"Come on, baby, let me in, and show me what this really is about..."

[asskickingblahniks]

Who? Gen Hart and Mark Campbell
What? Soaked in booze and tears
Where? The Campbell-Hart abode
When? Saturday, late morning, after this

Gen wanted to believe that she could hold it all together for her husband and son -- that when Justin was hurting, and Mark was hurting for him, she would somehow be able to be the strong one. But the truth was, her heart broke for her husband and son, too. She had come home from work and crashed out early, exhausted from a long day, and Mark had texted from work telling her that he was at work, but he was going to get Justin and he'd be home later. By the time she'd woken up, it was to a text from Ali telling her that Mark was passed out drunk on her couch. Thank fuck Justin was with Sam. Which probably said all anyone ever needed to know about the father Mark was. Even in the midst of heartbrokenly writing himself off, he was still first concerned about being sure Justin was safe. But what this meant to Gen right now was that, as Ali had told her, she had to get Mark home and really talk to him about what was going on, because if he was writing himself off? He wasn't coping with things, and that was when they needed most of all to be a team. Which was why she'd spent well over an hour after Ali's texts sobbing into her pillow in her room -- sobbing for her amazing husband whom she so loved whose heart was shattered for his precious son, and sobbing for that son himself... the wonderful boy that love had given her as a son, just as truly as if he'd been conceived and carried in her body... the boy whose innocence had been taken from him when he was still too young to even understand why this was happening.

Ali let her know when she was on the way with Mark, and Gen made her way to the bathroom, washing her face and trying to at least calm some of the puffiness down. By the time Ali got Mark home, Gen had brewed a pot of coffee, stout and strong, and was waiting for Mark on the sofa, both of their cups of coffee made just as they liked them. She'd invited Ali to stay and have a cup with them, but knowing that they needed to chat, Ali declined and left Mark on the couch with Gen, who was slowly sipping her coffee and trying to decide what to say.

It was an awkwardly long few moments that Gen and Mark sat there in silence, Gen prolonging a sip of her coffee to get her thoughts together despite the fact that hours of prep time hadn't allowed her to do that yet. And when she finally spoke, it was shaky and she felt like she might start crying all over again. "Mark," she said softly, setting her coffee down on the coffee table in front of them so that she could turn and look at her husband. "Sweetheart, I don't know where we should start talking, but we need to talk about this. Not just about you drinking, but about everything that's happened with Justin."

Comments

[aussielawyer]

Mark had been to hell and back with Justin multiple times since the kid turned up on his doorstep. Hell, his very welcome of them was to spew all other Mark's feet. At that point, Gen had understandably freaked out and questioned everything. Mark never judged her for that, but it was those initial moments where he hadn't remotely had a choice to back away and analyse the situation. The kid was his son. Well, either his son or Sam's, because he looked so much like him. Sam had never been promiscuous or slept around, so it wasn't even a possibility. Mark had taken Justin in and been determined to care for him no matter what. The kid was his son, and he was sick and in a really bad mess. It hadn't taken long for him to realise that there was something much deeper at play than just a delinquent kid who abused booze and drugs. He was absolutely screaming out for help, and with the right medical attention, the mental illness diagnosis had come. Even then, it was only gradual and piecemeal that Justin began to revealed traumas of his past. Mark remembered questioning Nathan about the possibility that Justin was being so secretive. It was Nathan who said that it was unlikely Justin was being secretive, and much more likely he was blocking things out in his past. It was something young people often did, especially mentally ill kids. He told Mark that over time, more things might come to light and warned him to be prepared for it. Nothing could have prepared any of them for this. "We can't keep holding on to the anger because it's going to spill over onto him. Like Ali said, the only way he's going to know it's okay to not be okay is if he sees that we're not either. But on the same token, he can't see that we're continuously angry either because he'll react to that too. You have to let it go."

The anger for him was dissipating for that very reason, but he couldn't shed the grief or the nauseating sickness inside from what had been in that statement Justin had made. There had been an attempt from the cunt's legal defence to try to say Justin was lying and making up stories, like he always did for attention. That he had a lengthy history of attention-seeking. That had been the nail in the coffin for the presiding judge. She chose to throw the book at them and now Justin's mother had a very lengthy jail sentence to serve and she couldn't get to him at all. "I know that. I do. But I have a hell of a lot to work through and I'm not dealing with any of it. At all. But I've made an urgent appointment with my therapist, and I've set up a session for all three of us to see Justin's therapist together so he can have a chance to open up about what he said in the statement if he wants to. I fucked up. I know I did. But I needed to shut down. I couldn't handle the pain. It's the worse pain I've ever felt in my life. Even above and beyond when I was told Jim was dead."