Chapter 1: The returning
The air felt cooler today. The breeze played with her hair as she walked home from yet another therapy session. Once more she had set down on that huge couch trying to put feelings into words, she wasn't good at that, she knew. For the last years she had traveled the world seeing doctors and therapists for this and that and she still felt the same. Yet she couldn't help but try again but this time she had no intention of going back. She held onto the tiny note her therapist had given her.
- Would you like to go back to the accident today?
Her therapist had once again tried his best to make her engage in a conversation.
All he knew about her were what her grandmother had told him throughout the last four years that she had been in her custody.
In the tinniest problem Mrs.Alden would call him to try and talk to Rose, she had never said much, except that one time her classmates had locked her in the schools basement.
That day she had experienced a panic attack and had a breakdown.
But Rose didn't like talking, he knew. She didn't want to depend on anyone to fix her or her problems. Even if she couldn't do it, she was the only one allowed to try.
This particular session had helped her see things more clearly.
- I remember the loud crushing sound…then being stuck…and feeling the warm blood, I couldn't tell if she was dead, she wasn't moving, her head was on the steering wheel. I couldn't reach her.. the others were in the car behind us, I remember the noise of their brakes and screams and smoke
I don't remember much after, only that I have woken up in pain ever since.
Was all she had said, and she didn't mean the pain in her arm that had since never left.
She had spent the last four years trying to put herself together, but she had only gotten hurt even more.
Now she was sure, she wanted to go back.
She wanted one last chance to fix what she could before she left.
After four years she wanted to go back to Pine Hills.
The thought made her anxious but she felt that was her last duty. To bring together what had been torn apart, then say her goodbyes.
Mr.P's passing, although it had forever broken her heart, had given her the perfect chance of going back, the perfect reason for everyone to be in the same room again.
The promises she had made were no longer valid.
She was going back and everything had to change.
Pine Hills hadn't changed much. The people still the same, the houses, the tiny marketplace, the dusty roads that lead to beautiful hills.
Her grandma had given her the key to the house in Pine Hills. Though she'd spent her whole childhood in that house, this was the first time she had a key to it.
It felt odd.
It was the first time she was back since after the accident. Her arm still hurt and the scar on her right temple was still visible and the pain she had felt in that passenger seat four years ago was still fresh.
She pushed the lock of the garden gate. She stepped inside. There was grass now, where used to be mud she'd play in. And the old garden shed that used to scare her before, now was only a mere object that she wouldn't notice any other day. She sat on the step for a bit. She could feel the wind. She noticed the two huge plum trees had been cut down, she felt sad, she wished they were still there. They were her two friends when she needed an escape from her mother and all Pine Hill was sleeping.
She walked through the concrete pavement where she'd skinned her knees too many times as her mother dragged her out, she walked into the front garden with the little grass where she would lay down and read when her mother wasn't around or she was passed out in the living room. She would go near her mother as she lay drunk. She had wanted to put her head on her chest once, and play with her mother's hair, so she could feel what all the other kids took for granted, just for a moment. But she was too scared of her to ever do it.
And now there it was.
The closest thing she had ever had to a home.
There.
Unchanged.
Yet she was an entire new person.
The blue front door that used to look so much bigger now seemed tiny to her. She pushed it open. The hall lay in front of her and she felt her heart beat faster. She couldn't convince her mind there was no danger, especially here, here for her had always been the most dangerous place.
She often wondered if starting life there had somehow defined how it had gone up until now.
Was this house why?
She walked the hall to her mother's room. It looked the same, her bed, the windows, her broken mirror.
She sat on her bed a little. She would never admit it but deep down she really wanted to forgive her mother, she wanted the two of them to build a life together away from all. She knew her mother, under all her struggles wanted the same. Or at least she hoped so.
She opened her mother's wardrobe, hung there was left the one thing, the white dress with daisies. Her mother had never worn the dress, and it was the only decent piece of clothing she had. Her mother didn't let her go near it, she would sometimes just sit on the bed and look at the dress. Back then Rose gave it to her being drunk, but now she understood, now sitting in that bed looking at that dress, she thought the same things her mother did.
That dress was the only clean thing her mother owned, the only thing that linked her to her old self.
She walked to what used to be her room, a tiny little room in the back.
Scattered around were her paintings.
She found one she had painted as a kid, her and her mom in her daisy dress holding hands under the sun.
Then behind the pile of books and drawings she found a little paper where she had drawn dragonflies. Tiny dragonflies. She smiled, she remembered Lorelei. The trip to the waterfall where she had first seen a dragonfly.
All of her hopes of her mother one day holding her hand she had spread in drawing books all over her room.
With her mother gone God knows where, the chances of them ever having a new life together had vanished.
She knew she couldn't stay much longer in that house. She looked at everything once more. Locked the door and walked to the only person in Pine Hill that already knew everything and would take her in.
Pine Hill hadn't changed in the last 4 years.
She knocked on the huge green door.
- Hi Anne !
She smiled at the woman that opened the door.
- Welcome back kid .
She smiled back.
April.
Rose sat in the huge red couch holding the white paper in her hand.
There were a million ways to contact her, but she wanted to write her a letter.
It felt more genuine but she just couldn't find the words. It felt strange.
They had spent all their life being friends, now she didn't know what to say.
She put the letter down.
Was it all just a failed attempt to occupy her mind ? Was she only trying to distract herself from the fact that the only person that had ever loved her was now gone?
Mr.P wasn't just a retired teacher that helped them out now and then, he was their escape, especially hers. She would hide away in his house when she needed peace. Now he was gone.
He had died in his sleep. Last time she saw him he looked happy.
People had come and gone from her life, nobody had given her the chance to say goodbye. And none of them had stayed long enough for her to want one.
But now she did.
She wished she had said a proper goodbye.
It killed her knowing she never got to say thank you.
She never had a father so she didn't know what that felt like. But what she felt for Mr.P she knew came very close to it.
And he was gone.
For the past years life had felt heavier. But today, today she felt like she was under unbearable weight.
All the sleepless nights, all the pain now seemed twice as big and she felt twice as lonely.
Her heart started beating fast again. She sat back on the couch put her hand in her heart.
It was back.
That feeling of running out of breath.
She felt like drowning again and she didn't know how to pull herself out.
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