Protect My Heart

Chapter 24

Suggested song: "Not About Angels" and "Wings"
By: Birdy

A/N: Listen to it when you see a scene starting. You'll recognize it, trust me.

Clover

I was a proud mother, but I couldn't also believe how fast time had passed.

Of course, Mia's youth had passed by in a blur. Some days I regretted not being a better mother, for letting 'grief' get the best of me and even losing touch with my own daughter. For three years, I spent it cooped up in the house, barely getting up to do chores or find a hobby. I may have adored my daughter and spent time with her, but I wasn't really there.

As a child of workaholic parents, I should've done better. I didn't like talking about my parents since they'd passed away a long time ago and I barely had any memories with them. To be honest, I often felt that they died before they actually did. A crazy feeling for a teenager to have, but you can't say much when you hardly knew them at all.

Of course, I loved them and felt sad that they were gone, but I wasn't burdened with grief. I didn't sit by their graves every day and prayed for them to come back. Ned was my brother; he was who I had and adored. Then there was Jane who swept in to take care of us; even if she wasn't legally my mother, she still felt like one.

She may have gone about things wrong at the start, especially when I began dating Logan. But years later, I realize this was her worry speaking. She was worried I might stumble into someone like Jackson again, so I understood her worry now. She was being a mother to me. She loved me like her very own daughter and wanted to protect me. She interrogated Logan to make sure he was a good man, was there to tend to my needs when I needed someone. She wouldn't let things go so easily when she noticed an absence in me.

Thanks to her, I also started seeing a therapist. She saw the dark hole I was falling into and helped me to my feet.

My own mother never did so. My mother didn't even blink when I got home with that bruise on my face. I said I'd fallen down the steps, she said to put some ice on it, not even asking again whether that was what had actually happened. The next time it happened, there wasn't any talk of ice.

Their jobs took up their life, their children were just a side-hustle they turned to when boredom hit.

I had nice memories with them, but those got overpowered by the bad.

When they died, I sat next to their grave for one whole day and spelled my regrets about causing the accident, about making them pick me up. Until I got so frustrated with the apologies that three months later, I smacked their tombstones with my foot, trashed the flowers, and shouted: "You should've picked me up! You shouldn't have let me go to the party in the first place! You should've banged on every door in that party and smacked the living shit out of Jackson or even called the cops! But you drove away, picked me up without so much as a word for my mascara-rubbed eyes, the fresh tears, and the rumpled dress! You didn't even ask! You would've let him walk away if he hadn't killed you, so why the fuck am I apologizing? Why am I apologizing for something that was a normal thing for a child to do?"

Then I broke down and sobbed there for hours, picking apart the grass and carving my nails into those stones.

That was the last time I visited their grave.

I hadn't gone back since. I lit a candle, yes, on their anniversaries and cried with Ned or Jane when they said they missed them. But I didn't miss them that way.

I hadn't gone back until today.

I hadn't even returned to this town in so many years. How could I when so much bad had happened there?