Page 109 of One of Those Amnesia Stories

She was in there for almost an hour—a lifetime to a child pressed against cold stone.

And the whole time, a wild and hungry hope bloomed inside me. When that door finally opened, I was certain she would ask for me. She would look for me. She would see me, take my hand, and lead me out of this cold, silent mausoleum of a house.

She didn’t.

All she did was pause at the foot of the staircase, her gaze lingering on it for a long, unreadable moment before she turned and walked out without a backward glance.

That day, I accepted a brutal truth. Aldric Quinn had built my reality on a foundation of lies, carefully constructing a childhood that would shape me into the perfect instrument for his legacy.

But about one thing, he had been painfully, unequivocally honest.

I did not have a mother.

After my sixteenth birthday, things shifted.

Aldric fell ill.

And she came back.

That was our first official meeting. When her eyes landed on me, they instantly welled with tears.

Mine just narrowed. But my grandfather’s training was impeccable. I extended my hand, my posture perfect, my voice cool and detached. “Alessia Quinn. A pleasure to meet you.” She stared at my outstretched hand, a flicker of pain passing over her face before she covered it with a sad, resigned smile. Then she took my hand. Her grip was surprisingly firm.

“Sariah Quinn. The pleasure is mine.”

She stayed until Aldric recovered.

Then she disappeared again.

The disappointment I felt wasn’t that she had left. Not exactly. It was the bitter, childish irritation of realizing that my grandfather had survived when, for years, some quiet and shameful part of me had wished he wouldn’t.

Apparently, my silent prayers had been inadequate.

Four years later, my wish was finally granted.

I was sitting in a lecture hall when the call came.

He was dead.

Fucking finally.

His funeral was a massive, somber spectacle, crowded with every titan of industry performing the solemn and appropriate rituals of grief. My mother and I were the only two people in that black-clad crowd who seemed incapable of pretending.

When I asked for five minutes alone with the casket, everyone assumed I wanted a final farewell. Tears, perhaps. A whispered goodbye. The private grief of a granddaughter saying goodbye to the man who had raised her.

They had no idea about the flask of brandy tucked inside my coat. They didn’t hear the calm, conversational tone I used to detail, point by point, how his legacy would be dismantled. And they certainly didn’t see the smile I’d been suppressing for twenty years finally break free.

I thought I was finished with the Quinn name then. Finished with the house, the empire, the ghosts, all of it. I thought death had finally cut the last thread tying me to the life he’d designed for me.

My mother, unfortunately, had other plans.

The moment I graduated and began the real work of building my business plan, Sariah Quinn materialized in my life.

Dinner invitations began appearing. Then suggestions for “bonding trips” to places she’d been, places she apparently believed could somehow compensate for sixteen years of absence. She became a sudden, persistent presence, trying to cram a lifetime of mother-daughter memories into the space I was trying to clear for my future.

She poured out her side of the story: the pressure, the rebellion, the bargain. She insisted that, unplanned or not, she had always loved me in her own way. That she was different now. Then came the stories—her travels, the cities she’d lived in, the people she’d met, the person she’d supposedly become somewhere along the way.

I nodded when I was meant to nod. Made the appropriate sounds of interest. Asked the occasional question. But my mind was a million miles away, calculating burn rates, analyzing competitor agencies, and mentally rehearsing my pitch for the venture capitalists I had lined up. Her voice became little more than ambient noise against the spreadsheet taking shape behind my eyes.