Warning Signs (Broken Promises #2) (2 page)

“I’ve been here a couple times. It attracts people who are sad and have addictive personalities.”

I actually laughed. “Right. Is Mom off her rocker?”

“She’s in bed with her sedatives. She will be fine tomorrow. Just get in before someone catches you out here.” I crawled into the passenger side of the car, and buckled up as Ben drove through the darkened town.

“Are you going to go back to school?”

“I’m considering it.”

“Okay. Do you want to work?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll need to decide soon.”

I wondered what exactly he had in mind for me when he asked me to return home. Questions about school and jobs made me reconsider the truth of his intentions.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Well, you start therapy on Monday, so maybe you’ll find out soon enough.”

With a shudder I went back into the house, and allowed Ben to escort me to my bedroom. It was his special project when we bought the house, and I’m sure he dreamt of the day it was revealed to me. He opened the door, flipped up the dimmer, and followed up by throwing his hands above his head.

“Voila. Goodnight.” He left without another word. I was alone in the most dream-worthy room with subdued blue-gray walls, dusty lilac valances, and a duvet that took the most attention with its blue printed trellis pattern over a stark white background, and the accent rug in front of the bed with contemporary styled floral prints that kept up with the light colors that made this room something I wanted to be in forever. I couldn’t imagine how my brother had gotten it in such a way that I’d like it so much, but he’d succeeded.

Finding the new clothes I had previously requested were already put away, I picked out clean underwear, some cute PJs, and went to my private bathroom where I drew a bath. I slid my naked body into the piping hot water, and once the steam had settled throughout the bathroom and I was able to feel safe, I dunked myself underneath the water. Completely submerged, I only came up for air. I hugged my knees to my chest while I sat in the tub, contemplating everything that had happened in the last year. I washed my hair and used the lavender-scented body wash to scrub my body clean. I couldn’t recall the last time I had a proper bath. I scrubbed my body until it turned pink. I wanted to be shiny and new, sort of like how my mother was. She was a clean slate with how her memory had so conveniently left her. It was because of the alcohol and a few other mental health reasons Ben had yet to inform me of, but she lost all of her memory. She forgot how she had treated me, how she treated Ben. I’d never forget, and I doubt Ben was going to forget either. The only difference was I wasn’t so easy to forgive others who’d hurt me. Even if she was my mother, it was going to be hard to forgive her.

As I dressed in new pajamas that still had the tags on them and crawled into the most comfortable bed I had ever slept in since Mackynsie’s bed, I felt like I was an interloper making my way into this house, mooching off the goodness of my brother and the failing memory of my mother. I fell asleep refusing to cry. However, once the realization of the situation I was in, sharing one house with my family for the first time in eight years without Mother being drunk, it was hard to stop the tears.

CHAPTER TWO

The first week of my return was chaotic. The media kept filling up tabloids and other media outlets with news about my arrival, thoughts and opinions on my disappearance. People had come forward saying they had traveled with me…slept with me. I couldn’t believe the things I had been reading every time I went by the market for food. I hadn’t gone a day without crying at least once. Half the time, I couldn’t figure out why I was crying. Other times I found myself so angry I tried to scream; instead all that came out was hot tears and gasps for air. I went on walks a lot when I felt like getting a short escape from the house. Ben wasn’t really a big help, and things between us had really changed. I didn’t know what had caused such a great rift between us. It wasn’t the fact I pushed him away. It was something deeper than that. I couldn’t understand why he was so angry with me and he couldn’t begin to understand my anger toward him.

Car rides I spent with Ben either began with screaming and ended in silence, or held nothing in the air but the feeling of two siblings torn apart.

When we got home from our daily errands, our mother was all smiles.

“What would you like for dinner?” She asked such a simple question, yet she had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. Ben went to help her cook dinner and I returned to my room, promptly inviting the emotions to flood in and break me down, piece by piece.

When dinner was ready to be served, I tried to hide the fact I had been crying. It was written all over my face. The flushed, splotchy cheeks matched with swollen eyes and a sniffling nose told all the things I refused to say. I sat at the table with my mother, who was busy serving the food onto my plate and didn’t notice my sad demeanor.

