Chapter 9
Chase finally explained why he supported Tove.
Their father.
A hard man.
Illness in the Mercer house had been treated as weakness.
Chase broke his wrist at eleven and was told not to cry.
Tove had asthma as a child herself.
That changed everything.
Not enough to excuse her.
Enough to reveal the source.
I stared at her.
“You had an inhaler.”
Her face tightened.
“Years ago.”
Margaret looked stunned.
“You know what this feels like.”
Tove snapped:
“I grew out of it.”
There.
Not medically important.
Psychologically.
She had survived a childhood where needing help was punished.
Then turned survival into ideology.
“If I had been coddled,” she said, “I would’ve stayed weak.”
I stared.
“You were a child.”
“So is Mireya.”
Exactly.
She thought that proved her point.
It destroyed it.
“You learned adults would not help you.”
Silence.
“So now you think refusing help creates strength.”
Her eyes hardened.
“Yes.”
Honest.
Finally.
I looked at Mireya’s inhaler pouch on the table.
“No.”
My voice stayed calm.
“It creates children who stop asking.”
Tove flinched.
May you like
That landed.
Perhaps because somewhere inside her, she remembered being one.
