The Station Girl

Chapter 14

She was crying when he stepped out into the cold from the train station, the door cracked open behind him. Through her tears, she'd asked him if she had told him enough. Told him that she couldn't bear anymore. That the pain, barely a few months old, was still too fresh in her heart.

She had relived her past for him, and for what? So he could profit off her misery as she remained at this lonely train station in the middle of nowhere? He'd become her deepest confident, even more so than Sir had been, and he was going to abandon her to the memories?

The author turned on his feet, and stepped back into the train station. No longer did she sit at the small table, the same one that had always been in her shed she claimed, but now she sat curled on the floor, her back to the wall beneath the ticket window. Her sobs were loud; loud enough that she didn't hear him step in, or notice him stand there as he silently observed her.

A young girl in the mature body of a twenty-year-old. A young girl who tried desperately to live up to responsibilities that were dumped on her. A young girl who, just as she'd said, was damaged by her past and the time in the horrendous bad room. A room that he had learned of for himself.

The Beekley Orphanage. A well renowned and respected orphanage back when it was still in operation. For over twenty years, it had taken in and successfully adopted out children time after time. Their children were well known as being well-behaved and cheerful, if a bit reserved at times. Children that were kept clean and looked to be healthy despite their poor clothing. That was how they all appeared to the outside world. That the Beekley Orphanage was well ran was taken for granted. How else would their kids have turned out to be so polite and well-mannered all the time?

What they didn't know was the reality behind the results.

But he knew the reality. He had lived through it.

She had been lucky. They had never put her to the whip, or starved her of dinner. They had never taken away the bed she slept on at night. They had never forced her into doing work. So many things that he and other children had been forced to do behind closed doors. But had she really never been subjected to those sorts of things? There were years that she'd left unaccounted for.

Deliberately left untold? Simply forgotten about? So terrible they'd been erased from her memory entirely? Or had she truly been lucky enough to have never experienced those things?

He wasn't going to pry. Not any more than he already had. Not until the time came where she was ready to speak of it. If it ever did come.

The author walked over to her, and for a moment, stared down at her. How she survived the years until now, he still didn't understand even after she'd told him her life story. What he did know in that moment though was how strikingly familiar she seemed to him.

He sat down beside her, and held her in his arms. There was nothing he could say, nothing he could even think of to say. So, he said nothing as he sat there, stroking her back as she cried into his shoulder. As he sat there, he thought about how lucky he himself had been to have been adopted by an actual husband and wife instead of one of Beekley's fake couples.

It was a policeman and a wife who had adopted him. No matter how hard they tried, she just couldn't seem to get pregnant. But they wanted a kid, and decided to simply adopt after many, many failed attempts.

They bonded with him, they'd said when he had grown old enough to understand why they had chosen him. When they'd arrived, they were hoping to adopt a baby, but his demeanor alone was enough to convince them that he was the right one. They couldn't explain it any better than that because they simply didn't understand much better themselves other than that a bond had formed between the three of them.