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CHAPTER TWENTY XX. a sky full of stars [ season 3, episode 1 ]
Contrary to popular belief, Stephanie Miller was an understanding person.
Truth be told she had a quick temper, inordinately difficult to control at times, and chose to remain stubborn over matters that could often be resolved within the click of two fingers. But understanding the circumstances was an entirely different scenario all together. Stephanie could apprehend and acknowledge the difficulties, scrutinise them with a pensive gaze and an open mind, though never solve aforementioned difficultly with the same ease many people — mostly patient people — had. Veronica Hayes, for example, had more forgiveness in her little finger than Steph held in her entire body.
So, that begged the question. What had drove Steph into a disagreement that involved understanding one point of view, with the other forcing forgiveness?
Well. What hadn't?
Three months ago Stephanie begrudgingly waved goodbye to that cursed little town in Indiana to move back home with her unendurable mother, Loretta Miller, in the heart of Atlanta city. Home. Or so it had been.
Only three months of shared accommodation, and already a destructive storm had ravaged through the frayed mother-daughter relationship, reducing it to mere rags and ribbons. Steph had become the victim to another bundle of deceitful lies, which she had been expecting to unravel the moment she landed in the bustling city. As presumed, her mother's defective behaviour had not changed one bit, despite an apparent life-altering course in rehabilitation to treat her dampening alcohol addiction.
It became apparent rather quickly that Loretta Miller had not been in the rehabilitation for very long at all — a few weeks, but certainly not the months she had so loyally promised. Scout's Honour, she had said all those weeks before Steph left for Hawkins. I'll be better when you come home. Promise.
She broke that honour. Shattered the thinning wire of trust. Fractured her array of empty promises. Her relationship with Steph had already been crumbling, but now their once-unbreakable bond was reduced to a cluster of leaden debris, utterly unsalvageable.
That was where the understanding segment of the situation came into relevancy. A large part of Steph understood the impact behind her mother's deep-routed troubles, how hard those enormous hurdles were to overcome, and the behaviours that came hand-in-hand with addiction. She understood. She sympathised, because without an ounce of sympathy she was immediately deemed as soulless and cruel — people couldn't magically become better, especially with something like . . . this. Addiction. It was a soul-numbing desperation ingrained deep into the mind, siphoning the life from it's victim's like a vicious serpent seeking blood.
