Because You Are Mine Part VIII: Because I Am Yours Read Free

could see.
    No
, Francesca thought. That wasn’t Helen Noble. Not really.
    A nurse ran down the hallway toward the attendants, Dr. Epstein trailing behind her at a rapid pace. The attendants carefully laid the shrieking woman on the floor, and the nurse gave her an injection.
    Anne began to cry silently as she watched them carry her daughter away. Francesca put her arm around the older woman’s shoulder, at a loss for what to say, still in a state of shock herself.
    “Ian,” she exclaimed when she glanced around and saw him and his grandfather walking in their direction. She’d never seen him so pale. His facial muscles were rigid.
    His glance at her was glacial.
    “How dare you come here,” he said as he approached her, his lips barely moving, his mouth and jaw were drawn so tight. Her heart seemed to stop in her chest. She’d never seen him this way . . . so anguished, so furious . . . so exposed. She couldn’t think of what to say. He’d
never
forgive her for coming here uninvited, for seeing him at what was perhaps one of the most vulnerable moments of his life.
    “
Ian—”
    But he cut her off by merely walking past her in the direction where they’d taken his mother. James gave his wife a sad glance and followed his grandson.
    Anne took her hand and led her to a chair. She sat down next to her, all the vibrancy Francesca had noticed upon first meeting her seeming to have drained away.
    “Don’t blame Ian,” Anne said hollowly. “Helen and he had been sharing a wonderful morning and now . . . all ripped away again. He’s upset, obviously.”
    “I can understand why,” Francesca replied. “I shouldn’t have come. I had no idea—”
    Anne patted her forearm distractedly. “It’s a ravaging disease. Brutal. It’s been hard on all of us, but the hardest by far for Ian. From an early age, he had no choice but to be Helen’s sole caretaker. He told me after he’d lived with us for a while and started to open up that he had to constantly monitor her, for fear her madness would be exposed to the townspeople in too flagrant of a fashion, and they’d take her away to the hospital and send him to an orphanage. He lived in daily, hourly fear of her harming herself or of being separated from her. He barely attended school like the other children, because he needed to look out for Helen. The town where Helen ended up—we, to this day, don’t know how or why she ended up there—was very remote and a bit backward. I have little doubt some kind of child protection agency would have been contacted about Ian’s poor school attendance if it’d been more centrally located. As it was, he managed to keep Helen’s illness a good secret, learning where Helen kept her reserve of money and managing it frugally, taking up odd jobs around the village, running errands, and once it was learned that he had a genius for fixing electronic things, repairing small appliances. He did all their shopping and housekeeping, cooking for them, making their little cottage as neat as he was able and securing it with various safety measures, given Helen’s odd behaviors and occasional violence during her psychotic episodes . . . such as the one you just witnessed,” Anne mused wearily. She gave a heavy sigh. “All that, and when we finally discovered Helen and him, Ian hadn’t yet passed his tenth birthday.”
    Francesca shuddered with silent emotion. No wonder he was so controlling.
Oh God, that poor little boy.
How lonely he must have been. How brutal for him to experience moments of love and connection during his mother’s lucid periods, only to have them vanish from him when psychosis hit . . . just as it had today. Suddenly, she recalled that expression he wore once in a while that tore at her so deeply and bewildered her so much, the look of someone who not only had been abandoned and lost but who knew with certainty he would eventually be rejected again.
    “I’m so sorry, Anne,” Francesca said, feeling