Warning Signs (Broken Promises #2)

by Alexandra Moore

  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 a
ll 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.

  The next morning when I was getting ready to go to therapy, I saw the news playing an interview with the driver who hit my mother. He went into detail about how, yes, this was Ben and Bea Morrison’s mother I ran over. She tried to commit suicide, I didn’t even see her. I definitely saw them though. It’s hard to miss them.

  Ben was pacing back and forth in his office, and when he saw me he slammed the door shut in my face.

  “What are the Morrisons trying to hide?” the news anchor asked. “Whatever it is, we’ll find out. Stay tuned.”

  “Dammit, dammit, dammit!”

  ***

  “How does it feel to have told your brother about you and Everett?”

  I had obviously discussed my previous relationship with Everett with my therapist. When I told her I blew up and admitted to my brother we had been together, even if it was brief, she seemed pleased. I wasn’t pleased at all.

  “It feels horrible. Real horrible.”

  “Why is that?” the therapist asked. I turned to look at the fake Monet painting again. It was better than looking at her fake red hair and crooked nose.

  “Beatrice—”

  “It’s Bea, not Beatrice. I hate being called Beatrice.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll call you Bea from now on.” I heard her scribbling notes on the pad of paper she had in her lap, and I could hear the clock ticking ever so quietly.

  “I’m going insane,” I told her. Looking away from the Monet and to her crooked nose and mismatched lipstick smile, I shook my head. “I’m going insane. I can’t believe I came back. I should have never come back.”

  “If you hadn’t come back, you wouldn’t have healed.”

  “Is that such a horrible thing?”

  “Have you ever broken a bone?”

  “Once.”

  “Did it heal properly?”

  “Yes, we put a cast on it.”

  “Right. You broke your bone, so the doctor put a cast on it and made you do specific things to ensure it healed properly. I’m trying to do that. It’s an invisible cast and it isn’t very noticeable to others; if it heals properly, it’ll be wonderful.”

  “What if it doesn’t heal properly?”

  “It’ll never be the same.”

  I was trying to remember how I had broken my bone in the first place and how we were comparing my brain to a broken bone. It didn’t seem plausible. But she had reiterated that I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Anxiety and Depression.

  “It also has occurred to me that your mother has bipolar disorder. You may have it too.”

  “No way. I’m not crazy.”

  “It doesn’t mean you’re crazy. All it means is that your brain is chemically imbalanced. Nothing a few pills can’t fix.”

  “I’m not bipolar.”

  “I didn’t say you were. I’m saying if you were, it would make much more sense to you to take care of
your mental health. Anxiety, depression and PTSD sufferers will often think they aren’t really suffering and will go long periods without help. I don’t want you to suffer, Beatrice. Don’t you want to get better?”

  With that in mind, I went home to my brother, who sounded like he was arguing on the phone.

  “I’ve got to go. My sister is home,” I heard him say. Before he could welcome me back, I went upstairs, and I tried to believe everything that my therapist had told me. Somehow it refused to sink in to my mind. It wouldn’t stick.

  CHAPTER THREE

  When I woke up the next morning the sound of Ben yelling at someone whom I couldn’t identify from my brother’s overpowering voice made me want to stay in bed even longer. I could tell he was pretty angry by the sound of how his voice carried through the house. I had heard his muffled arguments for far too long, and when I had decided enough was enough, I threw off the duvet and quietly crept out of my room and snuck down the stairs. I tried to hear what he was saying from the staircase, but he was in his office. The door wasn’t completely shut, so I figured he wouldn’t know I was eavesdropping if I came up and listened to him.

  Going up to his office door, I pressed my back against the wall and tried to listen in. No one was responding to him, so I assumed he was on the phone.

  “I am sure this is what I want. I agree with everyone, it’s too much now. We have lives; we have families to tend to. The tabloids will never leave us alone, but we can try to live normal lives. I don’t care about the risks! I want this to be over. It has brought me joy over many years, but lately it has only brought those I love harm! Everyone agrees that Eden Sank is over. Get over it. We’ll release the last album and…”