Chapter 34 Phoenix
PHOENIX
Her fingers trembled as she reached for the glass of wine.
She was trying to keep it together, but I saw right through her. I could see the fear, the fatigue, the weight of something she hadn’t said yet. My gut twisted. I hated it—that look on her face. The vulnerability she didn’t show anyone else. But she was showing it to me.
A minute stretched between us, the crackle of the fire filling the silence.
“It’s time, Rose,” I said, my voice low.
“It’s time for you to take this seriously.
Someone has formed a sick obsession with you, and we need to consider all angles.
Look at everyone. I need you to look into your past. I know it’s uncomfortable, but we need to talk about it.
We need to figure out who is after you.”
Her gaze drifted toward the living room, her lips parting like she wanted to say something but thought better of it. She was retreating, emotionally bracing. I recognized it because I did the same thing when I didn’t want to face my own demons.
After a moment, she quietly said, “Go stoke the fire. I’ll be right there.”
I nodded and stood, giving her space, but my chest ached as I turned away. I didn’t want space. I wanted to wrap her in my arms and swear nothing would ever touch her again.
Five minutes later, she came back with two mugs of coffee and a single slice of tiramisu. She placed them on the coffee table like it was any other night.
“You keep this up and I might never leave,” I said, trying to lighten the moment.
“Sorry that there’s only one piece. Thought we could share.” Her voice was softer now. “I’ve kind of indulged over the last forty-eight hours.”
“Stress eater?”
She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Someone I know might refer to that as emotional eating.”
“Hey, I’m the only one with the license to psychoanalyze in this room.” She winked and handed me a cup. “Decaf.”
“Because it’s healthier.”
“Of course.”
I wanted to tell her I hadn’t had a drop of alcohol that evening. I wanted her to be proud of me, to know that her efforts were making a difference. That her blind faith in me wasn’t for nothing. I wanted to tell her that she was good at her job. But, true to form, I fumbled with the praise.
I sipped—black and strong. Exactly the way I drank it.
“Try it.” She nodded to the dessert.
She was deflecting and that was okay with me. We’d get to it.
She watched me take a bite. As suspected, it was heaven. The woman could cook. And it was then that I realized Rose enjoyed pleasing people through their stomachs. As if I wasn’t attracted to her enough.
A satisfied twinkle in her eye had her sipping her coffee and leaning back in the armchair.
I took another bite, then set it on the coffee table between us.
“Now. Tell me.”
Her hand squeezed around her mug.
I leaned forward, knees on elbows. “Tell me about what happened to you while you were in foster care.”
The fire hissed next to us, as if sensing the mood unfolding in the room.
“Please tell me.” I repeated.
“Do you know that there are almost a half million children in foster care in the United States?” She began.
My brows popped. I didn’t, and that number was staggering.
“When my mom died, I was put into the system because my dad was in jail. He died shortly after, by the way. I had no living grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, nothing. I was told I’d be adopted quickly.
Didn’t happen. The first seven years of my life were spent being shipped from home to home, stranger to stranger, school to school, waiting to be adopted by someone who thought I was worthy enough.
It’s funny,” she stared listlessly into the fire, “I don’t remember too much of most of the homes I was in.
Repressed memories, I learned later while in college. ”
“Unconsciously blocking something that had a high level of stress. That’s a lot for a child.”
“Yes, it is. But it’s not only that. It was the lack of structure, the lack of genuine relationships, role models.
The only constant I had was the feeling of abandonment.
I spent every day anticipating that knock at the door where my caseworker would take me to my next set of ‘fill-in parents.’ I was at the mercy of the system.
Instead of a human, a system was in control of my welfare.
” A sharp gaze cut to me. “That’s pretty screwed up. ”
“What about your caseworker?”
She slid her coffee on the table. “I had three, total. The last one I rarely saw, and I found out years later, he was arrested for possessing child pornography, by the way. He had no clue about the conditions I was living in. He didn’t care. That’s why I got myself out.”
I grabbed the wine she’d been drinking earlier that evening and handed it to her.
