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“My aunt would take me for short periods, but she had six kids already and didn’t have enough room for me to live with her full-time. After my mom’s final stint in the hospital, a nurse started asking too many questions. I ended up living in a foster home for a while. My mom couldn’t handle life without me. The weekend I was supposed to see her for our supervised visit, she swallowed an entire bottle of Oxycodone. When she didn’t show, my social worker had the police bust down her door. They found her on the couch and pronounced her dead on arrival.”
“Shit, Lila. I’m sorry. I thought it was bad when my mom died, but you had it so much worse.”
“To answer your question, that’s how I ended up marrying that asshole. Ted was a way for me to put my old life behind me and have a real family. We went to college together. He went to law school, and I got my Ph.D.” She leans back in the chair, her arm rested on the edge. “Enough about me. I want to know more about you and your family.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about your mom,” she says.
“She passed away from cancer when I was in high school. You already know that.”
“How do you think that impacted your role in the family?”
I shrug. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You went from older brother to caretaker of your siblings overnight.”
“You already know this.”
“Yes,” she says, “but I’m missing something. I believe yo
ur mother’s death and your father’s abandonment is the source of your anger.”
“You don’t need a Ph.D. to figure that out.”
“What was it like when your mother was still alive?”
“Before or after she got sick?”
“After,” she says.
“Dad was out of it a long time before she died. He was around all the time when she first got sick, but after the doctors told him it was terminal, he started disappearing. At first, it was an hour or two, and then it turned into days at a time. He hired a nanny, who my mom sent home after the first day. She didn’t want anyone else to raise us.”
“And how was it after she died?”
“My dad was either on the road or not mentally available. When he was home, he was just there… until I forced him to stop acting like an asshole.”
“What did you do to change that?”
“I smashed his face in.”
“Would you say your anger started before or after your mom died?”
“After, definitely after. My dad fucking left us, okay? I had to deal with everything on my own. If Austin weren’t there to help me, I would have lost my mind. The twins never stopped running around. They were a fucking nightmare. Theo and Trav are still a pain in the ass.
“What about your sister?”
“Kat’s the only girl. I didn’t know what to do for her. I had no idea what she needed. I had to learn how to do girly shit that my mom did for her.”
“How did Austin help out?”
“Austin was better at school than me, so he helped Kat and the twins with their homework. He has a lot more patience than I do. Austin read to them and did stuff like that. He took them to their doctor’s appointments. I drove them to school and made sure they had lunch and didn’t look like slobs.”
“So, you took on the role of your father?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Walk me through a typical day in your house after your mom passed away. What was it like for you?”
