

"It doesn't hold up in court. But in my heart, you're already gone."

I turned and pulled James toward the door.

"Wait…" Her voice came from behind me, barely a sound.

She didn't beg. She didn't curse.

She raised her head. And somehow, there was a smile on her face — faint, but unmistakable. The smile of someone being released.

"Ellie… keep going… don't look back…"

I stopped mid-step. My chest clenched.

Those words.

I knew those words.

"Crazy woman," I said through my teeth, forcing the tears back down. I grabbed the controller box I'd taken from her and hurled it at the floor.

"Take your junk and die."

I walked out before James could stop me.

By the time I got to the car, my hands were still shaking.

"Don't cry, Ellie." James started the engine. "Some people can't be helped."

I nodded and looked out the window.

Then, from somewhere in the distance, a siren began to wail.

An ambulance, lights flashing blue, pulled directly up to Linda's building.

My heart lurched.

I looked down at the paper that had slipped out of the box — the one I'd never dropped.

I'd assumed it was a manual.

It wasn't.

It was a trust fund statement.

Beneficiary: Eleanor Harris.

Amount: $200,000.

Date: five years ago.

The same year Linda quit her job. The same year she "gave up."

Tucked beneath the statement was a stack of medical documents.

The first one was dated five years ago too.

Diagnosis: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Estimated prognosis: 3 to 5 years.

Patient notes: Patient declined all treatment. Pain management only. Requested all remaining funds directed to trust…

The world went silent.

My mind went blank.

My hands shook as I turned to the note folded beneath everything else. The handwriting was almost illegible — smeared with tearstains and grease.

"Ellie, Mom couldn't give you much. I'm sorry I couldn't build you a fortune.

Mom didn't want you to watch me fall apart. To watch me turn into something that just drools and stares.

Hate me. Hate me so you can fly far away.

That fifty thousand — Mom used it to clear the last of the loan sharks your father owed before he died. Nobody will come after your company anymore…

Ellie, it hurts. Mom is so tired… Mom just wants to sleep…"

"Stop the car!"

I screamed it. The car hadn't even stopped fully when I threw the door open and ran.