“Tell me what happened at the last house.” Without even hearing the story, my protective streak was raging.
Little did I know then what I was about to hear.
She sipped, took a deep breath, and began.
“I was placed with a man and woman who said they couldn’t conceive and wanted to be foster parents to fill the void.
Little did everyone know, the cause of the infertility was from a life of excessive drug use.
But they hid it well. The man, Earl, worked for a manufacturing company and was gone all the time on sales trips.
The woman, Cheryl, was a stay at home wife with nothing to do.
The first time I saw him hit her was after she’d tried to serve him a cold dinner a week after I moved in.
The first time he hit me was when he tripped over a shoe that I’d left in the hallway. ”
White hot anger surged through my system. I curled both my fists, and my toes in my boots, in an effort to dispel the rush of adrenaline.
Her steely gaze pinned me. “Yes, I was physically abused, Phoenix. They were two screwed up individuals who had no business being foster parents. But that’s the system,” she emphasized.
“They’re desperate for foster homes. Anyway, it didn’t take long for me, even at eight years old, to realize Cheryl was not only cheating on her abusive husband, but was a drug addict who also sold drugs on the side.
” She paused. “Have you ever been to a drug dealer’s house? ”
It was a rhetorical question, but back in my door-kicking days, I’d been to plenty. And my stomach was rolling.
“It’s a revolving door of strangers,” she continued. “Day and night, people in and out of the house. One after the other. Lights are always on. No sleeping. It’s a madhouse. I’d hide. Every second I wasn’t in school, I’d hide under the kitchen table because they never ate there. That was my spot.”
She began turning the wine glass around in her hands.
“One day, I was hiding in the kitchen after school, my usual routine. I remember being so hungry that day. Abnormally so. Anyway, in the living room—the next room over…” Her voice cracked.
“Cheryl died of a heroin overdose. Right there, twenty feet from me. She died with a purple ligature around her bicep and a needle in her arm. I had no idea.” Her voice wavered and tears filled her eyes.
She looked at me, a childlike desperation pulling at her face.
“I didn’t know, Phoenix. I didn’t know. I would have tried to save her, I promise.
I hated that woman, but I wouldn’t have let her die. I would have tried to save her.”
I slid off the couch, pried the wine glass from her clutch and set it aside. I kneeled at her feet. She gripped onto my hands as her eyes glazed over in a memory so haunting she was no longer in the present. When she began again, it was a whisper.
“Earl came home and found her. He screamed my name; I think he thought I actually did it. Or, he blamed me for it.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I remember thinking I was going to be taken to jail charged for murder. An eight year old thinking that. Can you imagine that?”
I wiped the tears. “It wasn’t your fault, Rose. It wasn’t your fault. Release the guilt, just like you’ve told me to.”
“It’s tough, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I get it.”
“I still blame myself. To this day, I blame myself for her death.”
“You can’t. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t put the needle in her arm and pull the trigger, so to speak. It wasn’t your fault.”
My heart broke for her. And also, in a weird twist of fate, I heard my own words in response to what I was going through, too.
Fate. Funny thing.
“Tell me the rest of the story. Because I know you’re not done.”
She swallowed deeply. “When he started screaming at me, I ran. I ran up the staircase, grabbed a bag I kept hidden under my bed. I literally had a go-bag for all the times I thought about running away. An eight year old with a go-bag.”
Tears streamed down her face. My heart pounded like a drum in my chest.
“As he pounded on my bedroom door, I jumped out the window and ran into the woods. He would have killed me that night. I know it.”
The room fell silent.
I held her hand while she took a deep breath, then continued.
“After that, after I lived in the woods for three days, alone, until a woman on horseback found me. I was dehydrated, sick, with infections all over my skin from hiking through the terrain.” Her eyes met mine.
Her chin lifted. “That woman was June Massey.”
And the pieces of the puzzle began to slowly click together.
“Let me guess. She lives in a ranch house on the other side of the mountain.”
“Yes.” A smile touched Rose’s lips. “That’s why I bought this cabin. To be close to her.”
So the midnight mystery visit had been to the woman who had saved her life.