“You draw everyone else beautifully,” he said, pointing at her sketchbook—full of classmates, trees, stray cats. “But never yourself.”
She titled it: Evidence .
Elara shrugged. “I don’t know what I look like.” maternal maltreatment facialabuse
That night, she tried. She sat on her bedroom floor, mirror in her lap, and forced herself to look. The face that stared back was not ugly—she knew that logically. But it felt illegal , like a stolen object. She saw her mother’s fingerprints ghosting over every contour. She saw the places that had been criticized, corrected, condemned. “You draw everyone else beautifully,” he said, pointing
He didn’t laugh. He simply set a small hand mirror on her desk. “Then find out.” “I don’t know what I look like
Lena never mentioned it. But she stopped touching Elara’s face. And Elara, for the first time, turned her mirror toward the room—not to admire herself, but to keep watch. To remember that the crime scene had been closed. That she was not a reconstruction.