It's All Part Of The Show 'The Carnival Of Glass'

Chapter XVII 🎪Someone You'll Never Forget

It was true, she had been starved. Both literally and metaphorically and it became confusing.

See, the more I said, the less she knew but she still wanted more. Rather the more I said, the more she knew -but she understood less and less.

She quickly began to want me to stop more and more with each word. Or at least slow down, but she had never trusted anybody, and saying she believed me was a bit of a stretch. However, she could say at least she was making an attempt -Yeah, I guess that's the proper word. To 'trust' me.

I wasn't hurting her. -THAT IS THE LAST THING I'D EVER, ever THINK ABOUT REGARDING MADISON.

It seemed like I had good intentions. Did I? I hoped I was right and the answer would be a 'yes'.

"Uhhh." I inhaled deeply through my nose. "I figured you would pick up on that sooner or later."

I grunted softly while exhaling.

"Your name isn't Rainey."

I forced my words out before taking another breath. "This whole time... Your parents even lied to you about that."

"What? Lied!? Lied to me about what?"

She said stunned.

She couldn't have prepared for what was coming, and it was like tearing the band-aid off a healed wound. -Sure the wound was healed, but there was a scar. Scars get better, but they don't fade and this was more like a large strip of duct tape being torn off a yeti.

"Your name isn't Melia Przyjemski or Rainey Coatcher -It never was. It's Madison, Madison Cochran. I named you Madison. Those people have been dull and cruel and unkind to you, they didn't even tell you your real name! They are cruel! And they covered it up, because they knew you were my child. They knew! And yet, they still had the audacity to do what they did... To lie... They lied to me and they lied to you. To steal you from me, and me from you. They had the audacity to hurt you, to betray themselves and you, and what they knew to be wrong from right, and to neglect you! To abuse you and abandon you."

I spoke and it was the truth. It made me numb thinking about it.

No matter how farfetched it sounded to Rainey, MADISON- I knew it was all true.

I just needed her to believe it was true.

People had been so cruel to both me and her. I wouldn't ever want them near my own daughter.

I looked at Madison with puppy eyes. I wasn't even sure what to tell her anymore.

"If you knew all this, then why now? What took so long?"

She wanted to be mad, she wanted to be upset. -She was a tornado of emotions chasing one another back and forth.

"I tried, Madison. I tried. It wasn't easy. I came so close to death each time I tried to save you, even when you were two years old. And I sold my soul to something, maybe to The Ink Man or to a legacy to save you, so we could be a family again. And I would do it all again. I would do it all again to see you and call you my child. Believe me, I would."

I spoke with such compassion and empathy -Things that were either not there before or had just been drawn out of me like blood with a needle.

"Two? Two years old! W-what are you talking about?"

"You were there. Madison, you were with me when my merry-go-round collapsed."

"Collapsed? How? Why?"

She asked.