Chapter 59
FRASER
Parker is self-harming.
Maggie’s text brings my elation about Rachael crashing to the floor.
Self-harming? How did I not know?
Isn’t it a parent’s job to know? Have I been here, thinking about myself and Rachael, grappling with grief and joy and romantic potential while my child has been right beside us all, quietly sinking?
What does ‘self-harm’ even mean? I’m jolted back to the times I plunged to my lowest, when my life was at risk, sick to my stomach that Parker could have reached anywhere near a place like that.
Fraser, it’s not the same as you.
It’s as if Maggie, professional as ever, has hurdled our divorce and remains inside my head to this day. I turn to Rachael and feel the apology that’s written all over my face. It’s not been five minutes, and I’m about to complicate her life already. I pass her my phone.
‘Oh, God. I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘But also, I know a little about this. It’s a scary term, and it’s serious. But it’s often driven by a need to let out painful emotions. It can be an attempt to feel better. Not worse. Try to stay calm.’
Calm? In these few moments I’ve already cycled through every mistake I’ve ever made as a parent.
Could I have tried more to keep her mother and me together?
Should I not have repartnered with Audrey?
If I hadn’t repartnered, we wouldn’t have lost Audrey and gone through such an intense few years.
Did I lose myself in my own grief? Neglect hers?
Was she collateral damage to my own depression?
And now my brain presents me with a reel filled with arguments over messy bedrooms or late essays, and I’m questioning every impatient word I’ve ever spoken.
She says it’s the only way she can let out her guilt about the accident.
Parker’s guilt? Rachael and I stare at Maggie’s latest message and then at each other.
I know exactly how heavy this guilt weighs.
I cannot imagine a child carrying that around—all this time, in silence.
I ache for her. Maggie and I went over and over the ‘it’s not your fault’ conversation when we broke up.
Have we not reinforced that about Audrey’s accident?
‘It was Russian roulette who picked up the phone that day,’ I say to Rachael. ‘It could just as easily have been Maggie or me crossing that road. It never occurred to me that Parker would have felt it was her fault.’
She takes my hand. ‘Fraser, listen to yourself. This is what you just told me. In that instant the cosmos would have downloaded a whole alternative future, but what’s the sense in trying to imagine it?
You can’t ever know how things might have played out.
Maybe Audrey would still be here. Maybe you’d be the one who would’ve gone—’
‘And she might have handled everything so much better.’
‘Or she might not have. You can’t know that. But Parker would have lost one of her parents!’
Did I miss something on the day of Audrey’s death? It would be easy to do, swept along by the emergency. Maybe Parker messaged us and I didn’t see it or respond, routine family communications knocked off course by the crisis.
She was supposed to stay with us that night, but Maggie made some excuse about the shift in our arrangements.
Then Parker ended up at Maggie’s parents’ place.
Maybe this is where it all fell to bits.
Where she lost trust in the world, and in us.
Because we made her believe everything was all right that night and then, just hours later, tore her world apart.
All this time, Parker must have replayed that afternoon and imagined a version of the day in which she hadn’t raised an alarm. Hadn’t been struggling. Hadn’t gone to sick bay. Hadn’t called us in early to pick her up. A world in which Audrey hadn’t died trying.
‘All I know is that good parents don’t get a clear ride through. You can’t protect kids from the harshness of the world. It’s never about how we fall. Always about how we rise.’ Rachael takes my hand. ‘You and Maggie have got this, too, Fraser.’