Everyone in My Family Remembered What I Did, Except Me Chapter 09

Everyone in My Family Remembered What I Did, Except Me Chapter 09

I sat there for a moment.

Then, as if something had come back to me, I covered my face and sobbed.

“It happened again, didn’t it?”

“I don’t remember any of what I just did.”

“Dr. Quinn, you were right. It really is getting worse.”

The faces around me were all over the place.

Some were wary. Some felt sorry for me.

I cried and clutched at Simon’s pant leg and told him I hadn’t meant any of it.

He ground his teeth and pointed at me, furious.

“You didn’t mean it?”

“You’re faking. There’s nothing wrong with you and we all know it.’

“Simon! That’s enough!”

Gordon saw him about to say too much and cut him off while pretending to scold him.

“Look at the state your sister is in. Why are you arguing with her?”

Watching them choke on it was the most satisfying thing I’d felt in weeks.

Monica had taken the worst of it, and she had to swallow that too.

She forced a warm, patient look onto her face and turned to me.

“Maddie, your dissociative identity disorder and your delusional symptoms are very severe.”

“I happen to have a prescription ready for you. If you take it on schedule, it should keep things

under control.”

She pulled a pill box out of her bag and handed it to me.

e neighbors watching saw half of her face already swelling.

They immediately praised her for still worrying about a patient who had just hit her.

The corner of Monica’s mouth twitched and she made an excuse and got out of there fast.

Simon was probably worried about her belly.

He said that since I’d hit her, the least he could do was see her home to make up for it.

Then he went after her.

Once everyone cleared out, I put on my meekest face and followed my parents inside.

In the living room, the two of them watched me with dark expressions.

“Maddie, has somebody been saying things to you?”

Sylvia asked it carefully.

I looked at her, puzzled, and denied it flatly.

“Why would you ask me that?”

Gordon studied me for a moment and then waved it off.

“We were only worried that somebody said something upsetting and triggered a flare-up.”

He thought about it and added one more thing.

“If anything bad comes into your head, you have to tell us right away.”

“Don’t let the delusions build up into more misunderstandings.”

I listened to that performance and found the whole thing bleakly funny.

But I nodded like a good daughter.

Over the next few days, I faked identity switches around the apartment now and then.

Then, one morning, somebody started pounding on the front door hard enough to shake it.

I got to it first.

Ray and I held eye contact for a second, and neither of us said anything.

“Madeline Shaw! I knew you were hiding out here!”

“Pay me back. You owe me over $200,000, and you thought you’d just walk away?”

I backed up a few steps and put on a frightened face.

“What money? I don’t know who any of you are.”

My parents and Simon came out of the back when they heard the noise.

When they saw Ray with a dozen rough-looking men behind him, they went stiff.

“You two must be her parents.”

“Good. Kids run up debts, parents pay them.”

“Either you cover it today, or I put your whole family in the ground.”

On that, several of his men moved in and grabbed all three.

I rushed forward like I was trying to stop it, and somebody shoved me off balance.

All I could do was cry at Ray.

“Sir, I’m sick. I have dissociative identity disorder.”

“I honestly don’t know anything about owing you money.”

Ray raised an eyebrow.

A second later, Simon lost two teeth.

My parents were beside themselves, and they screamed at me to pay the man.

“Mom, I really don’t know when I borrowed anything.”

“Dr. Quinn said it herself. Memory gaps are normal with this condition.”

But Simon was howling louder by the second.

Sylvia finally broke.

eyes went bloodshot, and she announced to the whole room that there had never been anything

wrong with me.

“There is! I even take medication for it!”

Sylvia was coming apart, hair everywhere, looking like a woman who’d lost her mind.

“No, you don’t! We made it up! We lied to you!”

“The diagnosis was fake. Why are you still putting on an act, you little bitch?”

The air in the room went strange and still.

It was a while before I let out a long breath and spoke softly.

“Mom, what did you just say?”

Gordon caught up in an instant.

He started arguing that she was hysterical and talking nonsense.

But Sylvia was terrified for Simon, and whatever had been holding her together was gone.

She sobbed that I really wasn’t sick.

“If you want your money, go after Madeline. There is nothing wrong with her!”

She was crying, and she turned to look at me.

There wasn’t a trace of the softness she used to have left.

“You vicious little bitch. Are you trying to get your brother killed?”

My face went cold, and there was a sneer on my mouth.

“You lied to me for years. You told me I had a mental illness.”

“Which one of us is vicious?”

“You. You already knew?”

Gordon asked it, and he was stunned.

I answered him with silence and stood up, so I was looking down at both of them.

Over those few days at the apartment, I’d had someone dig up every piece of it for me.

At the start, I was sending money home for food.

Gordon and Sylvia only skimmed part of it off to help Simon.

Later, Simon started dating Monica, and his spending went up.

So they asked for more food money, and every dollar of it went straight to him.

After that, Monica got pregnant.

The supplements and the prenatal costs kept climbing.