Still the same

Words 300

If only I’d known how this day would turn out, I wouldn’t have made such an effort making things nice for her.
My husband Jim, bless his soft heart, couldn’t wait for his little girl to be “back where she belongs.”
Sophie had been in trouble before but things got really bad.

I suppose we’d always known she had this wild streak, a problem with authority. She never cared about the effects her behaviour had on others.

At school it was simply rudeness to the teachers, or smoking with friends at lunchtime.

Yet somehow her grades were good enough. Asserting, “I "don't need to study,” to achieve a high enough standard to pass exams.

The teenage pregnancy upset her dad most of all. He couldn’t imagine his little girl having underage sex. The termination seemed to send her crazy for a while.

Then she ran away, lost to us for nearly a year. We never really found out where she’d been, just fed drips of information. We saw the track marks though on her arms, each one may as well have been a dagger into her father's heart. How I hated her for that.

At last she admitted she needed and wanted help.

Rehab doesn’t come cheap, but what else could we do?
We saw her getting better; she put weight on to that skinny frame, her hair began to shine and she found her smile.

They allowed visits home after six months. Although we rejoiced in the fact she was getting well, it all felt so fragile, like an egg with a shell not quite hardened. We tiptoed around her afraid to say or do the wrong thing.

My blood ran cold when I heard Jim’s raised voice spit out the words, “You haven’t changed a bit!”