As the four girls stepped out of the hospital into the dull afternoon light, Isabella's playful facade cracked first—she wiped her eyes as tears spilled over.
"God, poor Blossom... she's been through hell. Her dad just up and left when she was only eight, cheating on her mom like she meant nothing. Then her mom—Dorthe's this huge name, the nation's biggest female scammer—ends up in jail, leaving her all alone. And now? This rare cardiac angiosarcoma, only a month left? It's too much. Way too much for one person."
Camila pulled Isabella into a hug, her own voice thick with emotion. "I know, Izzy. It's unfair. She's the kindest soul, and life's just piled on the suffering. But we're here for her—that's what matters."
Ayla nodded, blinking back her own tears, her usual calm wavering. "Yeah, poor girl. Abandoned by her dad, watching her mom cry herself to sleep then turn into... that. And fighting dizzy spells for years without knowing it was this monster tumor. God really needs to cut her some slack, give her one good thing before..."
Aveline rubbed Isabella's back gently, her serious eyes soft. "Shh, we'll make sure she gets it. No more tears—we're her family now. Let's focus on that doctor clearance tomorrow. She's strong; we'll help her feel alive again."
---
I'm Bloosom Silverstone.
My mom—Dorthe Silverstone —wasn't always the person the headlines screamed about. When I was little, she was my whole world: warm, funny, she wore the prettiest outfits I had ever seen and had this beautiful scent of expensive feminine perfume.
She'd take me to fancy cafés, buy me beautiful princess dresses, twirl me around and tell me I was going to be someone important one day, just like her.
I always knew how much she loved me and my dad.
She loved my dad with every fiber of her being. She'd look at him like he hung the stars, and I remember thinking that's what forever looked like.
Dad shattered it all.
He was cheating—had been for years, apparently.
Mom found out so many times: stumbling on messages on his phone, late nights that turned into weekends away, a lipstick stain on his shirt that wasn't hers.
She confronted him many nights , her voice breaking as she begged him to explain, to stay.
I heard it all from my room—the shouting, the silence, then her sobs that seemed to echo through the walls.
He didn't even fight for us. He just said he was "unhappy," that he needed something new, something without the "drama."
When I was eight,
One day he packed a bag one Tuesday afternoon while I was at school and walked out like we were nothing.
Divorce papers arrived cold in the mail. He remarried within months, started a shiny new family in another city, as if erasing us.
The child support checks came sporadically at first, then trickled to nothing.
I haven't seen him since I was twelve. I don't even know if he knows I'm dying, and honestly, part of me hopes he doesn't—it would hurt too much if he did and still stayed away.
Mom broke after that. Completely, utterly broke.
I'd wake up in the middle of the night to her crying in the living room, clutching old photos of them together, her body shaking with these deep, wrenching sobs that sounded like her heart was being torn out over and over. "How could he?" she'd whisper to herself, tears streaming down her face, her eyes red and swollen from nights without sleep.
She loved him so much it consumed her—every memory, every promise he'd made—and losing him turned that love into a gaping wound that never healed.
She'd hug me tight those nights, her tears wetting my hair, murmuring, "We'll be okay, baby.
I'll make sure no one ever hurts us like that again."
But I could feel her trembling, the way her grip was desperate, like I was the only thing anchoring her to the world.
The pain twisted her. She started saying things like, "Men like him always win because they have power. Money. We need that too—so we're never vulnerable again."
She threw herself into her finance career, but it wasn't enough.
She wanted more—fast, overwhelming success to fill the void he left, to prove she didn't need him or anyone.
She became a big name in the investment world: Dorthe the visionary, the "queen of exclusive opportunities."
She built a national empire of sorts, running high-stakes investment networks that spanned cities, pulling in wealthy clients, celebrities even, with promises of sky-high returns on luxury real-estate flips, tech startups, "insider" funds.
Her face was in business magazines, her seminars packed. People trusted her because she was beautiful, confident, magnetic—she spoke like she held the keys to fortune, and for a while, it seemed like she did.
But it was all smoke and mirrors. A massive Ponzi scheme, defrauding hundreds across the country out of crores—maybe more.
She paid early investors with money from new ones, living this glamorous lie to mask the emptiness inside.
We had everything: trips to beaches , designer clothes, a life that screamed "We won." But I saw the cracks—the nights she'd still cry over old letters from Dad, her hands shaking as she signed another deal.
She got arrested when I was thirteen.
Police raided our house one morning while I was eating cereal, sirens blaring, agents in suits flipping our world upside down.
Mom didn't cry or fight in front of them; she just looked at me with those haunted eyes, the same ones that had wept for Dad, and whispered, "I did what I had to do so we'd never be broken again, baby. I love you."
They took her away in handcuffs, and the empire crumbled. Assets seized. Everything gone.
The trial was a nightmare—national news splashed her face everywhere: "Finance Mogul Dorthe Exposed in Massive Fraud Scandal." Victims from all over—families who lost life savings, retirees ruined, small businesses collapsed—testified with tears and anger.
I watched it all from the back of the courtroom some days, my stomach twisting as I heard how her desperation had destroyed lives.
People at school whispered, stared, like I was guilty too. I stopped smiling in photos. Stopped trusting easy. Became the quiet girl who fades into walls, carrying this ache that wasn't even fully mine.
