State Of Grace

Chapter 54 - Daylight

"Just twelve hours to go," Gracie told herself as she watched the clock tick from August 12th to August 13th.

At midday, she would be in the courthouse with her family, and her mothers would be signing the papers that made Gracie legally their child. Then she'd get to go home where she would never have to worry about being taken away, going hungry, or the wrath of angry foster parents ever again. Since her release from the hospital, she'd been a ball of excitement, but now it was becoming so real that her fear of something going wrong again turned the volume of her intrusive thoughts up to ten and she was convinced that asking Stella and Lilah to go through with the adoption was selfish.

She'd been a burden to them for months in more ways than one; she'd practically drained the family of their money during her trial against John and all of the medical bills, not to mention the medication she may need to take for the rest of her life.

Aside from the money, she'd caused problems with her lies and then running away, and though she'd promised herself and her mothers she would work hard to stay on the right path with her mental health, who was to say she wouldn't revert back to her old ways one day?

If Stella and Lilah adopted her, they would be required to take care of Gracie at least until she was eighteen, and though her recovery was going well, she still struggled with nightmares and flashbacks, and she knew her panic attacks might never go away. Could she really live with the knowledge that she'd be burdening her mothers with her episodes for the rest of her life?

She tossed and turned for hours trying to rationalize her intrusive thoughts and then scolding herself for letting them win. She hadn't worked her fingers to the bone to get better just to take herself back to square one.

Her countless conversations with Dr. Hastings and Dr. Ellis came back to her, but something in her head made it impossible to listen to reason.

She sat up in her bed, switched on the lamp beside her bed and pulled her journal out from under her pillow. Optimistic that her oldest coping mechanism could help, she began scribbling her stream of consciousness, expelling all of her negative thoughts onto the paper.

Looking at the clock again, it was somehow seven in the morning. Consumed by the pages she'd filled, she'd been completely oblivious to the sun weaving its way through the cracks around the blinds. Just five more hours until the adoption. There was no use in trying to sleep at this time, so she rose and went downstairs to make herself a pot of coffee when she remembered that she wasn't supposed to have coffee because it might mess with the new anxiety medication that Dr. Hastings had prescribed, so instead she brewed a pot of decaf hoping it might have a placebo effect for the big day ahead.

Journaling helped, once she'd gone back and read over what she'd written, she began to make sense of it all. Somewhere inside of her, was still the little girl who couldn't trust anything or anyone, and that little girl had defence mechanisms of her own; if you don't hope for anything you can't be let down when things don't work out. But now that girl was growing up and beginning to understand that hope was sometimes all she had, a beam of light guiding her ship across the open ocean. Turning a blind eye to the light would mean a lifetime on the waves, when she could be safely docked at the lighthouse.

Walking into the kitchen, any remaining doubts had vanished. She was stunned at the sight in front of her. The table was laid with the same floral tablecloth they had used in the garden on her first day home, the same fancy china, and down the center of the table, wrapped in plastic was an array of cupcakes, muffins, and her favorite doughnuts from the vendor on the beach near the school.

On the plate where Gracie usually sat, was some kind of big blue book. Across the front, in gold embossed letters it said "The Tucker Family". When she turned open the cover, she realized what it was; a photo album. The Tuckers had stacks of photo albums on the shelves in the dining room, and this new one matched the set perfectly, the only difference was that the photos inside this one included Gracie.