Chapter 31
Thirty-One
My phone is glued to my ear as I swing my car into my parents’ driveway.
“Let me stop you right there,” I say. I’m already unbuckling my seatbelt and reaching for my bag. “No. You don’t get to panic at me because he’s trending for the wrong reasons. You were told exactly how this was going to go forty-eight hours ago.”
On the other end, someone—some junior staffer who clearly isn’t built for this—is talking too fast.
I push the car door closed with my hip before I start up the front steps.
“You don’t like the plan?” I continue, each step punctuating my point.
“Fine. You don’t have to like it. You just have to execute it.
Draft the statement as I outlined it. Get legal to sign off.
Pull the charity receipts and the school board records.
This is the strategy until I’m back in my office this afternoon. ”
He starts to argue.
I stop on the porch and lower my voice. “I’m unavailable for the next few hours. If you need someone to yell at, try your own reflection. It’ll be a more productive conversation.”
“Madison—”
“This afternoon,” I repeat, cutting him off. “Or you can handle it without me, and we can all watch the man implode together. Your call.”
I hang up before he can breathe another syllable.
I stand there for a heartbeat, hand on the doorknob, letting the version of me who turns grown men into obedient creatures slip away.
I try to find the other version of me. The one who belongs here. I smooth my expression into something gentler, then I push the door open.
“Mom?” I call out.
“In here, baby.”
The curtains are open, letting in a soft morning light that makes the room look peaceful. It’s a lie, of course. This room hasn’t been peaceful in a decade.
My mother is sitting at the table, her coat already on and her purse perched beside her.
Her hair is brushed back, dark and shot through with silver strands.
She’s small now. Time and the weight of her own mind have carved her into a softer, more fragile shape.
She’s wearing her muted rose lipstick. It’s her way of telling the world she’s fine.
She looks up, and her face catches the light.
There it is. The smile that makes me want to cry and scream at the same time because no matter how many times I have to be the parent in this relationship, she’s still my mother.
“Hi,” she says, standing with a slight wobble. “Come here.”
I cross the room and let her hug me. Her arms are warm, but they feel like paper. She holds on for a second too long.
“How are you doing, Mom?” I murmur into her hair.
“I’m good, baby,” she says, pulling back to inspect me. “It’s a good day.”
“Good.” I keep my voice bright, matching her tone. “Where’s Dad?”
Her smile stays, but her eyes flick away for a fraction of a second before she waves a dismissive hand.
“Your father had some work to do. He’ll be back later.”
I roll my eyes before I can stop the reflex.
“Madison,” she says softly. “Don’t be so hard on your father. He’s a good man.”
“I know,” I say quickly, because I do. I know it the way you know a truth you still resent. “He is.”
“He worries,” she adds, lowering herself back into her chair. “He just… doesn’t know what to do with it, so he hides.”
I drop into the seat across from her, lacing my fingers together. It keeps me from cleaning or organizing just to feel a semblance of control.
“Neither do I,” I admit.
My mother reaches across the table to touch my hand.
“You’re a good daughter,” she says. “I hate feeling like a burden.”
The words hit a bruise I’ve been carrying since I was twelve.
For a second, the kitchen disappears. I’m not twenty-nine with a career and a schedule. I’m seventeen, learning to keep my voice steady as my stomach flips. I’m nineteen, standing in a hospital hallway, pretending I’m not terrified because if I look scared, the whole world might end.
I clear my throat, pushing the ghosts back down.
“You’re not a burden,” I say, and I mean it, but the words still land heavy in my chest, because loving someone and carrying them aren’t the same. I’ve been doing both for so long, I don’t know where one ends and the other begins.
I squeeze her hand. “But it’s a good day, right? That’s what we’re focusing on.”
“A good day,” she agrees, smiling again.
Another good day.
Great.
I need her to have a good day because if she doesn’t, I’m not sure I have enough pieces of myself left to hold us both together.
