Regina turned toward the older woman — her own mother, Regina's mother, Ivy would soon learn — her earlier shock deepening into something far more complicated as she registered her mother's visible, overwhelming distress. "Mother, what is she talking about?"
The older woman remained frozen, tears now streaming freely down her face, her hands trembling as she stared at Ivy with an expression that seemed to carry decades of buried secrets finally, unavoidably surfacing. She said nothing further, though her silence carried its own unmistakable confirmation.
Regina turned back to Ivy, her earlier fury entirely gone now, replaced by a dawning, uncertain vulnerability that seemed entirely foreign to her usual composed authority. "Your father," she said slowly, "what was his name?"
Ivy wiped uselessly at the blood and tears mixing on her cheek, the pink box still held out between them, waiting. "Robert Ashford," she said quietly. "He passed away when I was twelve. My mother said he used to visit us sometimes, before everything got too complicated for him to keep coming."