Rose
Nothing registers.
I've never felt so numb, and I welcome it with open arms because the alternative might just kill me.
I asked Jackson to leave, and that fact is sitting somewhere in the room with me too, but even it feels distant, like something that happened to somebody else.
Not only is the man who raped me his father, Jackson has known for days.
Days of hiding it. Days of letting me hand him my body, my history, my trust while he decided on my behalf what I was ready to know.
He gave that monster time to settle his affairs before prison, and that is the part my brain keeps circling back to, because what affairs could Wesley Finnegan possibly have that ranked above my justice?
What could he possibly need to organize, arrange or say goodbye to before consequences were finally allowed to catch up with him? I
know Jackson was trying to control the situation.
I know he had security watching him.
I know he thought he was protecting me from more chaos.
All of that can be true, and none of it changes the fact that he made a decision about my trauma without me.
Hours ago I was smiling at my phone.
I'm staying at your place tonight.
Now there is nothing left in me. No anger.
No rage. Not even heartbreak, which seems strange considering there should be enough of it to level the building.
There is just this enormous vacancy where Rosalie Marie Bennett used to live, and from somewhere deep inside it, I can almost admire the efficiency of the thing.
One revelation and we've cleared the whole damn premises.
A knock lands against the door, muted, and I realize everything is muted now.
The traffic outside the windows, the hum of the refrigerator, my own footsteps as I cross the apartment.
It's like the world got wrapped in cotton somewhere between the lobby and here, and I've been left standing on the wrong side of it.
When I open the door, Michael is there looking gaunt, tie gone, eyes red-rimmed, something barely leashed moving underneath his expression.
He takes one look at me and whatever he was prepared to say disappears.
"Rosalie."
He pulls me into his arms and holds on hard. "What's happened?"
"A lot," I say, answering the question beneath the question because I don't have enough energy left to sort through which version he actually asked.
He pulls back, hands still gripping my shoulders. "Hey. What's... Rose. Are you okay?" His eyes move over my face, searching for something, and I don't know what he's looking for or whether it's still in there to find.
"Not today."
His face changes, just slightly, and then I'm back in his arms, held even tighter while I stand there feeling absolutely nothing and wishing to God I could. Anger would be useful. Rage has always been useful.
This numbness, this nothingness, it's useless.
"Can you go home, Michael? I'll call you later."
"Okay." He doesn't move. "I'm worried about you, Rose."
"Me too."
It comes out flat and automatic, and I watch the honesty of it hit him harder than any lie could have. His face goes pale.
"Fuck, you're scaring me. I don't want to leave you like this. Can I just hang out on the couch? I'll be quiet. You won't even know I'm here."
Normally I would make fun of that, because Michael has never been quiet for longer than four consecutive minutes in his life, but even the joke refuses to show up.
"Please just go home."
He holds my gaze for a long moment, and I can see him running the same calculation he's been making our whole lives: push, or give her room. He's never once won by pushing. Finally he nods, but reluctantly, and his eyes stay on me like he doesn't trust the decision.
"I'll check on you later tonight. That's not a request. I'm telling you." His voice cracks on the way out. "I love you."
"Love you too."
The hesitation bleeds off him in waves all the way to the door. He pauses with his hand on the knob, looks back at me one more time, then leaves. I lock the door behind him, and the click of the deadbolt is the loudest thing I've heard in hours.
I stand there with my hand resting on the lock for a moment before moving to my laptop.
There isn't a plan behind it. No dramatic realization or grand decision.
I just sit down and start typing because some part of me has decided that if I can't control anything else, I can at least dismantle my own life in an orderly fashion.
Dear Laura,
Please accept this as my official notice of resignation.
Effective in three weeks' time, I will be stepping down from my position as Senior Counsel and relinquishing my seat on the board.
This is of a confidential nature; I will notify the board at a time of my choosing before the three weeks have ended.
Thank you,
Rosalie Bennett
I read it once, feel nothing, and hit send. Eight years of my life, closed in four sentences. There should probably be more ceremony involved. A luncheon. Champagne. One of those engraved plaques nobody actually wants. Instead I close the email and open the website for a storage company.
I fill out the profile, choose full-service packing, climate control, indefinite storage and answer every question the form puts in front of me.
Estimated square footage. Fragile items. Insurance.
Preferred date. I schedule a crew to come pack the apartment and pay the deposit without once stopping to consider where any of it will eventually be delivered.
Only when I reach the field marked forwarding address do I pause.
I don't have one.
I don't know where I'm going.
The form doesn't require that information yet, which is helpful. Knowing where your life is headed is optional.
I order dinner because people eat dinner in the evening.
When it arrives, I tip the delivery person, carry the bag to the table and eat because eating is what bodies are supposed to do if they intend to keep being bodies.
I chew, swallow, take another bite and stare through the blank television screen across the room.
Halfway through, the food turns to nothing in my mouth.
I stop chewing and push it around the plate with my fork, watching my own hand move like it belongs to somebody sitting across from me.
My nails need filing. There's a small cut across one knuckle I don't remember getting.
The fork makes one slow pass through the food, then another, and I am still staring at it when the plate suddenly leaves my hand.
I didn't decide to throw it.
One second it's on the table. The next it's sailing across the room and exploding against the wall hard enough to send ceramic and sauce everywhere.
I stare at the mess.
The wine glass goes next.
That one makes a prettier sound.
Something inside me gives way then, not all at once and not cleanly, more like a seal that has spent too long holding pressure finally tearing open somewhere I can't reach.
I hear a woman screaming, raw and high enough that it takes me several seconds to understand the sound is coming from me, and then another glass leaves my hand, followed by a bowl, the lamp beside the sofa, anything close enough to grab.
There aren't words in the screaming. There aren't any words big enough.
Be a good girl.
The television caves inward when something heavy hits it, and I don't even know what I threw.
Glass sprays across the floor. My shoulders ache from the force I'm putting behind everything, my throat burns, my lungs hurt, and still the strange vacancy in my head remains untouched while my body rages through the apartment without waiting for permission from the rest of me.
Then my hand closes around the framed photograph of Michael and me from the day Sullivan went public.
I pull my arm back.
And stop.
His grin stares back at me through the glass. My own face beside his, proud and exhausted and happy enough that I barely recognize the woman anymore.
My fingers loosen.
The frame lands on the sofa instead of against the wall.
And just like that, whatever took over me is gone.
The apartment falls silent around me.
I stand in the middle of the wreckage, chest heaving, surrounded by broken pieces of things I owned fifteen minutes ago. There is blood on the floor, and when I look down I realize my feet are bleeding from walking through the glass. Several small cuts, one deeper one near my heel.
I should clean them. Bandage them. Vacuum. Call somebody.
Instead, I walk through the wreckage toward my bedroom, leaving little red prints behind me on the hardwood.
That seems like tomorrow's problem.
I climb into bed and pull the covers over my head.
A nap will be good.
It's been such a long day.