Forty
Rowan
The air in my parents’ dining room is so thick I can barely draw it into my lungs.
I sit stiffly at the table, staring down at my plate, dragging my fork back and forth through a pile of cooling mashed potatoes. My hand is shaking so violently the tines scrape against the porcelain.
I’m going to be sick.
Mom keeps glancing between Beckett, Griffin, and the head of the table, her brow creased in deep confusion.
Dad sits beside her, his shoulders rigid.
They know something is up. They knew the second we walked through the door together, and they can’t figure out why Hudson is at a Callahan family dinner, sitting right beside me.
Across the table, Noah clears his throat and launches into a safe, mundane story about his clinic to break the unbearable silence. Slowly, the table fractures into cautious small talk.
Under the cover of the noise, a warm hand wraps around my trembling wrist.
“Hey,” Hudson says softly.
I look at him. He turns in his chair, completely ignoring the rest of the room, not giving a single fuck that my entire family is probably watching us and wondering what is happening. Reaching up with his other hand, he takes my chin between his fingers and gently tilts my face up to meet his.
His blue eyes sweep over my face, examining every line of stress, reading the exact level of panic humming under my skin.
“I need you to breathe,” he says quietly.
My heart is racing against my ribs like a trapped bird. I try to pull back, to look away before someone notices, but his grip remains steady and gentle.
“Breathe, baby,” he whispers, his thumb stroking over my jawline.
I close my eyes, take a long, shaky breath, and force the air back into my lungs.
When his hand finally falls away, I open my eyes and realize the conversation around the table has shifted to Madison and Beckett’s wedding.
Good. Good. At least it isn’t about me.
My mouth is bone-dry. I reach across the table for the jug of water, but the moment my fingers wrap around the handle, my wrist gives out.
The jug slips from my grip and crashes onto the table. Water explodes across the wood, soaking the placemats, cascading into my lap, and dripping onto the floor.
“Oh!” I gasp, scrambling back.
The entire table erupts. Piper springs into action. Noah reaches for a stack of napkins, while Madison is already on her feet, grabbing my arms to check if I’m cut.
Dad reaches for a towel, shaking his head as he wipes down the wood, and tosses out a casual laugh. “Who let butterfingers near the breakables?”
It’s meant to sound innocuous. It’s the same teasing remark he’s made a hundred times over twenty-six years, but now that everyone in the room knows the truth, the words land like a slap.
Madison freezes. Her hands drop from my shoulders, and her posture goes deathly rigid.
“Madison, don’t—” I try.
It’s too late. Madison absolutely explodes.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Dad?” she shrieks, her voice shattering the dining room.
Dad blinks, startled. “Madison, it was just a joke.”
“It’s not a joke!” A real, ferocious mama bear, Madison steps between my chair and our parents, her body trembling with fury, tears flooding her eyes. “Because she’s sick! Jesus Christ, Dad! She’s always been sick, and not one of us looked at her long enough to notice!”
“Madi, please,” I choke out, reaching for her hem.
She doesn’t stop. Tears stream down her flushed cheeks. “Mom wasn’t the only sick person in this house. And no, Rowan wasn’t trying to get attention. She was in pain.”
Dad slams his hand onto the table, his face reddening. “That’s enough!”
“No, it’s not nearly enough!” Madison screams right back, pointing an accusing finger at them. “Those pains she’s always had? Her hips? Her wrists? The fainting? It wasn’t all in her head.”
Mom recoils, her hands clutching her napkin. “That is completely unfair. We brought her to doctors, Madison. We took her to specialists when she was young. They told us there was nothing physically wrong with her.”
Noah steps up beside Madison. “Did you ask her? She’s sitting right there!”
For some reason, instead of looking at me, Mom’s frantic gaze darts straight to Hudson. Because she trusts him, because he’s the doctor, because old habits run so deep, she looks to him for the answers about her own daughter.
“Hudson?” Mom pleads, her voice tight.
“Rowan is sitting right here, Donna,” Hudson says, his voice dangerously even. “She can speak for herself.”
The room spins. A sickening wave of nausea hits me so hard I can barely keep my balance. Even now—even with the truth laid out on the table—they fall right back into the old script. Talking around me. Looking past me. Treating me like an invisible variable in my own life.
“I can’t do this,” I whisper.
I push my chair back and turn on my heel. I bolt out of the dining room, down the hallway, and slam through the front door into the cool evening air.
