chapter forty
{ extremely unedited }
[ trigger warning ; parental abuse ]
THE HOURS FOLLOWING WERE A BLUR. Rowan couldn't precisely recall what happened within each hour, nor what was said, but she did remember hanging up as soon as Detective Brooks had told her the new situation that seemed to pile up in her life. She remembered walking away from Abby without saying a word and ending back at her room in Bob's house. She remembered going to the station in the morning and being escorted to her childhood home to gather the rest of her things. She could faintly recall seeing Hugo in his office, hunched over files despite being suspended currently.
That was about the last thing she could recall before blacking out, waking up to realise she was paralysed in the bed in Bob's house. Well, not technically paralysed but her body felt frozen, limbs heavy as lead with her cheek pressed against the pillow, eyes stuck on the window. Rowan had tried to recall all the conversations she had since receiving that call once she came to her senses but she came up blank each time and soon gave up once it started to give her a headache.
Abandonment was not a stranger to Rowan. It was something she had been acquainted with her entire life. It seemed to be her birthright; to be abandoned. Some children received jewellery, some money, some authority, some as simple as a name, but not Rowan. She received the overwhelming feeling of being forgotten, ignored, discarded. She received the experience of pain, the knowledge of being unworthy, the fear of anything intense, the distortion of personality, the pattern of reckless behaviour. Rowan's birthright was everything a child should be sheltered from, everything an adult dreads to witness let alone experience.
Rowan's gift of being born, something that should be a celebration of life, was a funeral for her stability, a pothole left unattended in her heart and a graveyard where her mind should reside.
It wasn't as if Rowan wanted Hugo in her life. She didn't. She knew he would cause her death if he remained in it but that didn't mean she expected to be abandoned by him too. No one likes being abandoned. No one wanted to feel the lack of worth that came with it and Rowan especially did not want to feel that because of her own father.
Hugo was not a good person or father, there was no doubt of that. But he was still Rowan's father. The only fully biological family she had left. As much as she loved Cameron, he was still only her half-brother, again connected through Hugo. It was like Paul had said in one of the past sessions, a child is wired to love their parents. Hugo had already broken that bond with the start of the abuse but, even then, he still stayed. He didn't abandon Rowan when he had so many chances to do so. He stayed.
Until now.
Hugo joined the list of people who abandoned Rowan and somehow it hurt more that Hugo had done so than it did with Cameron. Rowan couldn't explain why, she wasn't sure herself and she was too tired, too drained, to try and figure out the logic behind it. If she did try she may get something along the lines of Rowan being the only connection Hugo had left to the woman he once loved and lost and yet he still gave it up completely, not a shred of regret coming from him.
Rowan didn't understand.
She understood why Grace left. Grace left to save her own life. She was drowning in that house, her soul being chipped away day by day, and she left so she didn't become a shell of the person she used to be. She had been trapped, forced into a role she didn't want until she built the courage to leave.
Rowan had simply been collateral damage in that situation.
And Grace had been trying to correct that, even if it were six years too late. Rowan had to hand it to her, she was trying. That was more than anyone else could do. Grace had healed from the damage Hugo had caused her, even if it had taken her over a year to do so, and was now trying to be a better person. She had a child she was going to cherish for the rest of her life and had the intention to love Rowan through the pain she was experiencing, doing all that she could to help Rowan past this stage of healing, knowing firsthand how lonely it could feel.
Not that Rowan felt like she was healing but that was not a problem for now.
Rowan hadn't been able to promise Talia that she could forgive Grace completely and the reasoning behind it was coming into play now. If Rowan thought back, all the way to the start of her problems, it starts with Grace leaving.
Sure, Hugo wasn't a good father before that. He was neglectful and both physically and emotionally unavailable despite living within the same house but that was all. Of course, Rowan isn't saying that is great either. Growing up in the same house as him but never been talked to, never receiving his love or care, knowing he could care less about her did a number on her.
How could it not?
She saw fathers with their kids on a daily basis as she grew up, she saw the joy they held when they looked at their children and the admiration kids had when they talked about their dads. At the time she didn't understand it. Was no one else scared of their dads? Was no one else going home from school praying their father wasn't in because they were scared of what mood he would be in, not knowing if it'd be a good day where he'd actually smile or a bad day where she would be invisible?
That thought was insane to her.
