Chapter 33 We’re Not Awful Parents
We're not awful parents
Paddy
“What?” Morgan chokes.
I can’t believe I’m looking the girl I love in the eyes and telling her the truth. “She’s dead, baby.”
The words float around us. Raw. Shaky. Real.
And it’s quiet. Painfully, quiet.
My shoulders drop. The weight sliding off them. My lungs pull in fresh breaths of air. She knows. Finally. There’s no more hiding it.
Her eyes zone out as she looks at her parents, eyes wide in her silence like I just rewired her entire world.
I wish they’d told her sooner.
Now is not the time to blame them for trying to keep something like this from her. I understand that they thought they were doing the right thing. It’s a hard, bitter pill to swallow, but somewhere inside of me, I get it. I fucking get it.
Because feeling her body beginning to shake in my arms has my blood turning thick and ice cold. She looks so confused. So unbelievably scared and helpless, that I’m not sure forcing her to face her disorder head on was the right thing to do.
I saw the early warning signs when she was frantically getting dressed at the hotel. I talked to her, knowing she couldn’t hear me. I knew that the tide was shifting, and in that moment, I knew getting her home was my only option.
Nothing else mattered.
After minutes of endless silence from all of us, Morgan finally speaks, her voice so low, I can barely hear her. “I don’t believe you.”
Her words have me kissing the top of her head with heartbreaking sympathy. “She’s gone.” Maybe if I keep repeating it she’ll believe me.
“No.” Her hands loosen their grip on my arm.
Her lack of emotion terrifies me. “I’ve got you,” I try to console her, fear rising uncontrollably within me.
She’s limp. Motionless. It’s unnerving.
Eventually, dragging herself from my embrace, she leaves me abandoned. Just when I think things can’t get any worse, she looks me square in the eye, her face blank. “You’re lying.” The bags under her eyes are grey and heavy. What she’s going through right now is sucking the life clean out of her.
I glance at her parents as they stand.
Nothing. We’ve achieved nothing.
“Morgan,” Bill starts, watching his daughter like a hawk.
Morgan goes to her dresser, looking through the small jewellery boxes on top. She finds what she’s looking for and turns to face me, her voice completely normal, and every bit that of the young woman I know. “How did she buy me this necklace?”
Another look is exchanged between the three of us.
“She didn’t, love,” Julie says depleted. “That’s the chain I got for your birthday.”
Morgan looks at us all as if we’re playing some sick trick on her. “No. Holly gave this to me.” She looks down at the gold chain wrapped around her fingers. “It has M for my name on it.”
The look her dad gives me is helpless. Of course it is. He’s seen this before. Her inability to see the truth.
“It was on the table in the kitchen. You had already opened it before I could give it to you.”
Morgan’s gaze drops to the necklace.
There’s no M on it.
I give her mum a sympathetic look, trying my best to give her a reassuring smile. “Curly fries,” I say, moving out of her bathroom, knowing that after some extensive research, I had to gather what I could in order to help her. “Will you sit with me?”
“Why?”
I pull out my phone. “Need to show you something.”
She doesn’t move, and I give Bill a look, wanting to know if I should go on.
Clearly no longer able to determine what he thinks is best for his daughter, he gives me a nod of his head.
Having never encountered a patient with the same schizoaffective disorder as Morgan, I cautiously find the recording I took when she thought she was calling Holly in my car. “Tell me what you hear, curly fries.” I hold the phone out between us.
The recording plays back. There’s a pause before Morgan speaks.
Hi… I’m not sure… Can you meet me at mine? I am. We’re on our way home. I’m fine… He didn’t hurt me… Can you just meet me at mine in an hour?
Morgan’s eyes stare at the phone in my hand. “What did you do?”
My eyes plead with her to understand what my recording proves. “I recorded you talking to Holly.”
She huffs, looking between me and my phone before she points at it. “But not everything she said is on there.”
“What did you hear?” I ask gently.
Morgan’s eyes narrow to pins at me. Her head shakes. “She asked me if I was with you. But… Why can’t I hear her?”
My heart squeezes painfully. “Because it was just you talking, curly fries.”
“No.” Quick, tight breaths escape her nose. Her pupils dilate. “No, Paddy. Why are you being so cruel?”
Her mum steps forwards as I try to hold it together as best I can. “Do you have your phone, love?”
Morgan nods, her jaw quivering.
“Can you show me your messages to Holly?”
Realising what her mother’s asking, Morgan quickly finds her phone in her back pocket, holding it up once she’s found the messages.
“Will you read them out to me?” Julie asks, looking down at the phone.
Morgan proceeds to do just that, reading the one-way conversations she’s been having with herself.
It’s fucking awful to listen to. How much she has relied on her best friend who passed away when the girls were only eighteen. Too young to die, too young to know loss, Morgan never recovered.
My girl never let Holly go. Never grasped or accepted that one of her best friends was gone and never coming back. That’s what triggered her disorder. The emotional stress was too much for her.
Looking confused, her eyes hone in on her phone. She looks closer, eyes zipping from left to right.
Come on, curly fries, you can do it. You can do it, baby. I’m right here with you. You can do it.
Willing her to realise what’s really happening here, my stomach twists into knots when she looks up, and her shoulders sag. “Did you delete the messages?”
Fuck.
I shake my head slowly.
“Was it Jerry?” Her eyes narrow. “Is he in on this, because I wouldn’t put it past him to try and pull a stunt like this on me.”
Julie takes a step forward. “No, love. Nobody deleted any messages. Your brother,” she wraps her arms around her middle, “he’s scared, that’s all.”
Their eyes lock, and I’m merely a spectator. “Scared?” Morgan asks, her shoulders slumping. “Of me?”