Ben noticed, but he pretended he didn’t. I knew he was pretending because he didn’t want to feel the need to rescue me anymore. He didn’t want to be my knight in shining armor. I was never quite the damsel in distress, but the moment he sniffed trouble coming for me he went out of his way to save me. He had finally decided he had had enough of that life. Saving someone who refused to be saved was a tireless job that wasn’t very rewarding and would eventually lead to the death of your happiness. I guess Ben realized this, because even though the signal of danger was whirring loudly in the background, he wasn’t going to come to the rescue. He sat there at his end of the table, eating absentmindedly while Mother tried to talk to us. Neither of us was listening. The noise inside of our heads was too loud, and she was far too quiet. The demons were back to play again, and I didn’t know how to keep them away. I wasn’t the best person to keep evil things at bay. I wasn’t holy or pure; I was just as evil as the demons in my head.

“Bea, we need to talk after dinner,” Ben said coldly. Anxiety quivered in my stomach. “Okay, well I’m not very hungry. Can we talk now?” I pushed away my plate.

“Sure.” He motioned for me to follow him and led me into his private office. I didn’t bother sitting down, and Ben sat behind his desk. I felt like I was in the principal’s office.

“When do you plan on going back to school?” he asked me.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if—”

“When can you start searching for a job then?”

“Ben, what’s going on?”

“Bea, you need to learn to take care of yourself. I can’t keep doing it for the rest of your life.”

Filled to the brim with anger, I began to tremble as I clenched my teeth. I couldn’t say anything. I had to let this go.

“You need to find your own way. I’m done taking care of you.”

I burst into loud, angry laughter. “You, taking care of
me?
You’ve never taken care of me. I’ve taken care of myself. You gave me money, that’s it. That’s not taking care of someone. That’s not even half of it, Ben.” I shook my head, and I knew an argument was about to happen.

“I’ve done plenty to take care of you!”

I jumped forward and shouted, “Bullshit!” Soon enough we were arguing, screaming our heads off at one another until we were hot from the heat of arguing so passionately and our throats were hoarse.

“What
haven’t
I done for you?” he shouted at me.

“I think the better question is: what
have
you done?” I retaliated.

“You think you’ve been robbed of something—”

“I
was
robbed!”

“You weren’t robbed of a childhood, Bea!”

“Like hell I wasn’t! What kind of childhood is it to grow up with your brother trying to pass as your parent? Your brother who lies to you about who you are because your
drunken mother
told him to? What kind of childhood is it when you end up sleeping with your brother’s band mate because he is the only one who kept the promise your
brother made?!”
The gauntlet had been thrown. He didn’t need to know which of the boys I had slept with, because a part of him already knew.

“So you were with Everett?”

“Yeah, and you see where that got him.” I turned away, but my brother refused to relent.

“You didn’t get him shot.”

“Yes I did! I did get him shot because I had a stalker and no one I trusted to tell about it. I had him wrapped around my finger and he got in the way of this stalker. So he paid for it.
I paid for it.
He promised to be there for me and he was. You left me alone with that monster of a woman and expect me to be grateful now? Why do you think I was so willing to die for you?”

Silence stood between us. I left the office, slamming the door behind me. He tried chasing after me, but his words held no meaning.

“I would die for you, Frances. I’ve been lucky and have never been in the position where I had to prove it. Does that make me a horrible human being, or does that make me your brother?”

Slammed doors were nothing on this family. He slammed his, I slammed mine. We slammed doors like some families laughed or cried. It was our sign to each other that we were done, that we had had enough.

When we had to turn up for therapy, I was pretty certain I wouldn’t know what to say. But soon enough it all came pouring out, along with the tears that somehow didn’t come flooding out of my viridian green eyes all the times before.

Family therapy a few days later was filled with silence. Mother tried to work on things that had happened since she reunited with us. Like how I lashed out at her at our first reunion. Or how she overheard me referring to her as a monster. I was staring at the fake Monet painting on the wall when I heard the name I loathed.

“Beatrice?”

Turning to look at the therapist, I widened my eyes and pursed my lips. “Hmm?”

“What do you have to say about that?”

“Huh?” I asked. It was obvious I hadn’t been paying attention.

“Your mother is saying that she wishes to know what you prefer to be called now. She named you Brenna, and then in a lapse of memory, she renamed you. What do you want her to call you?”

“I don’t know.”

“What does Ben call you?”

“Frances. Sometimes he’ll call me Bea. Not very often though.”

“What about your friends?”

“My friends are dead.” Silence returned to the room, and I returned my gaze to the knock-off painting on the wall.

“Do you want to tell your mother how that makes you feel?”

“No. I’d rather not.” I sank back in my seat and let livid tears run down my face. Our family session continued in this fashion. Mother would talk, neither of us would listen, so they would have to repeat their question, and we’d hide ourselves from the truth because the truth had damaged us and we couldn’t allow that to touch our mother; she was a clean slate. I don’t know if that was cruel or not, to keep her from knowing all the wrong she did while she tried to make amends. But if it kept me sane, maybe it was okay. Except I wasn’t okay; I hadn’t been in a long time. Recognizing that took guts, at least according to my therapist.

