Page 59 of The Scrooge Effect

“You have daddy issues that I can’t keep taking on as my own. I’m not your old man. I didn’t walk out on you, and I wasn’t going to.”

“You’re leaving me now,” she cried.

“Because you need something that I can’t give you. You need to check into rehab and get clean.”

She wiped the snot from her nose on her sleeve, tugging at it like it would stop the itch under her skin. “I’ll get clean. I’ll— I’ll do whatever you ask! Just don’t leave me!”

The man stared at her with so much torment in his eyes. I knew that look. I’d seen it before in my own reflection. But he was on the other end. He was the man struggling with staying in a situation that he knew would not end well.

“I can’t stay for you. It’s destroying me to watch you like this. I nearly lost my job when I got the call that you overdosed.”

“It won’t happen again,” she pleaded.

“It’s the third time since we’ve been together!” he shouted. “God, I can’t do this. I can’t stay and ruin myself to make you happy because it doesn’t work. You’re only happy for a few weeks, and then you need a hit. You don’t love me. You love the drugs.”

“No!”

He pulled her into his arms and held her tight. “I love you, Grace. I always will. Be safe.”

And with that, he forced himself to walk away and out the front door. I wanted to go after him, to yell at him for walking out on her. But I was struck by the way my beautiful girl collapsed to the floor in sobs, reaching under the sofa for a box.

“No, don’t do it, Grace. Put it away,” I said urgently, reaching for the handle. But my hand went right through the metal.

My heart hammered in my chest as I watched in horror as she got out a needle.

“No! Grace, don’t do it!”

I surged forward, walking right through the wall of the house and toward my daughter. But when I tried to grasp the needle from her hand, my fingers went right through it.

“Grace, listen to me!” I said, getting on my knees in front of her. “You don’t have to do this!”

But she couldn’t hear me. Not over her sobs, and not when I wasn’t even real.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” she sobbed, and then she plunged the needle in.

“No!”

I was yanked through the house and out into the darkness. My body soared away from my daughter and through the streets of the city. Screaming, I tried to reach her, but no matter what I did, I was pulled further from her.

Finally, I was plopped down in the snow outside a hospital.

Anger, hurt, and terror filled my lungs as I sat there, desperate to get back to my daughter, to help her before she did something she couldn’t take back. What would happen to her mother?

Would she ever get past what Gracie did? What about Eden?

“You can’t help them right now,” the voice said solemnly.

“She was taking drugs,” I whispered. “My Gracie. She’s not even old enough to go to school yet.”

“Well, you weren’t there to stop her. You walked away, remember?”

Tears filled my eyes as I thought of the pain on her face. I could practically feel it tearing my heart to shreds. How had it come to this? Things were supposed to be better with me gone.

“This shouldn’t have happened.”

“A lot shouldn’t have happened,” the voice sighed. “Daddy issues. That’s what he said. You heard it clear as day.”

“She couldn’t have fallen into drugs because of me.”