Chapter 2

The bruises on my back were calculated.

The most hidden one was right below my left shoulder blade, left by a heavy plastic clothes hanger.

That afternoon, my mother’s hand had flew high into the air, and then her palm crashed down on me.

A burning pain radiated from my cheek to my ear. I bit my lip hard, tasting the metallic tang of blood in my mouth.

But she didn’t stop. Wearing her soft house slippers, she kicked me hard in the stomach. I curled up on the cold hardwood floor, gasping for air like a fish dying on dry land.

Her voice was shrill and screeching, a horrific contrast to the gentle mother I once knew. "Thief! You’re trying to steal my baby!"

I looked up through my tears and saw the raw, unadulterated hatred in her eyes.

But in the very next second, her gaze went blank. Her brows furrowed deeply, as if she were desperately trying to pull herself out of a thick fog.

She reached out with trembling fingers, gently touching my swollen cheek as tears cascaded down her face.

"Oh my god... I'm so sorry, Chloe. Mom is so, so sorry."

She pulled me into her arms. It was an embrace that was both warm and suffocating.

As her fingers brushed against the fresh welts on my back, I flinched from the pain. Instead of letting go, she held me even tighter, as if she wanted to merge me into her own body—or perhaps, erase me from this world entirely.

Back then, I always told myself: *Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. Mom will get completely better.*

I held onto that hope until the day I found out she had never been sick at all.

Once upon a time, my mother was the gentlest soul in the world.

When I was six years old, I came down with a horrific fever in the dead of winter.

My dad was away on a business trip. My mom stayed up all night, never closing her eyes once, gently wiping my burning body with warm, damp towels over and over again.

At three in the morning, half-conscious from the fever, I heard her calling a doctor friend from the living room. Her voice was trembling with tears. "Dr. Carter, please help. My daughter's fever has reached 104. What do I do? What should I do?"

She checked my temperature every fifteen minutes, writing it down carefully in a little notebook.

Her handwriting was messy from panic, but I could still recognize it.

Eventually, when the fever wouldn't break, she bundled me up in a heavy blanket like a little burrito and carried me down the stairs.

We lived on the sixth floor of an old walk-up apartment building with no elevator. She walked down those steps, one by one, her heavy footsteps echoing in the quiet stairwell.

The sidewalk outside was covered in patches of black ice. She slipped and fell hard, but she used her elbows to shield me from hitting the frozen ground.

I heard her groan in pain, but she immediately turned her head to check on me. "Chloe, sweetie, are you okay? Did Mommy scare you?"

Dozing off, I mumbled back, trying to comfort her. "I'm okay, Mom."

We didn't have much money back then, and I hated the thought of going to the hospital just for a fever.

When we finally got to the ER, the doctor scolded her for not bringing me in sooner. She just looked at him with red, bloodshot eyes and said, "I thought I could break the fever at home. I didn't want to drag her out in the freezing cold middle of the night if I didn't have to."

When the nurse pricked my hand for the IV, I started crying and screaming. My mom held me tight against her chest, softly singing my favorite lullaby.

As the medicine dripped into my veins, I fell asleep. In my hazy dreams, I could feel a warm hand gently stroking my hair.

When I opened my eyes, I saw her slumped over the edge of my hospital bed, fast asleep from sheer exhaustion. Yet, even in her sleep, her hand kept patting my back gently, over and over again.

The morning sun filtered through the gaps in the hospital blinds, casting a warm, golden glow over her tired face.

During those peaceful years, she was the one who taught me how to read and write.

We shared a single desk lamp. Her warm, soft hand would cover my small one, guiding my pencil across the paper to write the letters of the word "LOVE" in my spelling notebook.

Whenever I made a mistake, she never yelled. She would just gently erase it and say, "Let's try again, sweetie."

She always told me, "Chloe, you are Mommy’s greatest treasure."

And whenever she said those words, her eyes would crinkle into beautiful, crescent moons.

For my seventh birthday, she baked me a strawberry cake from scratch.

My dad had to work late at the office and couldn't make it home.

Seeing the disappointment on my face, she magically whipped out two movie tickets from behind her back. "Well, then it's a girls' night out! A date with Mom!"

We watched the latest animated movie. She bought me a giant tub of popcorn but didn't eat a single piece herself, choosing instead to just watch me smile. When the movie ended, it was drizzling outside. She took off her denim jacket, draped it over my head to keep me dry, and ran into the rain to hail a cab.

Inside the taxi, water was dripping from her hair, but her first instinct was to use her dry sleeve to wipe the raindrops off my face.

I kept these memories locked deep within my heart.

They were real. I was sure of it.

And that was exactly why her betrayal, when it came, was so incredibly cruel.

***