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CHAPTER THREE III. nothing breaks like a heart [ season 2, episode 2 ]
Steph decided to attend Tina's Halloween party, against her better judgement.
Apparently, Loretta Miller was calling from Atlanta City tonight to check up on her daughter. You know, to see how things were unfolding over in the measly town of Hawkins. Likely, a call to inform Steph of her slow progress in the rehabilitation centre, which the aforementioned daughter already knew would be either a bunch of lies, or something entirely made up to make herself look better.
That was why she wanted to go to the stupid party all of a sudden. Attending gave her an excuse to leave the phone ringing, unanswered.
Whoops. I was out, sorry!
Steph probably wouldn't have been so reluctant to answer her Mom's infrequent calls if the woman had been different ── a little less self inclined.
Problem was, Loretta Miller never wanted to get better, and she was too afraid to admit that sobering truth.
She was an alcoholic ── and inevitably, an insufferable drunk. She drank heavily, during the week and on the weekends, and the toxic elixir of ethanol had a tendency to plunge the woman into extremely vulnerable states that Steph had no idea how to control or manage. Depression, anxiety, full-blown panic attacks, suicidal thoughts. Every emotion seemed to get stuck beneath a microscopic scope, swelling uncontrollably in size.
Obviously, the behaviour indulged a strain on their already wilting mother-daughter relationship, to the point Steph could no longer take the daily alcohol-induced ritual.
In the end, she decided to move away. For her own health. And to better her Mom's.
Her Aunt Jenny was helpful enough to offer Stephanie a place to stay until Loretta had completed an entire course in rehabilitation, concluding in the month of March. Only then would Steph return to Atlanta City. Only then would she try to improve the dwindling relationship with her mother. If not ── well, the answer was obvious. She would sever all ties with Loretta until the woman finally fulfilled the one thing her daughter had desperately craved for seven years.
To have a Mom. A proper Mom.
After everything Steph had been forced to endure, it was the least she deserved.
The very least.
Before leaving the house, Steph glanced in the elongated mirror that sat at an odd angle on her bedroom wall.