I make it halfway down the gravel path before I hear heavy, fast footsteps behind me.
“Rowan!”
I turn around, wiping tears from my face as Hudson catches up to me near the hedges.
“You need to go back in there,” he says, his breathing steady despite his quick pace.
“I can’t. I can’t do it, Hudson. They won’t believe me. They’ve never believed me.”
Hudson blows out a frustrated breath and steps into my space. He grabs my upper arms, anchoring me to the spot.
“I’m going to need you to do something for me,” he pleads.
“Okay,” I whisper, my eyes wide as I search his face.
“I’m going to need you to pretend that I don’t love you for a minute, because I’m about to say some shit that’s going to sound like I’m being your doctor.”
The world stops. My breath catches in my throat.
I love you.
“Hudson?”
“Yes, I love you, but right now, you need to listen to me.”
I nod numbly, tears blurring my vision.
“Right now, you’re acting like a scared kid hiding behind the furniture,” he says, his tone razor-sharp.
“You’re twenty-six years old. You run a business, you paint your soul onto six-foot canvases, and you live on your own.
But the second you step through that front door, you regress into a fifteen-year-old girl who thinks she needs to ask permission to be sick. ”
My mouth opens, a gasping breath catching in my chest.
“It’s comfortable, isn’t it?” he asks, holding my gaze without a single flicker of apology.
“It’s terrifying, but it’s safe. Being the misunderstood victim means you never have to demand what you deserve.
It means you can stay resentful because it’s easier to be angry at them for not noticing than it is to stand in front of them, look them in the eye, and force them to see you. ”
“Hudson—”
“No,” he cuts in firmly, his fingers tightening just enough on my arms to command my full attention.
“You listen to me. If you walk away now, you give up your right to be mad at them. You reinforce the exact dynamic you hate. They will keep talking around you because you let them. They will keep treating you like glass because you hide the breaks.”
The truth of it cuts straight through the defensive walls I’ve built over a lifetime.
“You want them to stop seeing you as a dramatic kid?” he asks. “Then stop acting like one. Walk back into that room. You don’t need to shout, and you don’t need to defend your diagnosis. You just need to claim your own voice.”
His thumbs smooth over the sleeves of my sweater.
“I love you,” he repeats, softer this time, making sure every word lands. “Which means I refuse to watch you retreat into a shell because it’s easier than standing up for yourself. You survived the pain, Ro. You can survive this conversation.”
He’s right. God, he’s right. If I run away now, I’m letting the old habit win.
I take a deep, shuddering breath and wipe my face with the back of my hand. “Okay.”
He lets go of my arms, reaches out, and takes my hand, weaving his fingers through mine. “I’ve got you.”
When we walk back inside, the dining room is empty. The heavy silence has moved into the living room.
Madison and Noah sit on the couch, calmer but exhausted. They must have explained the clinical details while we were outside. As soon as I walk through the doorway, Madison gets up, pulls me into a tight hug, and whispers, “I love you.”
Noah wraps his arms around both of us, presses a kiss to the top of my head, then quietly gathers their things and leaves us.
“I’ll be right outside,” Hudson says, squeezing my hand before letting go.
Mom and Dad are standing near the fireplace. The room feels stretched tight.
Mom turns to look at me, and my breath hitches.
Tears are streaming down her face. She stays rooted to her spot, looking across the rug at me, and for a terrifying second, it feels like looking at my centerpiece from the gallery. Two submerged figures, separated by dark, murky water, trying to find each other through the deep.
“I’m so sorry,” Mom chokes out, her voice breaking. “I’m so sorry we could only see each other… and we never saw you.”
My parents have been madly in love since they were teenagers.
Through her illness, through the hospitalizations, through the manic highs and terrifying lows, they were consumed by each other.
They were surviving each other. And in the middle of that storm, I was the baby sitting behind glass, keeping quiet so the world wouldn’t break.
A sob erupts from my throat just before she pulls me into her arms.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” she cries, her fingers smoothing through my messy red hair, holding my head against her chest just like she used to when I was little. “I’m so sorry. Let me take care of you now. Please, let me take care of you.”
I collapse against her, sobbing into her shoulder, letting years of quiet isolation wash out of me as I finally allow myself to just be the daughter.
I feel Dad’s arm on my back and the vibration of his body.
A guttural sob breaks from his chest. “My baby girl,” he whispers, wrapping his arms around both of us.
We sit on the living room floor, the dark water between us finally beginning to drain away.