Mom Abandoned Me to Save Herself Chapter 09

Mom Abandoned Me to Save Herself Chapter 09 The Rusty Iron Chain

After staying cooped up in her room for a very long time, Mom finally agreed to

come out.

Following a period of treatment, her emotions grew far more stable.

She no longer flew into hysterics, nor did she keep running away from everything.

Every day, she would sit on the living-room sofa, keeping a great distance from me, and merely watch me in silence.

I pretended not to notice, yet I could feel her gaze fixed steadily upon me.

Her stare carried a tangible weight, making it hard for me to breathe.

When I stepped out into the yard, she would watch me through the glass window.

When I picked up a book, she would ask the butler to fetch one for her as well.

It was a wordless, clumsy kind of imitation, a timid attempt to draw near without daring to get close.

No words were exchanged, and she never moved any nearer.

She began learning how to cook.

She had the butler track down the wild greens-the only food I had ever gotten to eat back in the mountains.

She chopped the greens finely and boiled them into a mushy paste.

It tasted terrible, bitter and acrid, nothing like what I remembered.

She kept adjusting the recipe every day, adding salt one day and sugar the next, yet it always wound up tasting strange.

Still she persisted. Each day she would take a big spoonful herself first, then gaze at me quietly, a flicker of hope in her eyes.

One day, she finally summoned up her courage.

Holding the dark-green, odd-smelling bowl of wild-green mush, she walked slowly toward me step by step.

My stomach growled out of turn, for I truly was hungry.

Her hands shook so badly that the mush nearly spilled over the bowl’s edge.

She knelt before me, her voice trembling.

“My baby, Mommy made you something to eat.”

She held the bowl out toward me.

“Just one bite, please?”

At the sight of her drawing near, my whole body went rigid.

I shrank back instinctively and pressed myself flat against the wall.

The light in her eyes died away in an instant.

She didn’t leave right away. She stayed there on her knees, holding the bowl as its contents slowly turned cold, her expression hollow.

She didn’t press me further. She set the bowl of mush gently down on the floor in front of me.

Then she pulled something out from inside her coat.

It was a heavy, rust-covered iron chain.

The very same chain I had seen countless times in the mountains-the one that had bound her for years.

She held out the chain, together with a small hammer, toward me.

The chain clanged dully against the floor, the harsh sound echoing sharply

through the quiet room.

My body began to shake uncontrollably.

Large tears spilled down her face and splattered onto the floorboards.

“Mommy knows I was wrong. I’m a terrible person.”

Her voice was full of abject supplication.

“I’m guilty. I deserve to die.

“Hit me. Use this to hit me, just the way he hit me back then.”

She grabbed my hand, trying to make me close my fingers around the hammer.

“Strike me. Only then will Mommy feel a little better, or I shall go mad.

“Let me atone. Please. If you beat me, can we let it all go?”

I stared at the cold chain.

Faint dark-red bloodstains lingered on its links-her blood, and it felt almost like

mine too.

A heavy ache clogged my chest.

I would not take the hammer, and I would not touch the chain.

I merely shook my head.

Then I ran past her and fled.

I only wanted to escape her suffocating grief.

Behind me,

I heard her break down into unrestrained, heartbroken sobs.

Silas had come over without my noticing. He took off his jacket and draped it over her shaking shoulders.

He spoke to her softly.

“Do not frighten her. Hesper, we must never frighten her again.”

He watched my retreating figure and sighed quietly.

He said to her,

“We must take it slow. What we owe her will take a whole lifetime to repay.”