Chapter 31
Rita referenced her papers. “Let’s talk about your mother, shall we?”
Which one? I almost asked, but with our sessions going as well as they had been, I hardly aimed to mess things up with sarcastic evasion.
Deep down, I knew I needed to unpack it all: my birth mother and Glenda.
Glenda first and foremost—considering she’d been the thorn in my side for far longer than I cared to admit.
But my attention had shifted toward the future, hyperfixated on the new thorn; the ever present and constant one that made past traumas seem almost laughable in comparison.
Bethesda. While Celine had removed the witch’s hex, the question remained: What would she do next?
Apparently, the eye at the brand’s center confirmed Bethesda aimed to listen in on my progress.
After a little more research in Fhírinne under the cloak of night, I discovered more.
Bethesda had used a watcher spell. While not inherently Baneful in nature, from what I made out in the grimoire I’d found—the same one Celine had referenced in Art History and yet brushed off when I asked for further explanation on its origin—it was on the shady side of the Tinctured spectrum. Sneaky magic, if you will.
“Fey,” Rita prompted.
I blinked back to the present and dropped my hand from its mindless prodding against the mark on my chest: a swirled sun and, at its center, solid-bone-turned-stone risen up from below the skin.
And of course, neither Celine or Cillian had an idea who or where it came from, let alone what its purpose was.
I cleared my throat. “Sorry. I’m not sure what to say.”
“That’s all right. We can start wherever you feel comfortable.”
Nowhere. That’s where I felt comfortable.
I’d hardly thought about my birth mom for years, aside from random bouts of resentment.
Not until she’d wiggled her way into my dreams, anyway.
Rita’s patient expression rocked me. She’d brought up that part of my life every session, and every session I’d dodged it.
This time, however, it didn’t appear she’d let it slide so easily.
I crossed and uncrossed my legs. Maybe starting with my birth mom would be the easiest place to start.
I forced a smile, heart amping up.
“Well, she abandoned me. So … there’s that …”
“Your birth mother, you mean?”
“Yes, my birth mother.”
She offered a reassuring smile. “And do you have any idea why she left you?”
Because I was a disaster. Because I’d driven a wedge between her and my birth father by simply being conceived. But instead, I started at the shallow end of the trauma pool and said, “She wasn’t … well.”
“What do you mean?” Her forehead creased. “She had mental health struggles?”
“Yes. Bipolar and schizophrenia. In the last few months, things got so bad she believed she was seeing demons in our home … specifically surrounding me.” I breathed through the memory of cops bursting through the front door, our sweet little-old-lady neighbor clutching her pearls with worry on her porch.
“My mother meant well, really, she did, but I was a difficult child. I think I exacerbated things, forcing her to pay too much attention to me instead of getting the help she needed.”
“And how old were you when this happened?”
“Ten, I think? Eleven maybe … I’m not entirely sure. That part of my memory is fuzzy. I just remember bouncing around to a few different places after that until Glenda and Jack took me in.”
“I don’t usually do this but … would physical touch be helpful here?” she asked, noting the shake in my legs.
To my own shock, I responded, “Yes …”
Rita set a hand on my knee. “Hazy memories are to be expected. You were young and witnessed your mom go through a very traumatic episode, but I need you to hear me, Fey. Can you look at me, please?”
I pinched my eyes shut, took a deep breath, and met her gaze.
“What happened to your mother was not your fault. You were a child, and no child should ever have to bear the weight of their parent’s unprocessed trauma.”
Heat rose behind my eyes, the onset of tears imminent. “But I … I was such a bad kid. Troubled and … maybe if I’d learned to adjust in school and didn’t have to be transferred every other year or if I got a handle on my cutting, then—”
“It was not your fault,” she repeated and squeezed my knee.
“But my dad left because of me,” my voice trembled, “and I know her family was so cruel to her, and—”
“It still was not your fault. Your father leaving was his own choice. Your mother’s family dynamic existed far before you came into the picture. Simply put, a child is not responsible for their parent’s decisions, Fey.”
