Seahill, Northern Ireland; 1997
Tabitha was the new girl in town, just around to help her sick grandmother with her bookshop. She was quiet, trying to keep out of the way of others, particularly the attention of men. She never meant to get his atten...
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17, end of June
It was a rainy day, gloom spreading onto all the passengers as they finally got off the plane. There was turbulence amid the flight. Many were left uneasy and found relief when finally reaching the ground. Tabitha didn't have the butterflies like before when stepping into the airport.
This time, Tabitha came with large suitcases, there were two reasons for that. The first important reason was that her grandmother had taken a turn for the worse. Her parents decided that Tabitha would permanently live with her grandmother to help her out, they knew that Father Foley couldn't always help Sonya out.
The young girl shook her head when her thoughts came across that priest.
It was alright to say she still wasn't over what had happened that night a year before. She wished that her parents wouldn't bring up his name as if he was some angel sent for her grandmother because he wasn't. Stephen Foley was not a nice man, no matter the front he would put for others.
Unlike the times before, Sonya was not able to come to greet Tabitha when entering the airport. The trip to the cottage was a bit lonely, not being able to feel the ease of poking her head out of the window and allow the breeze to dance through her hair. She called a taxi that would be able to take her and her belongings, speaking with the driver for a casual conversation.
Tabitha's parents said that it was time for her to be an adult now.
She was only turning seventeen.
She still had one year of high school left.
She only had her grandmother at this point.
These thoughts kept her up at night for months on end. It terrified Tabitha realizing how fast she was forced to grow up due to her circumstances.
Things had taken a turn for the worse for her parents. They were fighting the clock to make sure they would be able to get their green cards so they could see her grandmother before anything worse happens. With the amount of money they spent on lawyers and different applications, her parents thought it was best for Tabitha to stay with her grandmother permanently. They hoped that at least she wouldn't go through that stress with them.
If they only knew her stress.
She never really told her parents what had happened that night. Tabitha was afraid to know what would happen. They knew she was raped, but not by who. They were angry, not with her though. Despite the world thinking that women did have some fault in sexual assault, her parents knew it wasn't true.
Tabitha's mother grew up in a hard life, with a mother with barely an education of a ten-year-old and an abusive father who drank all the money away. With her three siblings, Tabitha's mother saw how powerless women be without standing up for themselves, without the care and help of others. That's why she married Tabitha's father and left for America so that her children wouldn't have to live a horrible life, but she didn't even know what her daughter had gone through.
