Rise Like The Sun

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

MADISON

"Can I come in?" Her mother knocks gently on her bedroom door.

Madison lifts her head from rearranging the rest of her study books. Exams are finally finished and though she's packing them away for the only charity shop in Redwood, there's still a strange restlessness that echoes through her. She wonders if her mother will ask her about joining the ranks at their office in the city and for the first time, Madison wonders what answer she will give.

Her mother is a tentative figure, looking slightly hesitant. Madison is no longer angry with her mother, but she still doesn't want to forgive her. She'd spent years thinking the worst of her father and denying herself and her father the relationship they could have had because of her mother. Though her father was still in the wrong, Madison can forgive him for leaving because he came back. Her mother, on the other hand, lied to her face and left her to struggle constantly.

How much time had they lost?

"Yes," Madison says quietly, watching her mother carefully.

She enters the room shyly, no sense of the usual confidence and bravado that Elizabeth Sutton used to wear. Madison lifts her IT textbook and places it in the charity box that she and Nick are taking together to the shop.

"Madison, I wanted to tell you how sorry I am," she begins.

"I know you are," Madison tells her mother, her chest aching, wanting to give her a break. "You don't have to say it."

Her mother's face only creases in pain. "But I do," she says softly. She is starting to cry, to Madison's horror. "I chose myself over you and I never should have done that." Her voice is a heavy confession. "Your father didn't cheat. I only told you that because that would mean that it was his fault and not mine. I should have been better to you, I'm so sorry—,"

"It's—," Madison pauses. "It's not okay. I did everything because I just wanted to make you proud of me, for once—,"

"I am, I am always—,"

"Would it have killed you to at least tell me, once in a while?" she asks, her voice keening. "To stay home? To, at the very least, ask me how I'm doing, what I'm feeling? It was always only ever about you and I hate that your selfishness did this to us."

Her mother's face is a picture of distress, brows pulled down in slight horror and pain. She tries her best not to sniffle, her eyes brimming with tears, but Madison forces herself to breathe properly. She hates the sight of her mother in such pain and she reaches for a box of tissues to offer, her fingers still shaking. Even though her mother is crying, Madison knows that she is not in the wrong. Her mother was the wrong one here.

"Is there—is there anything I can do?" her mother asks desperately. "I want to fix this. I want to—what can I do?"

Madison gives her a soft smile and her voice is quiet when she speaks. "Put us both first for once?"

.

.

The preparations for the graduation party are underway when Madison sees her friends again.

Usually, she will have undertaken responsibility for the party but she's trying to take a step back from shouldering the world these days. It's a little easier to breathe through the days now, though she still feels sometimes like she's got a lot on her plate like before. Habits are hard to break, she guesses, but she's spending her free week with Nick and patching things up with her family again.

Her breaths hitch when she sees Lula and the others and Madison knows that she, at least, has to make an effort to patch things up with the rest of her family. She darts forward, cutting a path through the hall quickly, aiming to cut them off at the doors.