In Chap­ter 165 of “All the Col­ors of the Dark,” Char­lotte arrives at the Mad House, car­ry­ing a small white suit­case adorned with blue but­ter­flies. Her grand­moth­er nods to Patch, indi­cat­ing the sig­nif­i­cant respon­si­bil­i­ty he holds regard­ing Char­lot­te’s well-being. As Char­lotte enters the house, she inspects the hall­way with a dis­cern­ing gaze, not­ing the metic­u­lous detail of the par­quet floor, which Patch had installed with great pre­ci­sion.

Despite her keen scruti­ny, Char­lotte makes no attempts to inter­act with her sur­round­ings; she keeps her pink coat but­toned and holds her suit­case tight­ly against her chest. She takes in the art­work that dec­o­rates the walls, the chester­field, the hide rug, and the heavy drapes, yet remains dis­tinct­ly detached.

Patch then invites her to see her room, but Charlotte’s response is dis­mis­sive: “Noth­ing here is mine.” He fol­lows her up the stairs to a room that he has metic­u­lous­ly pre­pared. The bed is adorned with an ornate frame carved with ros­es and leaves, and a pink canopy hangs above, designed for her sense of pri­va­cy. The white shut­ters, con­struct­ed by Patch him­self, have been inge­nious­ly adapt­ed with lou­vers to man­age the room’s expo­sure to the south­ern sun. Patch wor­ried about sea­son­al tem­per­a­ture changes and had tak­en care to insu­late and paint the room mul­ti­ple times in shades of pink, seek­ing the per­fect hue.

The room is out­fit­ted for Charlotte’s com­fort with a read­ing sconce for the books she sup­pos­ed­ly has and a triple clos­et for her clothes, all because Misty had sug­gest­ed her inter­ests. Addi­tion­al­ly, there’s a col­lec­tion of soft toys, reflect­ing her love for ani­mals.

After briefly explor­ing her room, Char­lotte heads back down­stairs and notices a swing hang­ing from a large oak in the yard. She gen­tly touch­es the larch seat and asks if it was her mother’s swing. Upon con­fir­ma­tion, she sits in the cool sun­light, embody­ing an air of con­tem­pla­tion. Through­out this time, Patch strug­gles with how to inter­act with her, observ­ing that it takes Char­lotte near­ly three hours to remove her coat and anoth­er hour for her shoes, under­scor­ing the pro­found emo­tion­al dis­tance between them.