“I don’t think she meant to hurt me … she … she was sick and I—”
“And maybe she didn’t mean to. Sometimes, even those with good intentions let us down, but the pain caused is still valid. It still deserves to be felt.”
A quiet knowing settled in me like an anchor hitting bedrock.
I glanced out the window at the pelting raindrops.
This was about more than just my mother’s and my complicated history; it was a double-edged sword reflecting the fears around Fagan and Lynn I’d not allowed myself to truly feel either.
Fears that I’d let them down. Left them to their own devices the way I’d felt with my own mother.
But I knew, I knew with every molecule in my being that I’d done all I could.
I’d never have expected my own children to carry the hardships I was meant to shelter them from.
I was their protector, doing whatever was in my meager power to ensure their survival.
So, maybe my mother had been doing her best too.
Maybe … this wasn’t my burden to carry, just as it wasn’t my babies’.
Rita lifted my chin to look into my eyes. “I need you to say it.”
“It … it wasn’t my fault.”
“Now, I want you to close your eyes,” she said gently. “I know it’s hard, but I want you to picture those moments that have repeated in your head over and over all these years where you blame yourself. Can you see them?”
My thoughts began to cycle: the first time my mother found my razor blade and saw the cuts on my arm.
How I came home from school the following day to find she’d called the cops on herself, requesting an emergency psych hold in fear she would hurt herself for failing me.
How I felt so responsible for her wanting to hurt herself, and how I’d cried myself to sleep on the neighbor’s couch that night, wondering if she’d ever come back for me.
Or the time when her hallucinations had grown particularly visceral and how, instead of calling for help, I thought the best thing to do was to tell her the demons were gone, thereby reinforcing the hallucinations themselves.
That was the first time I remember recognizing my own anxiety disorder.
It built slower then, rose up like a rolling thunder into my shoulders and hardened into knots.
She looked so far away as she ran about the house, pulling the curtains shut and double checking the locks and …
it scared the shit out of me, so I did what any child would do when they were scared: I grabbed my mother’s hand.
Sharp as a whip, her stare barreled down on me, and the look in her eyes …
I’ve never seen someone so afraid in my life, not before or since.
Even as she registered who I was, still the shake in her stare didn’t settle.
She didn’t lean down to hug me, didn’t do anything.
Mom, I whispered. They’re gone now. You’re safe.
Moments ticked away in our tiny kitchen until finally, I couldn’t handle it anymore.
I pulled my hand free and patted her elbow, before retreating from the kitchen.
I lingered in the hall long enough for her to shake her head like she’d had some strange dream and to return to her fervent prayers for protection.
After that, I learned to leave her be when her panic arose.
My broken heart for her never healed. What she went through …
the torment and fear … none of it had been her fault.
Sobs tore through me and I curled in on myself, slinking to the floor and pulling my knees to my chest. “Y-yes. I see them.”
“Okay, stay with me here, Fey. Now, picture those same instances, but instead of seeing yourself there, I want you to picture what you think another child would do in those situations.”
Lip quivering, my babies’ smiles glimmered back in my mind’s eye … and the memories replayed precisely the same way. “They … they’re the same.”
“Good, good.” She scootched up close, wrapping a hand around my shoulders. “Now, I want you to hold on to that child in your mind, but come back to me, to this moment.”
I counted my breaths: in for eight and out for eight, over and over until I’d grounded myself back in the present. Once there, I nodded.
“Good,” she said, gentle but firm. “Now, tell me, if that child was sitting before you right now, blaming themself for all those same horrible things, would you condemn them? Blame them for the things that happened to their mother?”
“Absolutely not,” I said without hindrance.
“Then tell me, why do you blame yourself?”
And for the first time I realized … I didn’t know. But I was beginning to think I might have been wrong about myself for a very, very long time.