To love or have loved

that is enough.

Ask nothing further.

There is no other pearl to be found in the

dark folds of life.

"Les Miserables"

Victor Hugo

It was nearly 10 at night when Daphne finally reached the door to the apartment she and her mother shared.

She was miserable. Her back felt like it was on fire, every move hurt and spending 17 hours on her feet hadn't helped at all.

She was greeted by a white envelope taped to the door and she knew what that meant.

Another eviction notice.

She opened it, her eyes flying over the lines. Her mother hadn't paid the rent for 3 months?

They lived in the outskirts of NYC in a beaten-down house where the tenants seemed to change quicker than the weather did.

It had been the last apartment in a long line of them and Daphne needed to close her eyes for a moment.

3 months worth of rent that were, what, 1500 dollars?

Summer was over, Daphne having spent it working 13 hours a day at a diner and a bookshop, sometimes a bar. It was ridiculous that they had even let her do that. She was only 17, a high school senior now, but a fake ID and copious amounts of Make-up had helped with that.

Daphne didn't enjoy the lies that she needed to tell at all. She had grown used to them though.

Lie after lie, everything so that she could explain away the bruises and the pain, could explain away the drugs and the empty bottle of alcohol that littered the house.

Lie after lie.

She had kept more than half of the money carefully stashed away under a loose floorboard in her closet.

Even during one of her drunk rants, her mother wouldn't actually crawl through Daphne's closet and rip out the very last floorboard. At least it had worked for the last year and a half.

Daphne could just hope that there was enough money under that floorboard to pay the rent. And if there wasn't...she would need to raid what little she actually kept in her college fund.

She pushed down the tears that wanted to overcome her and she wondered another time why she was even bothering anymore.

She was just so tired.

She was as quiet as she could be as she entered the apartment she and her mother shared. She could smell then the stench of alcohol as she slipped off her backpack and then pulled off her coat and carefully hung it up at the door. Then she took off the beaten up converse that had already seen much better days.

To their defence, it should be said that Daphne wore them near-daily and had done so for the last 4 years.

She had bought them from some of the birthday money that her aunt and uncle had sent her that year.

She couldn't help but smile as she thought about her aunt and uncle. While Daphne hadn't seen them in years (the last time had been when she had been 14 and her mother had sent her to Maine for a week over the summer), they still stayed in contact. At least as well as it worked.

They emailed mostly because that was the easiest way for Daphne. Texting was impossible since her mother had thrown her phone out of the window after another one of her drunken tirades.

As hungry as Daphne was, she didn't bother to go into the kitchen. There would be nothing edible in there. She had bought ramen noodles last week but her mother would have probably already eaten them. And if they were already eaten...

As quietly as she could she stepped into the living room. The light was on in the small living room and she couldn't help but sigh. They really didn't have the money to pay for the electricity bill either.

Her mother was on the couch, the tv screen showing some soap opera.

Daphne wouldn't remember much of that night for the rest of her life.

She would however always remember that moment. She took the threadbare blanket from the back of the couch, wanting to put it over her mother and then stopped because Michelle's body was still.

Unnaturally still.

Her chest didn't rise and fall in the rhythm of her breath. There didn't come a single noise from her mother like it usually did, even when she was knocked out from alcohol and whatever drugs she could find.

What Daphne didn't remember was the rest of that night.

Later she was told, that she had called emergency services with her mother's phone. She had done CPR and frantically tried to restart her mother's heart.

She didn't remember when emergency services arrived.

She didn't remember when her mother was pronounced dead on the scene.

She must have been dead for hours, Daphne was later told.

The police came and asked questions to which Daphne didn't know the answer.

Did her mother drink a lot?

Well yes. Michelle drunk a lot.

Had drunk a lot since Daphne could think.

And Daphne had learnt early one to never say anything about that.

Alcohol seemed to be the most important thing in Michelle's life. Daphne had been unable to do anything against it. The one time she had tried to take away her mother's bottles...it hadn't exactly ended well for her.

So Daphne had learned to live with it. What else had she been supposed to do? There wasn't any family near her and she didn't exactly have friends either.

She had learned to hide it. Most people didn't look further behind the facade when it was presented in a way that it seemed completely and utterly normal and unremarkable.

Where had the pills come from?

She could just shrug at that. Had it been pills that evening? Most of the time it had been crack.

Daphne had seen her mother do that since she could think as well. She had thought it to be normal, for god's sake. Until there had been the whole 'drugs are bad' push in middle school.

Then she had learned that the white powder her mother used, wasn't exactly good for you.

She had wanted to tell people over the years. Of course, she had wanted to do that.

But she had been too scared.

She had been used to be the one that took care of her mother and if she didn't do that, then who was going to take care of Michelle?

Did she have any relatives?

Her mother had a sister. Aunt Caroline, who was married to Uncle Matthew and they had a son a bit older than Daphne. Oliver, that was his name. They did always sent her Christmas and birthday presents and her mother had used to ship her off to them a few times in the summer.

They still lived in the same small town in Maine, in which her mother and aunt had grown up in. Middleton, that was the name. Uncle Matthew was the town doctor. Aunt Caroline worked as a primary school teacher a few days a week.

Daphne's mother had had a few jobs but seemed unable to hold one down.

Michelle had once been an artist. Daphne could remember how when she had still been really, really small, her mother had used to paint a lot. That was also where Daphne's own affinity with paint had come from.

But Michelle's hands had developed a tremor and most of her pictures had been unrecognisable by the time Daphne had been 12.

The social services arrived then, expecting Daphne to pack up her whole life in two garbage bags.

It was probably a bad sign that that was actually the easy part.

Daphne didn't own a lot. Her mother had pawned off everything that she could only so that they had some money.

All of the clothing she had filled one trash bag. Most of it was old now, too old, threadbare in places and having holes in others. Most of it also was too short and too tight by now.

Still, she had packed it, had taken all of the money she had kept stashed away, and had then tried her best to hide her money in various places in the garbage bag and her backpack.

And then she had left that apartment behind.