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UNDER THE CAFETERIA TABLE, MY RIGHT KNEE BOUNCED LIKE A JACKHAMMER POSSESSED.

Adrenaline snaked through my limbs, urging me to bolt, to hightail it out of Rocquemore House and never look back.

Deep breaths.

If I didn't get my act together and calm down, I'd start hyperventilating and embarrass the shit out of myself. Not a good thing, especially when I was sitting in an insane asylum with rooms to spare.

''Are you sure you want to do this, Miss Fitzherbert?''

''It's Elsa. And, yes, Dr. Hamada.'' I gave the woman seated form me an encouraging nod. ''I didn't come all this way to give up now. I want to know.'' What I wanted was to get this over with and do something, anything with my hands, but instead I laid them flat on the tabletop. Very still. Very calm.

A reluctant breath blew through the doctor's thin, lipstick covered lips as she fixed me with an I'm sorry, sweetheart, you asked for it look. She opened the file in her hand, clearing her throat.

''I wasn't working here at the time, but let's see....'' She flipped through a few pages. ''After your mother gave you up to social services, she spent the remainder of her life here at Rocquemore.'' Her fingers fidgeted with the file.

''Self-admitted,'' she went on. ''Was here six months and eighteen days. Committed suicide on the eve of her twenty-first birthday.''

An inhale lodged in my throat. Oh hell. I hadn't expect that. The news left my mind numb. It completely shredded the mental list of questions I'd practiced and prepared for. Over the years, I'd thought of every possible reason why my mother given me up. I even explored the idea that she might've passed away sometime during the last thirteen years. But suicide? Yeah, dumbass, you didn't think of that one. A long string of curses flew through my mind, and I wanted to bang my forehead against the table-maybe it would help drive home the news.

I'd been given to the state of Corona just after my fourth birthday, and six months later, my mother was dead. All those years thinking about her, wondering what she looked like, what she was doing, wondering if she thought of the little girl she left behind, when all this time she was six feet under and not doing or thinking a goddamn thing.

My chest expanded with a scream I couldn't voice. I stared hard at my hands, my short fingernails like oceans against the white composite surface of the table. I resisted the urge to curl them under and dig into the laminate, to feel something other than grief squeezing and burning my chest.

''Okay,'' I said, regrouping. ''So, what exactly was wrong with her?'' The question was like tar on my tongue and made my face hot. I removed my hands and placed them under the table on my thighs, rubbing my sweaty palms against blue jeans.

''Schizophrenia. Delusions-well, delusion.''

''Just one?''

She opened the file and pretended to scan the page. The woman seemed nervous as hell to tell me, and I couldn't blame her. Who'd want to tell a person that her mom was so whacked out that she'd kill her herself?

Pink dots bloomed on her checks. ''Says here''-her throat worked with a hard swallow- ''it was ice....claimed ice was trying to poke through her head, that she could feel them growing and moving under her scalp. On several occasions, she scratched her head bloody. Tried to dig them out with a butter knife stolen from the cafeteria. Nothing the doctors did or gave her could convince her it all in her mind.''

The image coiled around my spine and sent a shiver straight to the back of my back. Why winter?

Dr. Hamada closed the file, hurrying to offer whatever comfort she could. ''It's important to remember, back then a lot of folks went through post-traumatic stress.....You were too young to remember, but-''

To be continued