CHAPTER 8: MUM'S SHOCK
1120 Words
LISA'S POV
For the first time in days, I woke up without feeling like I was drowning.
It took me a moment to recognize that strange, almost foreign sensation of not being afraid. I'd spent so long looking over my shoulder, so long bracing for the moment the past would finally catch up with us, that peace felt foreign, almost like wearing someone else's clothes.
But sitting here beside my mother's hospital bed, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest, I felt the hope I thought I'd buried a long time ago.
The doctor had said she was recovering well but these simple words had hit me like a wave I wasn't ready for. A few days ago, I genuinely thought I might lose her. The only person I had left. Now she was here, breathing, color slowly returning to her face.
I reached out and took her hand. "Mom," I whispered.
Her eyes opened slowly, blinking against the light. For a second she looked like she just woke up in a different world, the way people do when they've been pulled out of deep sleep. Then her gaze found me, and she smiled.
"Lisa," she called.
"Good morning, mum," I said softly.
She looked around the room, observing everything, and I could already see the questions forming behind her eyes.
"How long have I been here?" She asked.
"You've been here for a while," I said, which wasn't quite an answer. She noticed.
"What happened?" She asked.
I'd been dreading this. I didn't want to stress her, didn't want to pile anything heavy onto a body that was still finding its footing. But I also couldn't keep dancing around it.
"You collapsed," I said gently. "You were unconscious when they brought you in."
There was a bit of silence in the room, and then her first concern wasn't herself.
"Were you alone?" She asked.
She asked that question even when she played flat on her back in a hospital bed, her mind went straight to me. I'd grown up knowing she worried, but moments like this still managed to catch me off guard.
"No," I said. "I wasn't alone."
She looked at my face the way she always had, reading things I never meant to show. "Then who helped you?" She asked.
I took a breath without meaning to, I felt a small smile pull at the corner of my mouth.
" It was Charles," I muttered.
The name landed between us just as expected. My mother went very still, the kind of stillness that comes from someone choosing their reaction carefully. She held me firmly.
"Charles?" she repeated.
" Yes, I mean Charles Manson,"I said.
The silence that followed after I mentioned Charles felt dense. She stared at me like I'd said something in a language she needed a moment to translate.
"Mom?"I called her back to reality.
"You said Charles Manson?" She asked.
"Yes." I tried to keep my voice light. "I know it sounds unbelievable. But he helped us."
She didn't say anything. She looked toward the window instead and something in her expression made the warmth I'd been carrying since I woke up disappear.
"What is it?" I asked.
When she looked back at me, her voice was shaky. "Lisa… how did Charles Manson find you?"
I saw the fear in her eyes when she asked this question.
"What do you mean? He saw what happened, he knew I'd been arrested and he stepped in," I said.
That serious look she'd worn my whole childhood whenever she was about to tell me something I didn't want to hear. I saw it on her face, that moment.
"He paid attention to the case," I continued, leaning forward a little. "He made sure the charges were dropped and made sure you got proper care." My voice softened. "Mom, he saved us."
She looked down at our joined hands.
"I know you're grateful," she said finally, her tone was gentle. "And I'm grateful you're safe. But, Lisa, fear has a way of making us see kindness where there might be something else," she gasped.
I sat back immediately. "That's not what this is," I said, trying to convince her.
"You don't know that,"
"I do, I said.” I understood where her fears were coming from, considering who we perceived Charles to be.
"You didn't see him. You didn't see his face when he promised to help, or how seriously he took it, he didn't have to do any of it. He could have walked away. He could have left me at that station and never looked back. But he stayed," I said.
My mother was quiet for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was very soft. "I know you want to believe that," she muttered.
"I don't just want to believe it. I saw it," I said.
She looked at me with this expression I couldn't name. It wasn't doubt exactly, but something close to grief.
She sighed and turned away again. "You're just too trusting sometimes," she muttered.
The words stung, not because they were unkind, but because I recognized the truth buried inside them. Maybe I was, maybe after years of running, of sleeping lightly and trusting no one, I had swung so hard in the other direction that I was willing to believe in the first person who offered a hand.
But then I thought about Charles. The way he'd looked at me. The way he kept calm, when everything else was chaos.
Was it really that naive to want to believe someone had finally come through for us?
"Maybe," I admitted quietly. "But I still don't think he's pretending," I whispered.
My mother looked at me for a long moment. She wasn't saying anything at this point.
My phone buzzed on the bedside table. I glanced at the screen.
‘I'll pick you up tomorrow. We need to discuss the next step.’
Charles.
I stared at the message. ‘The next step.’ That was certainly our marriage agreement.
My stomach turned over. I wasn't sure of what I was getting into but I had to do it.
"Is it him?" my mother asked.
I looked up slowly. "Yes," I said.
I could feel her worry filling the space between us. I haven't even told her about the marriage and she is this worried. What happens when I do?
But I had already made my choice.
Charles Manson was the man we had spent years running from. And somehow, he had become the man who saved us.
I still didn't know whether that was the greatest stroke of luck in my life, or the worst mistake I'd ever make.
- Writer
