Another adopted by Hamilton story

Forty-six

Pippa's POV
"You've never seen that movie?" Niamh shakes her head and takes a sip of her water. She places it on the night stand.

"Well it isn't on Netflix but we will see it, okay?" She nods and lays back down. I take her arm and study it to see the bruises, tiny with, and signs of self harm, the thing that she at least doesn't have on her arm. I draw on her arm with my finger.

"You've been quieter then usual." She doesn't respond to that either. She watches my thumb. I can't tell if I am a mom or a friend to her. Almost both, almost neither. Whatever it is, I think she is okay with talking to me. "Lin told me that you said you were raped." She nods, sadly. I don't know how much of that she understands either. She is now eleven. At that age kids might understand it in health class but they aren't thrown into it and forced as she was. "And you didn't fight but did the opposite because they treated you better then." She pulls her arm back towards her.

"Yes. I thought it was stupid at first and I would let myself die but It wasn't so easy."

"You decided you want to live?" She shakes her head.

"I didn't want to die never having gone outside or at least trying to help myself after I failed so horribly at first. So I just listened to Liam and his dad."

"Often." She nods.

"Do we have to talk about this?"

"I just wish I could get in your brain."

"You don't want that. It's a sad place."

"One more question. You're gonna hate it. Did you count how many times this happened?"

"I stopped counting after twenty." Oh. My. God. "But no STD's." She try's to laugh my attention away but it doesn't work. We stare at each other for a second. "I didn't want to make you sad."

"Eleven times before this?"

"By them."

"Anyone else?"

"A teacher three times."

"What teacher!"

"She was a teacher of a grade above me and got arrested because it wasn't just me."

"You are the strongest girl I have met in my entire life, Niamh." I know how much my voice shakes. "I've never met anyone like you. Never forget how amazing you are."

"This is going to get harder as I get older, right?"

"Maybe, but people get through it. It's happened, but you are going to fly after it. Higher then the people that didn't. So never give up. That suicide letter was too real."

"I wrote that without any hope."

"But I don't know that you won't lose sight of hope again. But you will always have it."

"I'm a mess, aren't I?"

"You're rare. Exceptional. And you'll do amazing things."

"Please don't say that."

"Why not?"

"Because I won't."

"Niamh-"

"I'm okay with it. All I want to just feel better."

"You will but don't just settle. You have so much talent."

"Thank you, Phillipa. But I can tell she doesn't believe me. We are both up later then usual today. She does fall asleep before me, though. She looks at peace in her sleep, but a sad kind of peace. She has everything but fortune on her side, which makes everything else useless. Maybe she wasn't meant to do great things. But her voice says otherwise. Maybe it says the amazing things she will do will be overcoming this and rising above. And our job is to stop her from giving up or settling.