“You’ll make it out of this alive.”

“No one ever makes it out alive. We all die in the end,” I told her during one of our individual sessions. She couldn’t call me out on the truth, she told me, “Try not to be so cynical,” and let me go with a smile on her face, and a grimace on mine.

***

I used to take average length showers. I wasn’t someone who spent an hour underwater doing God knows what. I did what I had to do and got out. One night while crying in the shower, I had flashbacks to the night Everett died: the rain, the gunshots, the screaming, only to realize it wasn’t me screaming…

I turned off the shower and wrapped a towel around myself before stepping out into the hallway.

“What’s going on?” I called down to Ben, dripping water onto the floor.

“Mom is having an episode, no biggie!” he shouted from the first floor.

“Do you need help?”

“No, go back to your self-indulgent shower. I’ll be fine—Ow!”

I quickly threw on some clothes and a pair of house shoes then rushed downstairs to aid my brother in my mother’s episode. She was volatile and didn’t know who we were. So much had been lost from her drinking, her memory was now sporadic and she was unable to understand we had grown up, or that she had done those horrible things. She couldn’t remember all the things we had gone through to get her sober. She doesn’t even remember being a drunk.

“Bea, back off. I’ve got her!”

“No you don’t. Where is her sedative?” We were both arguing while trying to secure our mother in a full-body hold to keep her from hurting herself or us. While Ben was distracted trying to find the sedative, my mother swung her arm out and connected with the side of my head. Taken by surprise, I lost my footing and she ran out the door in the chaos. I watched her run with a dumbfounded expression on my face.

“Dammit, Bea!” Ben shouted at me.

I scrambled to get up off the floor and allow my senses to return to me. Our crazy mother was on the loose, and like zookeepers we had to make sure she didn’t scare the locals.

We began to run after her, but Ben saw it before I even heard it. My mother could barely be seen against the night and the driver couldn’t stop in time. The squealing of the brakes, the crunch of our mother against the windshield, and my hysterical screaming broke the still night. The driver got out, panicking and already on the phone with emergency services, while Ben held me as I cried.

All I could say was, “I didn’t see it. It came out of nowhere. I didn’t see it.
How didn’t I see it?”

***

The emergency became a top-list priority over my need to dry my hair and find more appropriate clothes to wear to the hospital. I guess I should have seen that coming. But it wasn’t like I had expected my mother to run out in the middle of the street. Waiting was pure torture. We must have been in the ER waiting room for at least an hour. By the time we had gotten through with the police, my hair was partially dry while the thicker parts of my hair were still damp by the time we saw a doctor who actually had news to give.

“What’s happening?” Ben asked hurriedly. The doctor stood tall, emotionless and void of any real interest in us. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when I noticed his lack of compassion.

“She will be on suicide watch for twenty-four hours. She isn’t hurt badly, though this incident suggests she needs someone to watch her a bit closer.”

“Suicide watch? What’s the point in that?” Ben asked without missing a beat.

“And we
were
watching her! We were trying to sedate her,” I explained, but the doctor ignored me.

“You should consider letting her stay in our psychiatric ward until her memory is less of a problem. Or consider hiring in-home care.”

Ben wouldn’t want the in-home care for our mother even if it meant she could stay with us. Having in-home care meant someone had unlimited access to us and our lives, and it would be too easy to exploit us. After seeing how ruthless and cunning the tabloids had been with me lately I wouldn’t want to risk it either. I didn’t want to imagine how someone with unlimited access to our lives could affect the way the tabloids saw us.

“Where do I sign to admit her?”

Ben was given a pen as I looked to him with surprise. I quickly changed views and began to glare at the doctor. He didn’t appear smug or pleased with the decision. Though I felt that either way, he didn’t care about our mother. Not the way we did. In the end, we still went home.

“You shouldn’t be taking such long showers, Bea. It wastes water, money, and apparently time to save our mother’s life. Think about that tomorrow while you’re primping.”

Ben stormed off to his room, slamming the door shut. I tried to keep from crying as I entered my room alone and in the dark. I kicked off my slippers and ran my fingers through my tangled curls. After I was done trying to keep my nightly routine, I crawled into my bed and attempted to sleep. I knew in the morning, I’d have plenty to discuss with my therapist. I wish I had nothing to say instead. Because having nothing to say was a lot better than saying, “I let my mother attack me and get run over by a car.” I guess my life was this big orchestrated show for the masses.