Little Orphan Mary

The Hemingway Complex is delirious from this astonishing strip but we are trying to hold it together to analyze just a little bit. Foremost: "broken home"! When did Mary learn that phrase? Then: divorced parents means malnourished and miserable orphan? Then: I thought she was looking out a window into gray bleakness but someone said she is looking at an empty pantry? And: This is the horrid past of poor Mary Worth? Hungry and alone? It explains her control issues, but the straight-up nosiness - in tomorrow's strip is she going to listen through the wall as the well-fed family in the next tenement apartment engages in melodrama that brings them to ruin merely because Mary kept her silence? And then she vows never to keep quiet on any issue again? And when does she get some food? Remember how a psychic moved into the building a few years ago (or last week maybe, by MW time) and after Mary brought her a casserole she disappeared? Is she back at the pool party where Toby woke up thinking she was going to go have a fun time and is now instead trapped on a bench for three weeks listening to Mary's tale of woe and Mother's best wasn't enough?
Now, look at Mary gazing into the past at her shivering orphan child self casting a creepy shadow (or has a silhouette baby shuffling up to her)! We're having nightmares just looking at it.
Now what? Does Mary get farmed out to some hick foster family? Does her Mommy Dearest make an appearance? It's only three days til Sunday and whatever is going to happen then only God knows, and maybe Toby who from her vantage point on the bench can see where this is all headed and is biding her time til she can run away and throw herself off a cliff.
We're still lightheaded. We've been on top of this strip for at least 20 years and Miserable Mary the Flashback has certainly never made an appearance before. The Hemingway Complex might even have to post on this one twice!