C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N

☆☆☆  

ANNA CARSON 

☆☆☆  

In the three days I'd since arrived at the Hearth Household to look after Paiten, I'd come to a devastating realisation. Paiten had changed.

Somewhere along these days, weeks and months since we'd last interacted, she'd shed bits of her personality until she'd gotten to this point.

Gone was the shroud of innocence that had covered her when I'd first met her, the wonder and tinge of fear she'd looked at the world with had shrivelled up and in its place, was a pool of bleakness.

I'd have been happy if her growth didn't seem to be the direct result of pain. Her face was so weary, her body laden with burdens I didn't know how to name and her eyes, those sweet brown eyes were filled with the kind of wisdom one had to endure much pain to gain.

Paiten didn't acknowledge me and neither did she truly acknowledge her surroundings. She lived her life as if she was a machine worked by a remote control and manual and it hurt to watch.

So often, I wanted to pull her into my arms, kiss the spot where the flesh of her forehead and her hairline met and bring her out of her zombie-like reverie. But I knew that I couldn't, shouldn't.

She was so much worse than when her grandmother had said those awful, racist things about her, or when that boy had touched her in a way that had made her uncomfortable and even when she'd felt threatened by me when her father and I had begun dating.

With all of those other times, Paiten had reacted. She'd cried and shown contempt by rolling her eyes and using snark remarks but now she did  nothing

In a way, I knew I was partially at fault for how she'd turned out. I still blushed with self-contempt when I thought about what I'd done and the extent of emotional turmoil I'd put her through.

I'd gotten her to open up to me and broke her walls down and she'd trusted me with everything, even her body in the most intimate of settings. I'd made love to her and made her care for me, only to turn on her and use her feelings against her. I'd hurt her. I abandoned her. I treated her like a stranger.

These past three months had done nothing but fill me with shame, regret and pain, so much pain. She would never know how much it had hurt to let her go.

I thought that I'd been doing the right thing even though I'd broken my own heart along with hers in the process. It would be my cross to bear and I'd carry everything that had happened as my own burden and pray Paiten could move on and find someone her own age who would give her what I couldn't.

I wasn't prepared for what I saw on the first night I'd arrived. The whole house had been dark and I assumed Paiten was asleep.

I'd gone straight to Robert's room and had settled into bed with a book when I'd heard her miserable retches and sobs coming from the bathroom. I found Paiten hunched over the toilet bowl, crying in a way I'd never heard before.

I wished I could take away any unpleasant feelings that were plaguing her but I was only human. All I could do was help her to bed and do whatever I could to ease the effects of her inevitable hangover.

The intoxicated psyche is always far more transparent, it allows expressions that our sober selves would never allow.

As I helped Paiten to bed she'd said some things to me that had shown me the true extent of her pain and hopelessness.

By the next morning, Paiten's walls were back to their original place, erected ten feet tall over her heart. A foolish part of me hoped that she would want to open up to me about why she'd drunken herself to misery last night without prompt like she used to.

But she no longer trusted me and it was no one's fault but my own. We operated in silence save for the good-morning-good-evening greetings every morning and night.

On the fourth night, I fell asleep to Paiten's loud music blasting from the speakers in her room. The music played all night and into the early hours of the morning and stopped only when Paiten crawled into the kitchen for breakfast with bags under her eyes.

She looked horrifically exhausted even as she half-heartedly shovelled cereal into her mouth while she had her eyes trained on her Maths books. Eventually, the soggy cereal was forgotten and she spent more than ten minutes working out a sum and sighing in frustration every few seconds.

I wanted to ask her if she needed any help but I wasn't sure she'd even respond to anything I said to her.

I dropped her off at school and when I returned from work a few hours later she was upstairs in her room. Five days had passed and I could no longer live with the way things were. I had to talk to her.

So with a tentative knock on her door, I entered her bedroom and found her sitting on her bed, on her phone. She wore her pyjamas – long, pastel purple pants and a matching fleece top. Her hair was loose and framed her face in tight curls.

"Hi," I said.

She made no verbal reply and just watched me with her disturbingly empty eyes.

"Is this a good time?" I asked.

I suddenly felt so uncomfortable under her gaze, not sure of what to do with myself. It was almost comical how things had changed, how it had been her that used to flounder around me and now it was I who was almost afraid of her presence.

Paiten shrugged.

I took a deep breath, "Paiten, are you alright?"

I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, a nervous habit I hadn't employed in years.

Paiten's eyes narrowed to slits.

"Why the fuck do you care?"

I was sure I cringed.

There was so much venom and ice in her voice and I deserved it, I know I did but it was so painful to hear.

"I'm worried about you," I replied.

"Since when? Was it before or after you decided I was nothing but the dirt underneath your shoes?"

"Paiten-"

"No, don't say my name like that!" she suddenly burst, standing up so she could come and stand in front of me.

"Like what?" I asked.

"Like you know me! Like you give a fuck about me because you don't, you never did! You have so much nerve, coming into my room and thinking you have the right to ask me such questions."

