My Family Members Are Dolls That Never Respond To Me Chapter 08
After the reporter left, the Sheldon living room went unnervingly quiet.
Annie’s admission letter still sat open on the coffee table.
Just a little while ago, everyone had been gathered around it, laughing.
Now, no one so much as glanced at it.
Dad snapped out of it first, grabbing his car keys and heading for the door.
“We’re going to the school.”
“I want to hear it from them. Where did she apply.”
Mom hurried after him, her footsteps unsteady.
Leo and Adrian went along too.
Only Annie stayed on the couch, her face gone bloodless.
She wanted to call after them.
But her mouth opened, and nothing came out.
The school was already on break. Only the guidance counselor was in her office.
When they all came in together, the expression on her face wasn’t surprised at all. It was as if she’d been expecting this day.
Mom rushed at her.
“Ms. Whitman, where did Nora go? Is she hiding it from us on purpose?”
The counselor looked at her for a long moment before speaking.
“Nora is an adult.”
“If she doesn’t want to say, I can’t say for her.”
Dad’s face darkened.
“We’re her parents. Applying to college is a big deal. How could she keep something like that from her own family?”
The counselor set her papers down. Her voice went cooler.
“On the day she submitted her applications, I asked her if she wanted to talk it over with her family again.”
“She told me, no. Her family had already decided for her once.”
The words landed, and no one spoke.
Mom’s face lost color for a moment.
She remembered Nora sitting at the edge of the couch that day.
Her fingernails buried in her palm. Her eyes red rimmed.
And Mom hadn’t even let her finish saying what her score was. She had only cared about steering her away from the East Coast schools.
The counselor went on.
“Nora had a hard year.”
“Toward the end of last semester, she was often slumped over her desk, working through problems. Her face was pale in a way that wasn’t right.”
“And she didn’t have enough money for basic expenses. She had to work part time. More than once, she came in with heatstroke from handing out flyers. She hit her head hard enough to bruise.”
“I asked her why she didn’t tell her family.”
“She said there was no point.”
Mom’s lips moved. She wanted to push back.
But not a single word would come out.
Finally, the counselor pulled out an application form.
“This is the form Nora filled out to apply for the scholarship and the paid campus position.”
“She wrote, no reliable financial support from family.”
“Unfortunately, because your family isn’t in financial hardship, the request was denied.”
“Because who would ever imagine that a set of parents would treat their own daughter this way?”
The office was silent as stone.
It was true. The Sheldons weren’t struggling.
Dad was a senior executive at a multinational firm, his salary comfortably in seven figures a year.
Mom owned three boutique clothing stores. One of them alone brought in nearly six figures a month.
The reward she casually handed her younger daughter was a limited edition designer bag. Seven thousand dollars.
But their older daughter, Nora, had been forgotten in that cheap rented studio for an entire year.
After they left the school, they drove to the studio.
The landlady was cleaning the room.
When she saw them, she froze for a second.
“You’re here for the girl? She moved out a while ago.”
Mom’s face went white.
“Did she say where she was going?”
The landlady shook her head.
“Nope.”
“She cleaned the place up before she left. Left the keys on the table.”
“She did leave a few little dolls behind. They looked so sad, I couldn’t bring myself to throw them out.”
She reached into the cabinet and pulled out a cardboard box.
Inside, four cloth dolls sat neatly in a row.
Dad. Mom. Leo. Adrian.
The fabric was worn, the stitching crooked. Anyone could tell Nora had made them herself, one careful stitch at a time.
Mom took one look, and tears fell down her cheeks.
For a whole year.
They had left Nora alone in this apartment.
And she had sewn fake versions of them to eat with her, sleep beside her, listen to her talk.
Adrian was standing by the desk. His eyes had caught something else, a scrap of paper half sticking out of the trash can.
He bent down and picked it up.
It was the postcard, torn in two.
The picture showed the bell tower and the campus lake of the top liberal arts university.
In the corner, in his own hand.
【Nora, I’ll be waiting for you here.】
Adrian’s fingers trembled.
The other half was pressed under the leg of the desk.
He crouched down, awkwardly working it free, and lined it up beside the first piece.
The tear ran right down the middle. No matter how carefully he pressed them together, the crack wouldn’t close.
Just like whatever had been between him and Nora. He had torn that in two himself, long ago.