Mommy ✓

eighteen

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.