“Is that you?” Ruby asked.

Yvonne nodded. “My mother and me. It was taken a few months before she died. I was three. It was a car accident.”

“I’m sorry. That must have been awful.”

“I don’t remember it, really. I have very few memories of her. Most of them are so vague and muddled that I don’t even know if they’re real. But someone has to remember her. Everyone else seems determined to forget she ever existed. Even when he was alive, my father wanted to forget her, probably out of guilt.”

“What do you mean?”

“My brother, Nicholas. He was born exactly nine months after my mother died.”

Ruby frowned. “Are you saying…”

“I’m saying, either my father barely waited until my mother’s funeral before he started fucking his secretary, or he’d been cheating on her long before she died. I’ve always suspected the latter. It would explain why he tried so hard to erase her, and why he resented me. I was a reminder of the woman he betrayed.”

“Your father resented you?”

“He never said anything, but it was obvious. He wasn’t kind to me, growing up. And his new family—Alice, and Nicholas—they took their cues from him, treating me with the same hostility. I was the unwanted stepchild. It didn’t help that I didn’t look anything like the rest of my pale, blonde-haired family.” Yvonne’s voice wavered slightly. “I spent my entire childhood feeling like I wasn’t really part of my family.”

“Oh, Yvonne. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe anyone could be so cruel to their own family.”

Yvonne placed the photo aside onto the bed. “I wasn’t family. Not to them.”

Ruby put a comforting hand on Yvonne’s arm. So much about the woman Ruby called her Mistress was starting to make sense. She would have had to grow a thick skin to endure such a painful childhood. But did her icy exterior serve another purpose? Was it to hide the pain of loneliness, of feeling unwanted? Was it to keep others from getting close enough to reject her, just like her own family had?

“It wasn’t all bad,” Yvonne said. “I still had one person I could call family.”

Ruby recalled what Yvonne had told her that night after the wedding. “You mean your nanny. Nita.”

Yvonne nodded. “She and my mother were close, despite the fact that Nita worked for her. After my mother’s passing, Nita was the only person in my life who acknowledged her existence. She told me stories of my mother, taught me how to cook all her favorite dishes. She kept the memory of my mother alive for me.

“But it was so much more than that. In erasing my mother, my father also erased any connection I had with my Chinese heritage, my mother’s culture. Having that part of myself ignored and unacknowledged was so isolating. Nita, she helped me connect with that part of myself. She made sure I didn’t grow up feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere, made sure I knew I had a place, both in the world and with her. I’ll always be grateful for that.”