But Daria is not my equal. She is my daughter. My very sensitive daughter. She’s been hurting beyond belief recently. I’ve done nothing to rectify this situation, only escalating it by bringing in more factors that drove us apart.
I make my way toward her room and stop when I hear my husband’s voice behind her door. “Of course, you can tell me, Dar. You know there’s no judgment inside these walls.”
Frozen, my jaw slacks. A part of me, the logical part, tells me to turn around and walk away. She is confiding in Jaime, not me. But another part—the mother in me—refuses to let go. I resent my own husband for having a superior connection with her. I resent the entire world, including Bailey, and Via, and Penn, and our friends for coming between Daria and me.
“Principal Prichard hit me.”
The air leaves my lungs, and I stumble backward. Silence. My husband recovers after what seems to be like a full minute.
“Tell me everything, please.” His voice is barely restrained.
She does. My daughter spends the next ten minutes chronicling her last, scarring, infuriating four years. She doesn’t leave anything out. Not the fact she destroyed Via’s letter—something I knew but never confronted her about—to how she started writing in the journal, and how Prichard used it against her. She breaks down when she confesses to deleting Grace’s messages in New York. Not that I needed to hear it from her to know it to be true. I figured it out when I finally found Grace’s number and called her. By that point, I could hardly blame Daria. I was a no-show for the past six months of her life. Too busy saving Via and Penn and giving Bailey everything she needs. The way I saw it, until the New York incident—my own wake-up call, if you will—I was staying out of her way, just as she had asked me to do repeatedly.
Daria always seemed so distant and independent as if she had it all figured out. How could I have been so stupid?
Daria acts like eighteen-year-old Mel. Dazed, confused, and hurt.
In New York, when Bailey and Via fawned over me, and Daria awarded me with long yawns, I did what I always do when I get frustrated with her; I built up an ice wall from the same variety she raised every time I came knocking on the doors of her heart.
I shouldn’t have built more walls.
I should’ve broken them down.
Smashed them and stormed in and given her everything she needed so she wouldn’t have to search for them in an abusive educator who took advantage of her.
I hear my daughter crying in her room and muster the courage to tiptoe and peek through the slit in the door. They are so quiet and content and wrecked together. My beautiful, perfect husband sits on the edge of my daughter’s bed, hugging her close to his chest and kissing the crown of her blond head. She is falling apart in his arms, and my heart hurts so much I can’t even breathe.
I should be hugging you.
I should be comforting you.
Collapsing against the wall, I suck in air. Sourness rises in my throat, and I swallow it down, but it keeps coming up, wanting to spill over. I want to purge whatever’s inside me on the floor. All the frustration and hate and animosity toward the person I gave birth to. This has been going on for far too long. I need my baby back.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, the love of my life?”
The love of his life. I know he means it. Jaime would die just to put a smile on his mini-me’s face.
“I can’t stay here, you know. I’m not going to let Penn throw the game, and I won’t be able to show my face at school after the journal goes public.”
“It’ll never come to that. I will hit Gus up tonight.”
“No.” I hear Daria sniff and know she is shaking her head. She’s made up her mind. “It’s too late. My reputation is shit. If the truth comes out, people will know I killed All Saints High’s chance at taking the championship, and Gus and Via will spin it against me. Besides…” She takes another deep breath. I know why. I know because I fold their clothes and tuck their secrets into their closets every day.
“I need to put some distance between the Scullys and me.”
“Is that right?”
“I’m so sorry, Daddy. I know you didn’t want this to happen. And I know I let you down a gazillion times. By letting the Hulk win. By being jealous. By being mean. By not being the best version of myself I could have been. By falling in love with a person I had no right to fall in love with.”
“Shh,” he murmurs into her hair, cradling her. They are moving back and forth to a soundless lullaby, cocooned inside a world I’m no longer a part of.
“You are the perfect version of yourself, kiddo. The real deal. We’re the same, you and me.” He kisses her nose, then the tears from her eyes. “When I was your age, I was frustrated and confused. I always had the best intentions, but my actions came out all wrong. As for falling in love with the wrong person…” He chuckles, shaking his head.
A ghost of a smile finds my lips.
Don’t say it, Jaime.
“I’m a lot of things, but a hypocrite is not one of them. I fell in love with my high school teacher. And guess what? We still made it work. Don’t let people tell you who to fall in love with, and don’t think just because the past few years have been shit, the rest of your life will follow suit. Look at your old man. I got my happy ending. You will, too.”