What did they mean that they love spending time with their dad?
Does their dad actually talk to them?
It was a foreign concept to Rowan and she realised how abnormal her household was through the stories her classmates shared about their parents. It dawned on her how wrong she was treated the first time she spent the day at her good friend Marcus' house, basking in love the second she stepped through that door. Even with his father being deaf, there was never a second he ignored his son.
Rowan was jealous.
How could she not be?
She was missing out on so much.
But she still had Grace. Grace who loved her.
Or so she thought.
Grace left and Rowan grew wiser. She was less jealous and more mournful towards the relationship she had with her father, one that only grew worse with Grace's absence. What had she done to be so unworthy of a father? That was the question that ran through her mind for months on end. Surely there should be a reason Hugo hates her so much, a reason as to why she was invisible in her eyes.
Had she done something wrong she couldn't remember?
That must be it.
She must've done something.
Rowan tried her best to right what she must've done wrong but it was to no avail. In Hugo's eyes, she still didn't exist. Whatever she must've done would have been unforgivable. But did it really mean she had to grow up with no father?
No, a father who was physically there but that was all.
Even then, most of the time he wasn't physically there.
Rowan had to raise Cameron by herself at this point and, like most children do, he loved the park. In the park, at the young age of eleven, she would see children and their parents playing together. She would see fathers kicking a ball around with their kids, lifting them up high in celebration.
Just by being there, Rowan had to live with the knowledge she wasn't worth the love they showed their children because she had done something in the past she couldn't take back.
Fast forward a year or two and Rowan was no longer mournful but understanding. Hugo didn't love her but not because of something she did in the past but because he was incapable of love. That seemed to be the only logical explanation. Hugo couldn't love anyone. It wasn't personal. He just wasn't capable of it as a person and that was okay. Maybe some people just can't love.
But, unfortunately, it wasn't that he couldn't love her but that he didn't want to. She may as well not exist. It's not like she did in his eyes.
At the age of thirteen, Rowan learnt the truth. It was the first time Hugo had talked about her mother, granted while drunk. He talked for hours about the woman he considered his high school sweetheart as if she were still alive and he was happily married to her. He talked about how they met, their first date, their one year anniversary, every anniversary until he proposed, the wedding, all of it. He talked about finding out she was pregnant, how he felt over the moon knowing they had created something special.
His happiness faded away when he remembered the birth and how the doctors chose to save the baby over the mother despite his wishes for his wife to survive.
As it turned out, Hugo was capable of love. He loved Rowan's mother. He simply chose not to love Rowan.
Somehow, that hurt more than him physically abusing her.
Not to say the punches didn't.
It was Grace's absence that led to Hugo finding a new outlet for his anger, for his pain if Rowan was trying to sympathise with him, and that happened to be in her. Despite only being a child, Hugo found his punching bag.
But Rowan was okay with it.
She was.
Because of Cameron.
She still had Cameron.
She still had her brother.
Until he turned her away too, essentially abandoning her for a woman he hardly knew.
Rowan had tried her best to make up for the love Cameron lacked from his parents. She thought she was doing a good job. She really did. She sacrificed her entire life for him, so that he didn't feel alone, so that he knew he wasn't alone and there was someone who loved him, who was willing to die for him. She gave everything up to raise him, to be a parent when she was only supposed to be a sibling. She brushed off all the experiences she missed that a young teen should have in order for Cameron to live his life to the fullest. She ignored the comments that were made her way by the mothers outside the elementary school despite how much it stung. She blocked out the obnoxious teens in her classes who had a little too much to say about her social life, or the lack thereof.
Rowan pushed it all to the back of her mind because all that mattered to her was Cameron.
He was her life.
For a long time, Rowan felt like the only reason she existed was to protect him.
But that was all thrown away when he chose a stranger over her.
Rowan always believed she wasn't built to be loved. Everything in her life has led to that explanation. Some people in the world aren't meant to be loved and she happened to be one of them. There was no other explanation for it. There had to be something fundamentally wrong with Rowan that everyone but herself could see to explain why no one can stay. There had to be a reason why everyone leaves her.
There had to be.
There had to be because Hugo was capable of love, Grace was capable of love, even Cameron was, but the first two chose not to love Rowan and all three left her. What other explanation could there be other than Rowan was not built to be loved? She can give out love until it runs her dry but never would she be one to receive it.
