“You’ve got me there,” I admitted slowly. I needed to keep in mind that he was more observant than I had initially given him credit for. Or maybe he wasn’t observant most of the time, but he picked up on things with an unnerving speed. “But it wasn’t working for me anymore. It felt like I was...all over the place, which I guess I was, but itfeltdifferent.”
I lapsed into silence. After all, how do you explain to someone what it was like to wake up and realize that you had done...nothing. Scores of jobs, dozens of friends, lovers, enemies, rivals. Different apartments, houses, couches I had slept on, all over the country.
And what had it amounted to? Nothing. I hadn’t developed any skills, and I certainly hadn’t built up a work history.
So there was no family, no friends to speak of, no career, no college degree, no work history that could help me. I was living my life the same way I had been for over ten years. I had looked around and realized that, while I had done so much and gone through so much, I had nothing to show for it.
“I woke up one day, and I just...hadn’t done anything. I had stories and life experience, but I didn’thaveanything. No friends, no family, no home, God, the closest I had to a long-term relationship since my parents died was a plant.”
“You still have it?”
“Yeah, Myrna has hung in there like a champ, especially after I got some special lighting for her, but I always make sure to give her sunlight whenever I get the chance.”
“You...named the plant?”
I blinked. “Well, yeah. I’ve had a longer relationship with her than with anyone. I mean, other than my parents.”
“You do seem to have processed the loss of your parents.”
“Well, I was eight when they died. I’ve had time.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, how did they die?”
“Drunk driver,” I said, getting up to make another cup of coffee. “They were out, and I was home with a babysitter. I got woken up by the cops telling the babysitter what had happened because there was no other family to inform. Imagine being a fourteen-year-old watching a kid, only to have to deal with the fact that the kid was now an orphan.”
“I...see,” he said in a tone that made me turn and stare.
“What?” I asked as the machine gurgled.
He scoffed. “You’re discussing one of the worst nights of your life, and the first thing you bring up is how traumatized the babysitter must have been?”
“I kept in contact with her for years. I wrote letters and sometimes talked to her on the phone. She always wanted me tocall her when I reached a new home and to tell her if I was being treated right. I always told her I was okay.”
Rowan stared shrewdly as I started a second cup. “Even when you were not okay?”
“Especiallythen,” I said with a laugh. “She was always so worried about me; it didn’t feel right to make it worse.”
“Werethere reasons for her to be concerned?” Rowan asked, and for once, I appreciated his calm, almost detached way of asking that potentially opened up a flood’s worth of trouble with the answer.
“You asking about abuse?” I wondered as I brought him the coffee and sat in the chair across from him: it didn’t feel like a lying-in-bed sort of conversation now.
“Thank you, and yes.”
“There were some who got...physical, yeah.”
“What kind of physical?”
I stared at him and took a deep breath. It wasn’t something I talked about often, and most of the time, people didn’t ask questions that deep. Despite how much I had insisted it was good for people to know so they could be part of the force for change, people didn’t want to know. That spared me from having to talk about the darker, uncomfortable parts of my childhood, and for the rest? Most people respected when I said I didn’t want to talk about it.
But if I was going to ask him to open up, then I needed to be willing to do the same. “Nothing sexual, well?—”
His lips thinned. “Oh.”
I blinked and shook my head. “Nothing sexual withme. But there was a foster family I was with for a couple of weeks, who got thrown in prison because they were abusing the girls. The boys were just creatures to throw food and water at occasionally. But they doted on the girls. At the time, I couldn’t understandwhy the two girls there were uncomfortable with being treated so well. Little did I know.”
“You were a child, you shouldn’t have to guess something so heinous.”
“True,” I said with a shrug. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t feel bad about being ignorant after I put the pieces together. And some people weren’t afraid to smack the back of your head, call you things no one should be called, let alone kids, people who used starvation and...unconventional punishments that were basically torture.”