My mom's parents—Grabdpa and Grandma—stepped in, their hearts shattering all over again. They were retired, living modestly in a small flat in my mom's hometown, always so proud of their brilliant daughter.
When the truth hit, Grandma collapsed in sobs, Grandpa aged a decade overnight.
But they didn't abandon me. They sold their cherished family home in the suburbs—the one Mom grew up in, full of memories—to scrape together what they could for restitution and legal fees.
What little remained went into a court-supervised trust for me. They signed guardianship papers, becoming my quiet saviors, even though they couldn't take me in full-time—their health was failing, and they wanted me to have "normalcy."
So they rented a tiny one-bedroom flat near my school, covered rent, utilities, groceries. Paid for school, then college. Kept up the private health insurance from Mom's heyday—until my diagnosis turned terminal, and the bills started swallowing everything.
They visit three or four times a month, frail and fading.
Grandma brings homemade sandesh, her eyes welling up as she holds my hand, whispering how much I look like Mom "before everything."
Grandpa sits silently, looking haunted, transferring money when hospital costs spike, his voice cracking when he asks if I'm okay.
They never complain, but I know—they're dipping into their meager retirement, maybe borrowing against their flat. Every hug feels like an apology I don't deserve, and it breaks me a little more.
I've never visited Mom in prison. I don't know if I can face her—the woman who loved so fiercely she destroyed herself and others trying to heal.
Part of me aches for her, imagining her alone in that cell, still crying for the man who broke us all. Part of me resents her for letting that pain spill over into innocent lives. Mostly, I just feel this deep, hollow sadness, like I'm paying for love gone wrong with my own borrowed time.
The girls know everything.
They know my mom was Dorthe —the Dorthe whose face was plastered across national news for years, the "visionary investor" turned one of the country's most notorious financial fraudsters.
They know Dad cheated, walked out without looking back, and left Mom so shattered that her heartbreak curdled into desperation and then into crime. They know the scale of it: hundreds of victims, crores gone, lives upended. They know Grandma and Grandpa quietly sold their home and drained their savings to keep me afloat after the seizure, becoming my guardians while quietly bleeding themselves dry so I could finish school, go to college, have a roof that wasn't a courtroom exhibit.
They know because I told them. Not all at once, not dramatically—just piece by piece over late-night dorm talks, over shared tears and too much cheap coffee, over the months when the weight of it all felt like it would crush me alone.
Isabella was the first one I told properly, the night I found an old article someone had screenshotted and posted in a college WhatsApp group. I cried so hard I couldn't breathe, terrified they'd all see me as "that girl," the daughter of a criminal. Isabella just held me until the sobs stopped, then whispered, "You're not her choices, Blossom. You're you. And we love you." She never brought it up again unless I did first, but from then on her hugs were tighter, her jokes a little softer when she saw me fading.
Camila figured out the rest on her own—saw the Willowbrook envelopes from Grandma and Grandpa with postmarks, noticed how I always thanked them like I owed them my life (because I do). One day she just asked, gentle, "Your grandparents… they're the ones holding everything together, aren't they?" I nodded, and she pulled me into the longest hug, murmuring, "They're doing it because they see how good you are. We see it too."
Aveline never needed me to spell it out. She's the one who reads silences like books. She'd catch me staring at nothing during study sessions, eyes far away, and later she'd just say quietly, "Whatever happened before you, it doesn't define what happens now. You're allowed to be happy, Blossom. Even with all of it." Her seriousness isn't cold—it's protective, like she's building a wall around the parts of me that hurt most.
Ayla was the last to know the full story. I told her one afternoon in the campus library when I couldn't pretend anymore. She listened without interrupting, then simply said, "That sucks. All of it. But none of it is on you."
She's not big on words, but she shows up—bringing tea when I'm low, sitting silently beside me when the news cycles dredge up old headlines, making sure no one in our circle ever lets a stray comment slide.
They don't pity me. They don't whisper "daughter of a scammer" behind my back or treat me like I'm fragile china.
They get angry for me—at Dad for breaking Mom and then vanishing, at the system that let a heartbroken woman spiral into something monstrous, at the world that still judges the kid left behind.
But mostly they just love me harder. They tease me about being too shy, drag me to silly campus events, defend me fiercely if anyone ever dares bring up the past. They've turned what could have been shame into something shared, something that makes our friendship feel unbreakable.
I still carry the storm inside me sometimes—guilt for the victims, sorrow for Mom's tears, fear that I'll never outrun the shadow. But with them, I don't have to hide it. They see the whole messy truth of me and choose to stay anyway.
That's why, lying here in this hospital bed with my heart failing and only weeks left, when they talk about finding someone gentle to make me feel wanted and alive for one night… I believe they mean it. Not out of pity. Not because I'm broken. But because they've always seen me as Blossom—the girl who's kind even when the world hasn't been, the girl who deserves at least one beautiful moment before the end.
And for the first time, I'm starting to believe I might deserve it too.
Right now, in this sterile hospital bed, with the girls weaving plans for one fragile night of feeling wanted… I think of Mom's endless tears for Dad, how love's loss turned her into a force that devoured everything. And here I am, craving just a taste of connection before my own heart gives out, wondering if wanting it makes me as desperate as her.
I don't know if I deserve it. But god, I want it anyway.