One Day // Daniel Ricciardo

Chapter 32

When I got home it was already past 10pm, I hadn't eaten and my eyes were stinging from tears and tiredness.

I contemplated whether or not I should wake Grace up and tell her everything but I found her already waiting for me on the sofa. She was sipping at a cup of tea and watching something on her iPad. She paused it when I walked in and opened her arms out to me almost immediately. I lay down on the sofa and rested my head on her lap, she started running her hands through my hair and I told her everything .

"Daniel has qualifying tomorrow, I don't want to tell him about the meeting until I know what's going on for sure. He says a lot is going on there, I don't want to put more on his plate just yet."

"I think that's a very valid reason," she agreed, "but get some sleep please. You have yourself to look after and tomorrow will be stressful enough."

She put the spare duvet over me and continued to stroke my hair and comfort me. This is all I ever wanted from my Mum, for her to play with my hair and tell me everything was going to be okay but as far as I can remember, even as a child, I've never once experienced it.

When the morning rolled in I dressed in my best suit dress and office heels. I kept my hair simple and no makeup on,I didn't have my hopes up but either way I'd be sobbing recklessly anyway.

I asked everyone not to come. I didn't want everyone around me, I wanted space to deal with everything first.

I was early to the meeting, the social worker was already inside and she made small talk to me while we waited. She was roughly mid 50's and smelled like sweets.I liked her.

When I was younger I said something about my Mum to a teacher and a social worker was involved. I remember sitting in the principals office with my siblings being interrogated by a middle aged woman who looked like she dressed in the dark, smelled like 2 week old rotten milk and approached us military style. I didn't like her.

The lawyer from yesterday, Brian, I think his name was? Arrived a few minutes after my mother, he was representing my sister in the sense of handing over the information he could from her. He did most of the talking. As much as I liked him too he gave off the vibes that he liked the sound of his own voice.

"I hate to interrupt, but this is all so surreal. I feel like you're all just pulling away at 100mph and we're left not knowing what's going on." 

They all fell silent and looked at me sympathetically.

"At the end of the day I love Hallie, I can give her the family life. I want her home with me where she belongs, but she's been taken from me once. Her routine was changed, her home was changed, her comfort person was changed, it's happened once and it can't happen again. She can't come to stay with me and then in a few months someone changes their mind and she leaves again. Irrelevant of me and my feelings it's completely not fair on Hallie."

"I completely agree."

This time it was my time to fall silent. I looked at my Mum, her eyes were empty and for the first time I saw how much she had aged recently. She had bags under her eyes, her grey hairs were growing thick and fast and her subtle crow feet lines round her eyes had grown into deep frown line wrinkles round her forehead.

"You know Jess, you remind me of myself in some way, the self I always wanted to be. There was a time I was desperate for a family too, a time all I wanted was to have the perfect husband, the perfect house, the perfect life. I got it, I had it all, I had your Dad, a house, a written on paper perfect life if you like. I fell pregnant and thought it was going to be the start of a happy ever after, only I lost that baby."

I had no idea about this. This was never the side of her I knew or expected.

"I was young, I was only 22 and I didn't have any professional support. Your Dad and I had an argument after I lost the baby, I told him I wanted space and I pushed him away. I got involved with the wrong crowd, I drank every night, I slept around, I became a version of myself that hadn't been raised to act the way I did. Eventually your Dad found me and basically dragged me home, he did that every time I ran away from my problems. He stuck by me even though I continuously pushed him away, I abused him in ways that I couldn't even say out loud because he really was worth his weight in gold. My biggest failure was allowing him to raise two children that weren't his own but that's the kind of man he was and the security I felt around him was enough for me to take advantage of it and keep coming home."

"He really loved you. I never understood it."

"But Daniel loves you in the same way. You run from your problems and you know it, that's not a shock coming from me. What I'm trying to say is, you and Mark turned out better than I ever could have imagined, Katie was a mess, you either see the actions of your parents and become them or you see the action of your parents and avoid them. She was a carbon copy of me. After her last accident was when I truly saw it, when I saw that what she was going to put Hallie through is what I put you through and I made a conscious effort to change. I did, I'm two years sober, that's the longest I've been sober since the day you were born, so when I took Hallie back it was my second chance at life, to prove that I could be a mother, I could have the baby and the house, the sober lifestyle, except I don't deserve it. I don't want it. It's not fair on Hallie to use her as some sort of experiment because if it goes wrong it's her life that's effected, not mine. I want to apologise to you Jess, you're tougher than you think but you are really Hallie's Mum. I've seen the way you fight for her, the way you look at her. She was heartbroken for weeks when she came to me because you aware her comfort person. You took her in and treated her like you gave birth to her yourself, yes, you had your own issues that needed resolved but you never once took that out on her. Something I never could have done. It's too late for apologies though, she needs to be home with you. I need to accept I've failed, I don't expect you to forgive me but I want you to know how I really feel."

I couldn't say anything, I had tears rolling down my cheek. I almost felt sorry for her but in the same token I couldn't.

"You and I won't have a relationship Jess, if anything I don't want to, you're too good to lower yourself to it. Katie wanted Hallie with you so I don't want the fighting anymore, the pettiness, the bitterness, I'm past it and I've accepted that. All I ask is you send me a picture on her birthday, please just send me a message with a picture and I promise I won't interfere. I don't want to be responsible for anyone else doing what Katie did, at the end of the day she was escaping from what I drove her to."

"I can't believe this." I whispered, "you'll get your picture no problem and you're right, I don't want a relationship with you. Weirdly, this is the closure I never thought I would get, you might be my mother by blood but you've accepted that you've never been a maternal mother and there's a part of me that has a lot more respect for you admitting it."

"I admire you a lot Jess, be the person I should have been please."