What She Left Behind

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

Would she ever find peace, or would she always be that seven-year-old girl, reliving the horrible night her father was murdered?

What dreadful memories had attached themselves to the bricks and mortar and clouded glass, forever part of the structure, mortared and sealed with blood and tears?

How desperate did a person have to become before they broke the law to survive?

But Izzy knew madness was the only explanation for her mother shooting her father while he slept.

Henry Cartwright was half owner of Swift Bank, the largest bank in Manhattan, with branches in all New York boroughs and several upstate communities. And her mother, Ruth, was the lone heiress of the Bridge Bros. Clothing Emporium.

That was when she realized physical pain made emotional pain disappear for a few minutes, and the sight of her own blood made her faint. Over the next seven years, she cut herself to erase her anger, frustration, and pain, but she did it without looking.

The earth and everything on it was cast black for those last few minutes of daylight, as if evil ruled the world for that short period of time, before the stars and moon came out to illuminate the night sky and remind everyone and everything that there really was lightness and goodness in the universe, that there really was hope and heaven.

What would have happened if the patients had been asked what had happened to them instead of what was wrong with them?

I won’t let my past define my future, she thought. I was a different person back then. And I’m not going to spend the rest of my life paying for my father’s sins. I won’t and I can’t.

From now on, there will never be at least one person in the world thinking of me every day, loving me unconditionally. I am finally, truly alone.

The world was full of broken people, and all the hospitals and institutions and jails could never mend their fractured hearts, wounded minds, and trampled spirits.