I was burying, finally and for good, the mother I had believed Ottoline was — a person who had never actually existed, who had been a mask worn over the woman now handcuffed on the wet stone.

When she slid back into that sweet frail voice and asked me to tell them she was confused, I understood the last cruelty of her: she was still, even now, trying to use my love for the mask against me, reaching one more time for the tenderness she had exploited for a decade.

And I found that the love was simply gone.

Not turned to hatred — hatred would have been another kind of bond.

Just gone, the way a room goes quiet when a sound you’d stopped hearing finally stops.

I looked at her and felt nothing I could use, and I said take her away, and I meant only: this is over, and I am going home to raise my daughter, and you will not be in the story anymore.