“Then it didn’t.”His eyes flickered.
“And in the system you ended up in… you were something else. An unidentified child. No clear background, I suppose, no confirmed connection… Just placed where there was space.”He let that sit for a little while before he continued.
“There was no link between those two things,”he said finally.
“Not automatically. Not unless someone made it happen.”
Neither of us said anything after that, but it didn’t feel the same anymore. Something had settled deep inside me, heavy enough that I couldn’t ignore it. I looked at him, really looked this time. Trying to take in everything he’d just said and fit it somewhere that made sense, but I couldn’t. If I could make it make sense, then it wasn’t as simple as I needed it to be.
I leaned back my head, let it rest against the back of the sofa for a second before I realized I’d done it. My eyes drifted away from him, just enough that I wasn’t locked onto him anymore. I tried to put it all together. Police, social services, two different places, two different versions of me.
One missing and one never found.
It should’ve felt like an explanation, but instead it felt like something slipping through fingers that were never really holding it properly to begin with.
Little Ghost… this is where it gets ugly. Not in the way you might be used to by now. No blood, no clear right or wrong, just this. I always thought it was simple. That he didn’t care, that he left, that no one came looking because there was nothing worth finding. It made things easier in my head and I had built something around that. I had let it shape me into something that didn’t need anything back. But now, now I was sitting there, looking at him, listening to him explain it in a way that didn’t sound like an excuse, didn’t sound like he was trying to get out of anything.
That realization was one that I didn’t want to have. Because if he was telling the truth, then none of it was simple. I had no idea what to do with that. It would’ve been easier if he was a bastard. If he’d just shrugged, or lied badly, or given me something I could tear apart without thinking twice about it. But he didn’t,and everything felt wrong all of a sudden. Like I’ve been holding onto something my entire life, and now someone’s telling me I picked up the wrong piece from the beginning.
I looked back at him, really looked. And I could feel it, that part of me that was already starting to believe him. Even though I didn’t want to– especially because I didn’t want to. Because believing him meant that it wasn’t abandonment. And that… that’s worse.
I ran my tongue over my teeth slowly, grounding myself in something small, something physical, because everything else felt like it was slipping out of my reach. My fingers twitched against my knee again, I didn’t move them, didn’t trust what they might do if I did. I just sat there, trying to hold two things at once and fucking failing. Because they didn’t fit together.
They still don’t.
And I could feel it, how badly I wanted them to, how badly I needed one of them to win. Because this fucking game of being in between was unbearable. His hands came together again, then apart, then rested on his knees like he needed them somewhere neutral.
“Rowan…”he started again, taking his time with the words, like he knew exactly how easily they could land wrong. I knew what was coming before he even said it.
“Do you remember anything from back then?”he asked. There was a pause, then he added, almost apologetic,“When you were alone with your mother?”
I felt something in me react to that.
“No, of course you don’t,”he said quickly after, like he regretted asking the second it left his mouth.
“You said you don’t remember us, I just…”he exhaled deeply, shaking his head.
“I thought maybe there was something. Even a little.”
I looked up at him then, and I tried. I actually tried. I let my mind go there, just for a second. Pushed a little, like maybe there was something buried under everything else if I just reached far enough. Nothing came, and the more I tried, the worse it felt. Like forcing a door that wasn’t there. Like I was pressing against something that didn’t exist anymore.
My head dropped again, I shook it, once. That was enough of an answer. Silence settled again, but not the same kind as before. This one felt shared. Just two people sitting with something they didn’t know how to say. My eyes stayed on the floor and so did his. I could see it from the corner of my vision. The way his posture shifted slightly forward, like he was thinking, going through something in his head and not finding the right place to land. I don’t even know how long we sat like that. Long enough that it stopped feeling like a pause and started feeling like something permanent.
“But was it… good?”I looked up.
“Was the orphanage good?”he clarified, and there was something in his face that didn’t sit right with me, because he looked hopeful. That’s the only word I can find for it– careful hope. Like he already knew the answer might hurt and was trying to brace for it, but still wanted it to be something else.
“Were they good to you?”he added.
That look… it shouldn’t have done anything, but it did. Because I knew the answer and I knew exactly what it would do to him if I said it out loud.
You’d tell the truth, wouldn’t you, little Ghost?
You look like you would. You sit there, listening to all of this, taking it in, and I can already see it. You’d say it exactly how it is, no hesitation. But I didn’t.
I looked at him a second longer and took it in. That expression. That fragile thing sitting behind his eyes that didn’t belong to someone like me, not with everything else I’d seen. And I didn’twant to be the one to break it, I don’t even know why. That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.
“I didn’t stay there long,”I said instead. My voice came out steadier than I expected.“I was placed with a foster family after some time.”