∞∞∞
The Psychiatric Outpatient Department is a fluorescent hum and the muffled, frantic clicking of keyboards. I lead my mother to a chair before heading to the front desk.
“Morning, Lou,” I slide the insurance card across the desk. “We’re here for the ten-fifteen appointment with Dr. Johnson.”
“Morning, Madison. Room four today.” Lou barely even looks up. We’re regulars.
“Donna? We’re ready for those labs,” a nurse says, appearing in the doorway.
Mom’s hand shoots out, finding mine. Her grip is white-knuckled. She looks at the nurse, then at the hallway. It’s the look of a woman who has been “sent away” enough times to know that doors sometimes lock from the outside.
“I’ll be right here when you get back,” I say. I don’t say it like a platitude. I say it like a contract. “I’m not moving an inch.”
I swore long ago I’d never lie about that. If I have to leave, I tell her. If I stay, I stay. In this building, my presence is the only thing that keeps her tethered to the “good day” version of herself.
She lets go, her fingers trailing off mine as if she’s losing her grip on a liferaft. I watch her walk away, her small frame looking even smaller against the sterile white of the corridor.
“Madison, step into my office for a moment?” Dr. Johnson is standing by his door. He doesn’t wait for an answer. He knows the drill. I follow him in and take the chair. It’s slightly lower than his, making me feel like a student reporting to the principal’s office.
“So,” he begins. “Talk to me. How’s the baseline?”
“She’s been stable,” I say. “Sleep is consistent. Six hours, give or take. She had a dip last week, a few days of ‘the heavy quiet’, but she stayed with the meds. She thinks she’s balanced out now.”
Johnson scribbles a few lines before looking at me over the rim of his glasses.
“And how are you doing, Madison?”
The question hits me like a physical blow. My mind flashes to Beckett—to the way he looked in the dark, the way he tasted. I feel a flush creep up my neck.
“Me? Oh, I’m fine.”
“That’s always your answer,” he says, leaning back. “It’s been your answer since you were nineteen.”
Because I’m the one who makes sure the appointments are kept. I’m the one who handles the dumpster fires at work. I’m the one who ensures she doesn’t burn the house down when she’s manic and that she doesn’t stop eating when she’s depressed.
Instead of all that, I smile and say, “I’m good, truly.”
His returning smile is sad in a way that makes me bristle.
“Looking after someone with Bipolar I isn’t a job you clock out of,” Johnson says, his voice dropping into that maddeningly empathetic tone.
“It’s a state of being. It’s hypervigilance.
You’re scanning her for symptoms every time she laughs too loudly or sleeps too long.
That kind of stress… it does things to a person.
It makes you seek out intensity because your baseline is already so high. ”
I think of last night. I think of the war I started with the man upstairs just to feel something that wasn’t this weight.
“I’ve got it handled,” I say, standing. I can’t do the empathy talk today. Not when I can still feel the ghost of Beckett’s hand on my chin. “Thank you, Dr. Johnson.”
He sighs but nods. “Just… try to breathe. You’re allowed to be more than just a caregiver.”
When I walk back into the waiting room, the air feels thinner. I stand near the window, watching the traffic below, feeling the strange, jagged edges of my life trying to knit together.
Fixer.
Caregiver.
Reckless neighbor.
Mom returns from her blood draw, just one question in her eyes as she looks at me.
You’re not leaving?
I shake my head and nod toward Dr. Johnson’s office.
Thirty minutes later, my mother joins me again in the hallway. She looks fragile, her rose-colored lipstick slightly smudged from rubbing her lips together. She does that when she’s anxious.
The second she spots me, her entire body transforms, and the tension drains from her face. She doesn’t just smile. She breathes again.
“You stayed,” she whispers.
“I told you I would, Mom.” I squeeze her arm against my side. “I’m right here.”
She leans her head against my shoulder. “I was worried for a second that the doors… you know.”
“I know,” I murmur, guiding her toward the exit. “But I’m here. Let’s go.”