Julie’s shaking hands come up to her cheeks. “Goodness, no. Not of you. None of us are scared of you. We’re scared for you, love.”
Seconds tick. The clock in her room growing ever louder.
“Dad?” Morgan gives her dad a look, her throat bobbing up and down.
Bill sighs heavily. I know their relationship has been far from perfect. But what I once assumed was lack of caring or emotion, was merely his fear of losing his daughter.
I’ve lived with the same fear since I found out why he was so controlling. Never letting her out of his sight, always telling her what to do… it was to keep her close. In his own fucked up way, it was to keep her safe.
The countless times Morgan spoke about Holly as if she was with us, or the endless times she had spoken about her in the present tense. I wrongly assumed it was her way of handling it. Little did I know she believed it to be true.
Bill inhales loudly. “It’s the truth.” I can tell by the wavering of his voice that’s the first time he’s admitted that.
Morgan looks between all three of us before spinning around and giving us her back. “Get out of my room.” None of us immediately move. “Now,” she orders, grabbing handfuls of her golden hair.
I don’t want to leave her at all. But when I see her parents beginning to move, I drop my gaze, following their lead. When I turn back to look at her, Morgan’s assessing the photos of her and her friends dotted around the mirror on her dresser.
My mind opens up, thinking of another way. One last push. One last try. If Morgan can’t see the truth for herself, then my worry is she’ll never see it. I have to try.
“Morgan?”
Her head drops to look over her shoulder, but she doesn’t give me her eyes.
“Do you have any more recent photos of Holly?” I begin. “It might be worth taking a look through them if you do. They might help.”
Her hands disappear up her sleeves.
My head drops. I don’t want to leave her side.
It aches thinking about how alone she must have felt all this time.
I want to be right by her in her hour of need.
But I also know that crowding her will only confuse her more.
“I’ll be right outside the door.” I close the door behind me, feeling so disconnected, the machine in my chest aches with every beat.
Half an hour later, I wait, sitting on the floor outside of her room.
Gentle footsteps come up the stairs. “Cup of tea.” Julie passes me a steaming mug. “And the photo you asked for.”
I want something stronger than tea, but I offer up a, “Thanks,” with a small smile, accepting both things from her.
Julie looks at the door. “She’s not come out yet?”
I take a sip from my mug. “Not yet.”
She rubs her face with both hands. “We’re not awful parents.” Her voice is meek and downcast.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“But you’re thinking it.”
Shaking my head, I peer up at her standing over me. “Not anymore.”
She lets out a choked sob. “Thank you.” Then she sits next to me, leaning back against the wall.
“You don’t need to thank me. I love your daughter, Mrs Brooks. I get why you went along with it.”
Her throat bobs as she tells me, “Doctors said we had to accept Holly was real for her, even though we couldn’t hear her. If she believes it, then we should too. We let her believe her best friend was right where she needed her to be out of love, nothing else.”
I turn my head to look at her.
“Seeing her happy was easier than seeing her so lost.” Twisting her head, she looks at me, and one single tear drips down her cheek. “But it got harder. The longer we went without telling her the truth, the harder it got.”
There’s a light clatter of plates coming from downstairs.
She dries her eyes. “There’s food, if you want some.”
“No, thank you.” I can’t stand the thought of eating. “I’m not hungry.”
Julie appeases me, giving me a smile. “Me either.”
I take in the woman next to me. At a little over forty, Julie looks more like a woman in her mid-fifties. The strain and weight of their family dynamics has aged her.
“I feel guilty for leaving all those years ago,” I say honestly, even though I know things might have worked out the same for Morgan, regardless of my presence.
“You can’t feel guilty for something like this. Trust me, I did too when we first had her diagnosis.”
My chest tightens. “I know.” I suck in a breath. “But if I hadn’t left, maybe… I don’t know… Maybe I could have helped her sooner. It wouldn’t have got this bad. I would have seen what was happening and been able to help.” The back of my head hits the wall in frustration.
She smiles again at me compassionately. “No you wouldn’t, Paddy. You had to go and become the man you are today. If you’d stayed, you wouldn’t be in the position to help her like you can now.”
I think. “What if it doesn’t help? What if it’s all for nothing?”
“Bill showed me the information you gave him. The residential clinic you found looks like a good place for her.”
The back of my eyes begin to burn. The thought of Morgan being alone in a place she doesn’t know terrifies me. A place I searched high and low for as soon as I found out what was wrong.
“I don’t want her to be alone.”
Julie rubs my arm closest to her reassuringly. “The last place we went to did wonders for her. It was coming back that had her slipping into old habits.”
I lift my mug to my lips, pausing to ask, “When did you take her?”
Julie looks up to the ceiling. “She went just before you came back.” She sighs heavily, looking away from me. “She was doing so well. But she thought we’d been on holiday. I didn’t have the heart to tell her.”
Jesus Christ.
“No wonder she didn’t have a tan.”
The smile Julie gives me is nothing but sadness. “She read in between therapy sessions and began new medication. That was it. We visited, but she thought we were returning from the pool or coming back from a walk. She was so lost, Paddy. My little girl, she was gone.”
Julie drops her head into her arms, resting on her knees.
“She’ll be okay.” She has to be.
Sniffing, Julie looks at me. “If she has you, I know she will be.” She nods, blinking hard.
“Because you’ve brought out the daughter I lost. You’ve given her so much that neither me nor Bill could give her.
She needs you, Paddy. She needs you to push her.
She needs you to guide her through her shadows and show her that she can live with this. ”
My throat burns and I have to swipe under my eye. “I’m not going anywhere without her.”
Because she’s my everything.
My girl.
My curly fries.
My forever.