Nichole sits on the couch watching the movie “Grown Ups” with Kyle. Having given up on playing after countless rejections from her mother, Nevaeh sits, dejected, on the floor.

“I’ve got so much riding on [Nichole] to pull through and I don’t want her to know it,” Mary said. “I don’t want her to know how much it means to me for her to really make a success out of this.”

Later that night, Mary said, “Sometimes I think the only way out of this situation is for me to die, but then what would happen to those kids?”