History Literature / TheRulesOfSurvival

* WalkingTheEarth: [[spoiler:After being caught kidnapping Emmy, Nikki is ordered by Murdoch to leave Massachusetts and never return if she doesn't want to go to jail. She spends the next two years drifting around the United States, living her life how she wants -- sleeping with random men, doing drugs, and who knows what else. But every now and then, Matthew and Callie get letters from her. (Some are addressed to Emmy, but her older siblings make sure she never sees a single one.) Some of them are loving messages asking the children about their lives, telling them to dress warmly in the winter and eat their vegetables, while some of them are angry rants blaming Matthew and Murdoch for how her life turned out, threatening to kill them and herself.]]

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* HairTriggerTemper: Doing anything Nikki doesn't like can make her fly into an explosive rage. Her son Matthew has spent his entire life walking on eggshells to keep her happy and making sure his sisters do the same.

* ReallyGetsAround: A PG-13 version -- while sex is never mentioned explicitly, it's pretty obvious what Nikki is doing when she brings strange men home and goes out to bars to seduce them into doing her bidding. Plus, she has three children from two different fathers.

** If someone is abusing you, just because they sometimes do nice things for you doesn't mean they're a good person, or that the abuse is less hurtful.

* AnAesop: When children are being abused, people need to step in and help rather than ignore it until it's too late.

* TheSociopath: Nikki ticks all the boxes pretty neatly; she's superficially charming, is capable of hiding her worst traits under a MaskOfSanity, has a total LackOfEmpathy even for her own family, was cruel even as a child, has a major reckless streak, and harbors no remorse for any of the terrible things she's done.

** Nikki is a deranged mother (implied to have borderline and/or narcissistic personality disorder) who switches on a dime between being overly affectionate to her three children and cruelly abusing them. Her oldest son Matthew recounts an incident where she held a knife to his neck for stealing cookies, as well as another where she took him and his sisters to eat at IHOP, then on the way home, decided the kids weren't being grateful enough for the food, so she drove the car into incoming traffic and didn't stop until they screamed that they loved her. After going to jail for trying to run down her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend with her car, and losing custody of her children to her sister and ex-husband, she decides to make all their lives a living hell. [[spoiler:Eventually she kidnaps her youngest daughter Emmy and tries to poison her to death by forcing her to drink a very large amount of alcohol]].