Everyone in My Family Remembered What I Did, Except Me Chapter 04

Everyone in My Family Remembered What I Did, Except Me Chapter 04

In the dark living room, a key turned in the lock.

The lights came on.

My parents and Simon were laughing, and the sound cut off the second they saw me on the couch.

“Maddie, when did you get back?”

I didn’t answer.

I asked them where they’d been that had them in such a good mood.

“A friend I did a favor for a while back wanted to pay me back with a meal, so I brought Mom and Dad along.”

Simon’s voice gave nothing away, and he was covering for himself.

I let out a short laugh and turned to look at him.

“A pregnant friend?”

All three faces flickered with panic.

So there it was.

“You. You saw us?”

My smile had something bitter in it.

“I honestly didn’t think you’d lie to me on this scale.”

“We weren’t hiding it on purpose. We were afraid of what it would do to you.”

Their thin explanations struck me as absurd.

“Did the three of you enjoy watching me spin in circles?”

The smile stayed on my face, and none of it was real.

Simon forced himself to speak and told me not to blame our parents.

“Maddie, don’t be like this. They kept quiet because they were looking out for you.”

I stared at him, and I had never once thought of him as this false.

“Looking out for me?”

“Simon, you’re the one who profited off it, and you’re telling me they were looking out for me?”

Simon froze.

A few seconds later, his face broke, and he demanded to know what exactly he’d profited from.

I didn’t answer him directly.

I only held his eyes.

“What did Dad say to you in that bedroom that turned you around like a switch?”

“You didn’t suddenly grow a conscience, did you?”

My pushing seemed to genuinely upset him.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and explained patiently.

“I only found out about any of this because Dad told me.”

“I feel awful about how I treated you before. I didn’t understand what you were dealing with.”

What he said struck me as ridiculous.

It had never occurred to me that the brother I’d been close to my whole life could dodge responsibility this shamelessly.

“You got a woman pregnant and you didn’t know? Dad had to tell you?”

“You feel awful about what I’m dealing with?”

“What I’m dealing with is you and the woman you knocked up.”

I practically roared the last of it at him.

My parents’ faces went ugly, and they argued back.

They insisted I had it all wrong.

“What exactly do I have wrong?”

“If you needed money to take care of my brother’s girlfriend, why couldn’t you say so? Why work an angle on me?”

“If I hadn’t caught you, when were you planning to introduce me to her?”

By then, the look on Simon’s face had gone past ugly.

“Mom, Dad, we’re here already. Let’s just put it on the table.”

“Tell Madeline the truth. All of it.”

My parents sighed and hedged for a long time, and in the end, they gave in.

We took a car to a complex I’d never been to.

When the door opened, the pregnant woman from that afternoon looked at me with some surprise.

In the living room, Gordon, Sylvia, and Simon didn’t say a word.

The woman sat down across from me and started slowly.

“I know this is hard for you to accept.”

“But some things are already settled, so it’s better for everyone to let them be.”

Her entitled tone made my blood boil.

I was about to say something cutting when she handed me a folder.

“What, do you want to show me your ultrasound too?”

I looked down at the folder, and every word I had jammed in my throat.

It was a diagnostic report with my name on it.

[Assessment complete. Patient Madeline Shaw is diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, with the host identity presenting severe delusional symptoms.]