At least, not unconditional love.
Even the whole situation with Abby proves it.
Abby did not love Rowan unconditionally. Rowan doubted Abby even loved her. It didn't seem that way. It hadn't done so in the past and it doesn't now. Abby was a runner, Rowan knew that. She runs when things are too scary for her but that doesn't excuse everything she put Rowan through. The days of nothing, the avoidance, all that she has said and, the worst of all, running to other people.
Rowan had excused it many, many times because Abby was all she had outside of her family for a long time. Abby weaselled her way into Rowan's life, in a way, and, ultimately, into her heart. Rowan excused everything Abby had said―not counting the times she also ignored Abby in return as, majority of the time, it was because she thought she was protecting Abby that way―and brushed off the pain Abby had caused but it still existed.
Now was no different.
Abby said she didn't have her phone because she was grounded but, the moment Rowan left last night, her own phone had been invaded by messages of concern from Abby. If her phone was taken there wasn't a way she could have messaged Rowan that quickly.
It was another lie.
Rowan wasn't sure she wanted to know the truth of Abby's disappearance.
She did know, however, that she couldn't keep accepting it.
Rowan had been put down all her life, always feeling worthless since she was ten years old, no self-love in her body and with everything that happens with Abby, every single time she gets ignored, it only becomes worse.
Rowan didn't deserve much but she knew she deserved better than that.
Or did she?
Abby supposedly likes Rowan and Rowan loves Abby. When will there be someone else who looks past the damage that clouds Rowan? She couldn't think of anyone who would bother dealing with that. She wasn't sure Abby was either, the younger girl looking over it until she had to deal with it.
At least, that is what Rowan believed currently.
Still, no one could ever possibly like Rowan. Why would they? It made no sense that Abby apparently did now too. Did she not see that Rowan was a black hole for love? It would only blow up in Abby's face and she'll leave too.
Rowan wasn't someone who could be loved, who should be loved, and Abby was going to see that soon and leave her like everyone else she loves has done so. There was nothing in Rowan that was worthy of love. There was no part of her that deserved her and she was foolish for thinking that someone, especially someone like Abby who deserves so much better than Rowan and all the love the world can give, could ever love her.
If she had learnt anything from her past, it was that love was not in the cards for her.
It would be best if Abby figures that out soon and leave before Rowan ends up ruining her too since that seems to be her speciality, hurting people and creating the worst, or close to it, version of them.
Rowan was a fool for ever thinking otherwise.
"Hey." Marcus' voice cut through the silence that had accompanied the room for the past few hours, the bed drooping as he lied down next to her. It startled her out of her thoughts, not having heard him come into her room.
Not her room.
The room in Bob's house that she happened to be occupying.
Rowan didn't have a room because she didn't have a home.
Not anymore.
Not like it felt like she ever did. The house she resided it previously was simply just that, a house. It had never been a home.
Rowan couldn't see Marcus, eyes still stuck on the wall but she could feel him behind her, most likely on his back staring up at the ceiling. "Abby showed up at my house. She's worried. You wanna talk about it?"
Rowan shook her head as best as she could with her face squished against the pillow, the only movement coming from her since she got into the bed. She should probably move. Her stiff bones were begging her to do so, her stomach was yearning for food but Rowan couldn't. Not that she wanted to either but, even if she did, she was stuck in place.
Nothing could hurt her if she stayed in this room on this bed.
"Do you want to talk at all?"
Again, Rowan shook her head.
Marcus was silent after that. Rowan heard rummaging behind her but wrote it off as him trying to get comfortable on the bed but that belief faded away when, a few minutes later, noise bled out from her laptop.
With a groan stifled in her throat, Rowan reluctantly turned herself over so she was on her back, the very little energy she had left in her fading away with the simple action. Marcus had Rowan's laptop in her lap, legs stretched out on the bed as he sat propped up against the headboard.
The show onscreen was Brooklyn Nine-Nine, starting from the first episode. It was Rowan's favourite show. She was surprised Marcus remembered that. It's been so long since she had talked to him let alone mention it before this year, how could he remember something as little as this?
Rowan didn't dwell on it for much longer, pushing herself up slightly so her head was resting on Marcus' shoulder in order to see the screen better, no complaints coming from him, all her attention being sucked in by the show until she fell asleep in that position.