Chapter 218 Not a Good Girl

Ashton realized that her mother had changed during their second spring with the Shaw family.

She had given away her beloved cloth doll—a gift from her father—to a child in the Shaw family.

That night she had cried so hard.

Yet her mother had said...

"We must behave differently here in Mr. Shaw's home than we would in our own. You have plenty of dolls your father bought you, missing one isn't the end of the world. You need to be a good girl."

Later, when she visited that relative's home...

She saw the doll again.

Her beautiful doll, torn and neglected in the corner, it broke Ashton's heart.

But...

She always held her mother's words close to heart.

They lived in someone else's house, which meant they had to be good, sensible, and obedient.

The doll, though she felt a deep guilt for leaving it behind, remained there nonetheless.

In the years that followed, this sort of thing happened far too often.

The thing she feared most when s