Poppy's POV
The day after the party dad called again, but he sounded different. I could tell he had been crying, his quiet sniffles could be heard through the phone. "How was your day darling?" he had asked me, his voice horse as he tried he best to keep his composer.
"Is something wrong? You sound upset" I had asked worriedly. It wasn't often that he got this upset, and when he did he choose to lock himself in his study.
There was a moment before a sob broke the silence. "I just want everything to be normal again. I want Jane to be who she was when I met her." His voice sounded almost angry, his breathing hitching with every word he spoke.
Hearing those words made me die inside. If I had just acted differently, she wouldn't have hated me so much, she wouldn't have wanted me dead. Most importantly she wouldn't be locked in a mental hospital. It's all my fault.
"I'm sorry, father." my voice was filled with disappointment. I had disappointed him as well as myself. "I should have been better." Tears streamed there way down my face before I wiped them harshly.
I don't deserve to cry, I'm the problem.
"Stop it Poppy" his tone changed, now harsh and scolding. I took in a sharp breath to keep anymore tears from falling, to keep myself from making any noise. "Don't say that, your mother is sick Poppy.
No amount of being good could have fixed that. If anything it's my fault. I'm a trained mental health professional and I couldn't even recognize signs in my own wife."
More sniffles. "I'm so sorry Poppy" It felt so horrible hearing him cry. Sometimes I failed to remember that she was a person. Now the most clear and vivid memory I had of her was the memory of her trying to take me out of this world, but for him it was different.
For him he had memories of her happiness, memories of her light. It was something my father talked of often when she was brought up, her light. He said that before she started to get bad, you could look in her eyes and it would brighten up your whole day. As if a ray of sunshine lived within her. But that wasn't the mother I remembered.
The mother I remembered was cruel and hateful.
I can remember her dragging me by my hair down the stairs one day when father was at work because I had told her that I needed some water. I was supposed to be napping.
I can remember her holding me down and putting all her weight on my chest so that I couldn't breath as she beat me with a metal hanger.
I can remember how she would come in my room at night and stand over me and just stare until I cried and screamed for father.
Sometimes he would asked about my bruises, or why I was always complaining about pain. "Children fall Peter, it's perfectly normal" she would say with a shrug, as if all the pain, all the terror I felt was no big deal.
Most of my other memories of her torture are fuzzy and hard to comprehend. Father said that it's normal for people who have been through things such as that to have problems remembering, he said it's my brains way of protecting itself.
I understood why he wanted her back. She was his world, the love of his life, his sun and his moon, but to me she was nothing but a worthless excuse for a mother. And the hatred i felt for her, I don't think it could ever go away.