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“I don’t know if I’d go that far with my mom,“ I say. “A lot of what she did was out of her control. It’s just…“
“It’s okay,“ Misha says, his hand squeezing my knee. It’s the briefest of touches and it sends a jolt of electricity up my spine. I think he means for it to be reassuring, but it leaves me practically gasping for breath. “Anything you say to us remains between us.“
“Is that a law?“ I joke.
No one laughs. I love it when that happens.
“I’m serious,“ Misha says. “Our chief interest is protecting you. There’s not one person in this car who wants to harm you. Feel free to share as much as you want.“
“Or as little as you want,“ Rei says from the back. “There’s no pressure from us. Just remember that the more you tell us, the easier it’ll be for us to figure out what’s going on with you.“
I shrug again. I don’t really talk to anyone about my mom—no one except my therapist, obviously, and even that’s a bit of a struggle—but they’re right. Keeping things from them would just be doing myself a disservice.
“When I was really little, my mom was great,“ I say. “Attentive, sweet. She took me everywhere with her. And then when I was a young teenager, she had her first psychotic break. She just…she acted so differently. But the thing I remember most vividly is that she wouldn’t sleep.“
“Like, she couldn’t sleep?“ Misha asks.
I shake my head. “No, like shewouldn’tsleep,“ I say. “Like she would pace around the house to try to keep herself awake. She’d do dangerous things she knew she had to stay awake for so she could incentivize herself to stay up. Like deep frying food, for instance. It would be three o’clock in the morning and I could hear sizzling coming from the kitchen.“
They don’t respond. The car is silent, the only sound around us the few vehicles driving past.
“That’s when my dad realized something was seriously wrong. He begged my mom to go get help, but she wouldn’t do it. She said that everything was fine, that she was just going to get through it. She fell asleep in her car once and crashed it head first into a tree. She was fine, but my dad decided to have her forcibly committed after that. And when he did that, well, she never came home.“
“That must’ve been hard,“ Rei says.
I feel a smile tugging at the corner of my lips. I’ve heard statements like that from my therapist. Sometimes, I forget Rei is a psychiatrist, but sometimes, it’s blatantly obvious. Like now.
“It was okay. I mean, it wasn’t, but it had been building up for so long that I was expecting something to happen. When it did, I wasn’t surprised. After that, everything was fast. The divorce, the long-term rehab facilities, all of that just kind of blends into one long memory for me. When they finally split up officially, my mom wanted custody of me but my dad fought her for it. It wasn’t…it wasn’t like he fought a lot. He put up a minimum amount of resistance and my mom backed away. My mom’s priorities were always obvious to me, but by that point, they became crystal clear. Whatever her delusions were, they seemed to matter far more than I ever did.“
I pinch the bridge of my nose, my mouth suddenly dry.
“And now all I can think about is, I don’t know, what if they weren’t delusions? What if I got it all wrong?“
“What do you mean?“ Misha asks softly.
“I mean, I don’t know,“ I say, trying to ignore the panic making my pulse race. “What if she was just trying to protect me?“
MISHA
Iwant to ask Trine more about her mother, but it’s clear that even thinking about it is hard for her.
She doesn’t want to be here. If this was just about her feelings, I would get off at the next exit and turn the car around and drive her back home, but this is more important.
Still, I wish I could make this easier for her.
This has already been a hell of a day. Sometimes, the fact that our job is problem solving by nature blinds us from everything else. I wish we would’ve at least waited to embark on this trip until morning.
“Listen,“ I say. “We’re still almost two hours away and we’re going to get there in the middle of the night. Maybe we should stop and sleep somewhere along the way?“
“Two hours isn’t that long,“ Trine says.
“Right,“ I reply. “But the GPS says that we’re going to get there at one in the morning, and we have plenty of things to explain to your mother. Plus, you’re not even sure if she still lives at the address you have for her, right?“
She nods.
“So what if she’s not there and we end up waking a poor unsuspecting family in the middle of the night?“ I offer. “We just jumped into this car without even preparing what we were going to say. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love the initiative, but even I admit that it’s a little bit rash.“
She watches me, her eyes wide. “So what are you suggesting?“
