She swallowed deeply. “When he started screaming at me, I ran. I ran up the staircase, grabbed a bag I kept hidden under my bed. I literally had a go-bag for all the times I thought about running away. An eight year old with a go-bag.”
Tears streamed down her face. My heart pounded like a drum in my chest.
“As he pounded on my bedroom door, I jumped out the window and ran into the woods. He would have killed me that night. I know it.”
The room fell silent.
I held her hand while she took a deep breath, then continued. “After that, after I lived in the woods for three days, alone, until a woman on horseback found me. I was dehydrated, sick, with infections all over my skin fromhiking through the terrain.” Her eyes met mine. Her chin lifted. “That woman was June Massey.”
And the pieces of the puzzle began to slowly click together.
“Let me guess. She lives in a ranch house on the other side of the mountain.”
“Yes.” A smile touched Rose’s lips. “That’s why I bought this cabin. To be close to her.”
So the midnight mystery visit had been to the woman who had saved her life.
“June not only adopted me, but took it upon herself to homeschool me when I was too scared to go back to school. Believe it or not, I was so embarrassed by my life. By everything that had happened. I remember begging her to keep it a secret from the public. Not many people around here even know she adopted me. I stayed within those four walls for seven years, healing. June saved my life. She’s the reason I’m everything that I am.”
“I had no idea.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Like I said, not many do. I didn’t go to public school, and let me tell you, that was a blessing for me. I was pretty screwed up for a while, and therapy got me through it.”
“Why haven’t you stayed with June the last few days? Through everything that’s happened?”
“I visited her one night, telling her I was having flashbacks and couldn’t sleep. But I didn’t tell her the real reason, because I didn’t want her to worry about me. The woman has been through enough because of me. I didn’t want to burden her, or for her to feel obligated to take care of meagain.Surely, you of all people, can understand that.”
I nodded. “You got me there. The guilt of being a burden. Yeah, I get that.”
She sighed. “Anyway, I was homeschooled until I left for college at seventeen.” She grinned. “I had a full semester of advanced classes under my belt at that point.”
“I don’t doubt that. Is all this why you studied psychology?”
She nodded. “I started studying psychology around age ten, when I realized how beneficial it was. I became obsessed. For the first time in my life, I felt like I understood what was going on in my brain. Why I was the way I was. It was an epiphany of sorts.”
I’d had the same epiphany recently, thanks to her. Little did I know the why’s of it, or the heavy meaning behind why she explained my injury to me in the way she did. It was because that was howsheadapted through her pain; and now, me, too.
She continued, “I remember reading an article about how severe trauma to young children can literally change their brain. Their physiology. It’s called Adverse Childhood Experiences. Because children have trouble verbalizing their emotions, bad experiences play on loop in their heads over and over. Think about that; the same horror show replaying in your head over and over. That kind of stress releases harmful chemicals into the brain and can result in a lack of growth in the part of their brain that controls impulses and determines good from bad.”
“The Prefrontal Cortex.”
Her eyes lit up. “Bingo. Sounds familiar, huh?”
“Thanks to you, yes.”
Yes, we were much more similar creatures than I’d realized, and that was the first moment that my physical attraction to Rose was second only to my respect for her. She came out of her circumstance.
I could come out of mine.
She squeezed my hand. “You’ve told me that you feel like you don’t know who you are. I hope you know now that I truly understand that feeling. Because I don’t either, Phoenix.” Her eyes filled with tears again. “I have no clue who I am. Where I came from. When I fill out medical forms, I know nothing of my past. Only that my grandparents were Italian. That’s it.”
Still kneeling at her knees, I stroked her palm with my thumb while, shockingly, fighting my own tears. I understood this woman. So much.
I blinked hard, shocked to feel the sting of tears building behind my eyes. That wasn’t something I did. I didn’t cry. I didn’t evenfeelhalf the time, at least not like this. But here I was, cracked wide open in front of this woman who somehow—without even trying—made me feel seen.
Understood.
Maybe even whole.
