Grace let go a second loud breath.
“None of this is your fault,” Mitch said. “You provided a loving home. You took good care of her.”
“Apparently not good enough.” Grace dotted another napkin at the corners of her eyes. “Arthur was worried. We didn’t know a thing about her … her past, her genetics, family history, none of it. And I brushed it aside because the truth is, you never know. I don’t care how a child comes to be your responsibility, it’s always a risk.”
“There are always risks,” Mitch concurred.
“Yes, but I’m not taking this risk alone. It’s not just me getting hurt. There are other people tethered to my rope, so when I fall, they fall. And we’ve fallen pretty far, and yeah, sure, I’m alive, I’m in good health, but survivor’s guilt … that’s a real, real thing.”
Mitch’s lips creased into a tight grimace.
“I suspect that’s our curse as parents,” he responded. “No matter the circumstances, we always want to do more for our children, take away their pain and suffering if we can. But some things are simply not ours to control, so we get the guilt instead, the what-ifs … should’ve, would’ve, could’ve.”
Mitch broke eye contact for a moment.
“I saw my son Adam at the rehab facility where he’s staying for the first time the other day. It was harder than I thought it would be. He kept insisting none of it was my fault, but it’s one thing to hear the words and another to believe them. He told me I couldn’t fix it for him. He said just talk to me … be there for me … that he needed my support, not my expectations that he was going to beat his addiction this time.”
Grace’s heart broke for them both.
“I’m glad Adam’s where he needs to be to heal,” she said. “And I can relate to your pain, Mitch, on a very deep and personal level. When we found out for sure that Penny had DID—how we found out is a longer story that I’ll tell you later, but suffice it to say, the diagnosis was utterly shattering. We’d known something was amiss for a while, but to have all the pieces put together for us … I couldn’t help but feel responsible, like I did something wrong, that it was my fault.”
“It isn’t, and wasn’t, but yes, I understand.”
“Right or wrong, I wasn’t going to let her down again,” Grace said. “I did my research, read every study on DID I could get my hands on, and every one of them said basically the same thing: that I had to embrace all of Penny’s alters, even Eve, or it could be like LGBTQ kids who get shunned by their parents. Denial or rejection of any of her personalities can be a potentially fatal affront to the self.”
Mitch returned an emphatic nod. “Making Penny feel loved, safe, and supported is a vital precursor to encouraging integration, for her to become whole again,” he said. “I guess in a way that’s what Adam was trying to tell me. He once said a hit of heroin filled him with this incredible warmth, totally relaxed him, so he had no worries about anything. He said it was like taking hits of joy, which was hard to hear because I felt my son’s joy was somehow my responsibility. But then when he got hooked hard that joy went away, and he didn’t need the drug to feel good … he needed it to breathe.”
“I’m so sorry, Mitch,” Grace said, feeling heavy in her chest.
Mitch moved his hand across the table. For a moment, Grace thought it might be to hold hers as a gesture of shared comfort, but instead he undid the zipper of the portfolio.
“You’ve suffered a lot,” he said. “And I don’t want to add to it by giving you false hope here. I honestly don’t know if I’m going to be able to help. I’ve never had a case like this before or dealt with someone quite like Eve. All I can promise is that I’ll try my best.”
“That’s all I can ask,” Grace replied.
“Okay, let’s look at this art, shall we?”
CHAPTER 26
MITCH REACHED INSIDE THE sturdy portfolio case and took out the first drawing from within. When Grace saw which one it was, she got another lump in her throat, thinking of the day Penny gave it to her.
* * *
She was in bed with Arthur, he with some nonfiction book about the Civil War, she reading about attachment in adoption. Penny had only been living with them a few months, but already Grace couldn’t imagine her small purple bedroom ever being empty again. Grace paid particular attention to the chapters detailing how grief and trauma could affect a child’s emotional development, finding those especially important.