Paiten was so filled with rage that it shook her entire body right into her fingertips. I'd be lying if I said I was not terrified.

"Do you remember what happened on Friday?" I asked softly.

"Yes, I got drunk."

"I'm worried."

"Oh my god," Paiten rolled her eyes and backed away from me, "I had a bit too much to drink. There's nothing odd about that, teenagers my age in every corner of the world are doing it."

I was almost annoyed with the condescending way she spoke to me but I knew that it was all an act.

"Do you remember that I was there?" I asked. I dared to step a bit closer to her.

"In the morning. Yes."

"No, I was there that night too. I helped you to bed."

"Well, good to know," she said with a nonchalant shrug.

"I came into the bathroom and you were crying and I knew that you'd gotten sick... anyway, I helped you stand up and I walked with you to bed. You were still crying even when I turned down the sheets for you and helped you take off your shoes. I tried to soothe you but you wouldn't stop sobbing, do you remember any of that?"

"Bits and pieces, yes," she replied, although the edge in her voice had lessened. She still looked at me with hard distrust. I didn't blame her.

"Do you remember what you said to me?" I pressed on and Paiten only looked at me and waited for my reply. Curiosity shone in her eyes but she still tried to keep up her detached front.

"You asked me not to leave you because you felt so alone. So I laid your head on my lap and played with your hair while you whimpered and murmured about your mother, about Amanda and even me. You told me your heart wouldn't stop hurting and shortly thereafter you finally fell asleep. You sounded so sad, Paiten and I knew that you were intoxicated but you know how much more honest we are when we're drunk."

Paiten looked shocked, her anger finally melted away and in its place, all the sadness that had stored itself in her body came into plain sight and all I wanted to do was hug her. But she was shaking her head vehemently and pointing at her door.

"Get out of my room Anna," she said.

"Wait, Paiten -"

"I said get out!"

"I know I've hurt you tremendously -"

"You don't know a single thing I'm feeling, you know nothing at all. You're such a selfish conceited bitch!"

A part of me had known that all of this was coming and I was the one who'd pushed her to the point. I couldn't get offended. She was staring daggers at me now, the rage that had disappeared was back in full force.

"I know I deserve this-"

"I hope that you're miserable and lonely then you'll get to feel a fraction of what you've put me through. God, I hope your tits rot off and you're reminded every day of how much of an awful person you are!"

I took a deep breath. While she stood a few feet from me, hyperventilating. There was this wild look in her eyes, this insatiable need to hurt me, to hurt those that had let her down and I'd let her do it. She needed to.

"You're not done," I said.

"The fuck do you know about whether I'm done or not?"

"Let it out Paiten. Say it," I said.

"Fine, you want me to say it? You want me to fucking say it? I hate you! I hate Amanda! I hate my father and I hate my mother most! I hate you all, I fucking hate you!"

And then she was trembling with violent angry sobs that welled from the cracks of her broken heart. At first, she resisted when I wrapped my arms around her, flailing her arms as if she was aiming to hit me. And then the fight left her and she sagged against me like a dead flower and cried until she could cry no more and used the last bit of her strength to crawl into bed.

"It's going to take me a long time to trust you, and I might never open up to you the way I did before because Anna, I won't lie, you crushed my spirit. And now every time I look at you, all I see is pain," Paiten said to me the next night. It was Thursday evening and we had one night left before Robert would return.

"I can work with that," I said, "I just want your forgiveness and your willingness to try, even if you decide in the long run that forgiving me is just too hard or too painful for you, I'll understand."

We were in the kitchen with an island counter and thousands of miles in emotional distance separating us.

"Okay," she said.

"I just want us to go back to how we were before things got complicated."

"I guess I'd like that too," Paiten said.

The girl still looked exhausted all the way to the depths of her soul but I had hope for us and for her. All was not lost.

×

Things between Robert and I had changed a long time ago and I could no longer deny that we no longer fit together like we once had. The flame that had held us together had died out and it had happened so slowly, with no significant moment that led to it.

I hadn't told anyone that Robert and I had barely had sex since his first three week trip to Zanzibar, that he'd been aloof and distant even during our holiday to Durban, that his eyes no longer lit up when they saw me and that I felt nothing when he kissed me.

Something deep inside my bones told me that this particular trip to Durban would change a lot of things for us and I'd prepared myself for that inevitable talk.

I couldn't find it within me to feel heartbroken over it and my most predominant emotion was the anxiety over what would be done with Paiten and I's frail relationship.

I had no real bond to her outside of her father and I wasn't sure that she'd let me see her even after Robert and I had broken up.

Robert returned on that late afternoon with a light brown tan and joy shining in his eyes. He and I went out for dinner that night in Brooklyn and it was over a light, delicious meal that he broke the news to me.

We broke up on such peaceful terms and I was glad that we were both mature enough to let sleeping dogs lie, there was no resentment on either side.

He had more pressing news that he had to deliver to his daughter though and I was so anxious for how she'd take it.