Thank you to all of you who've reviewed and/or added me to your alerts. Another short chapter. The one after this will be a bit longer and after that I hope to bring you real chapters! Enjoy!
Quinn's POV
Lima, 2022
She's really trying. She's trying so damn hard, but she can't help herself. Even after fourteen months and sixteen days, she's still trying to forgive her daughter. Trying to forgive her for being selfish, for being the reason she will never get to live out her happily ever after. For chasing away the person who loved her, the both of them, more than anything else in the world. The one person who sacrificed her own happiness, firmly believing it would be best to do what their daughter had asked, or rather, demanded, and leave.
So she's really trying and some days she's convinced that she's finally reached the point at which she can tell Beth she's been forgiven. But then a door slams and she hears the excited chatter of her pre-teen, the one who's a spitting image of herself at that age, and she can't help but feel betrayed and cheated all over again. Because her daughter is acting like nothing happened. Is her usual chipper self. As if she hadn't been the one responsible for single handedly dismantling the home they had tried so hard to fill with love and warmth and security. Everything has been shot to hell and Quinn can't help but hold her daughter responsible, for at least part of it.
Rachel leaving had been Rachel's choice. Quinn had been convinced things would settle down after a while, that it was just a phase Beth was going through. She'd suggested counseling, for herself and Rachel as a couple as well as for the three of them together, but Beth wouldn't budge. Things had gotten out of hand after that, ending in a disastrous 'final conflict'.
Quinn can't help but cringe at the memory. Already she can feel the telltale burn of tears forming in the corners of her eyes as well as the heat of shame reddening her cheeks. She'd hit her daughter. And even though it has been only that one time and the circumstances had been extreme, it went completely against every promise she'd ever made to her little girl.
After that night, Rachel's mind had been made up. Her desperate pleading with both Rachel and Beth to talk it out had fallen on deaf ears. Within hours bags were packed, a cab was called and Rachel was gone. She didn't even get to sleep in her lover's arms for just one more night.
So she just sits here, at the kitchen table, waiting for her daughter to come home. Waiting with tea and biscuits like any good mom does. But she doesn't feel like a good mom right now. Hasn't felt like that in almost fifteen months. Because, while she loves her daughter to death, she can't help but admit she doesn't like her very much right now.
Same goes with Rachel. Quinn is still convinced they would've been able to work it out. That they would've been able to make Beth see how unique a family they really had. A family built with bricks of love and trust and honesty. To point out the broken homes around them, how many of her daughter's friends came from said broken homes and how rare it was that people actually chose to stay together out of love, for wanting to be together, instead of using their children as the glue to keep their families together.
So, yes, she's angry. With her daughter and her ex-wife and with herself most of all. Because Quinn thinks that her daughter should feel remorse for irreparably fucking up their lives. Thinks that Rachel had been just a tad to eager to walk away from them. Thinks she herself should've tried harder to stop their lives from unraveling. But she didn't.