Page 6 of Save You
Shortly after Tom’s exit from the kitchen, I hear him walking up the staircase and onto the floor above us. Even the creaks and bumps from the thin ceiling feel strangely comforting here. Probably because it’s so very alien from the horror I’ve lived in for the past eighteen months, or longer if you also count my childhood home. Sadie gets up to make herself yet more tea, and shrugs when I decline a second cup. I don’t offer any information about America, but she doesn’t push me for it. It’s not because I’m trying to be rude, but the America I know wouldn’t sound too appealing to anyone, let alone Tom’s little sister. I expect she’s known nothing but love and affection in this lovely old house.
“Come on,” she announces as soon as the show finishes, “I’ll take you to your room. Where are your bags?”
“I gave them to Tom.” I gesture out into the hallway in which we came through to get to the kitchen. “I think he put them down by the front door.”
She nods, then leads us out of the kitchen and down the hall to the entrance. On a small table, I see my pathetic little bag of belongings, soaked through and looking extremely sad.
“Is that it?!” she gasps before turning back to frown at me. “I expected someone like you to be having lots of cases.”
I say nothing but shrug at her. As if disappointed by my meager belongings, she sighs and picks it up with two of her fingers, before carrying it up the stairs. She opens the door to one of the rooms on the landing, walks in, and gestures for me to follow. It’s a small room with a single bed, floral wallpaper, and thick, pink curtains with a frill running along the edge. The tiny window looks out onto a dark back garden that is currently being beaten down by the raging wind and rain. Dotted around the surfaces are porcelain ornaments of animals or children posing in their Sunday dresses and other such outfits.
“It’s not much, but it’s warm and dry at least,” she says as she pulls the curtains closed.
“No, no, it’s perfect,” I almost cry. “I can’t thank you both enough. This is…this is everything!”
At that moment, Tom knocks and pops his head inside the door with a pile of towels and what looks like fresh women’s clothing.
“I thought you might want something dry to sleep in,” he offers, then places the items onto the bed. “They’re Ma’s old things, but they’re clean. I’ve run you a hot bath and put your tea inside. Is there anything else I can do for you, Rosalie?” Before I realize it, I have tears running down my face and I’m sniffing back a rather loud sob that’s been hiding inside of my throat ever since we got here. “Hey, are you alright, darlin?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine.” I furiously wipe at my face, trying to rid myself of the traitorous little tears. “It’s just…well, no one has been this nice to me in a really long time,” I tell them, then try to smile but just end up breaking into more sobs.
“Alright, Tom,” Sadie seems to scold him, “I’m going to help Rosalie into the bath. You can go and read your love letters. Go on, shoo!”
Tom takes one more concerned look at me before walking away and down the stairs. Sadie seems to have changed her suspicion over me into sympathy and begins to treat me more like a small, pathetic child than one of Tom’s ‘lovers’, or whatever they are. I’ll take it though. The last woman to be this nice to me was my companion, who left shortly before I was married. To be honest, I have been craving this sort of motherly affection for so long, I forget when I didn’t feel lost without it.
She throws her arm around my shoulders and leads me toward the bathroom where she begins fussing over bottles of soap and shampoo. She then hangs a soft towel on the heater for me. I wait patiently for her to leave, but, to my horror, she doesn’t. Instead, she begins to undress me, even when I try to step away from her, all the while silently panicking over what she’s going to see if she carries on.
“Sadie, really, I’m fine…” I practically beg but she just laughs over my apparent coyness. She begins to explain that she’s training to be a nurse, and that she’s seen hundreds of naked people before, right before she pulls the shirt from my back.
As soon as the air hits my skin, I brace myself for her reaction. I know it isn’t a pretty sight and not what normal people are used to seeing. And yet, when I hear her immediate and sudden gasp, I still shut my eyes tightly to try and block it out.
“Jesus, fucking Christ!” she says on an exhale. “Tom!” she shouts from the doorway, making me feel like a freakish monster. The need to cry weighs heavy on me again, for I must look so bad, so vile, and ugly, that it’s hard to stomach without her big brother being there for her. “Tom! Tom!” she screams for him, “Come here!”
Within seconds, her brother is running at speed up the stairs, then bursting through the door in a wild panic.
“What?! What the hell…?” I stand with my back to them both, feeling physically unable to turn around to see the looks on their faces. “My God!” he eventually whispers.
Long, torturous moments pass, and in the end, I make the first move to turn quickly and grab for my clothes so I can get out of this stifling room. It doesn’t help the situation because the front of me only shows my other horrifying secret, the small bump which is growing bigger with each day and is now plainly sticking out for all to see. Their eyes theatrically drop straight to it, right before they open their mouths wide and gaping, taking me in with all of the ugly truth.
“Sadie, out!” Tom orders, and to my surprise, she does exactly as she is told.
Tom instantly grabs a robe that’s hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and places it around my shoulders before his sister has even fully left the room. We then huddle back to his mother’s bedroom, with him reaching an arm around my shoulders and me trying not to pass out from shame.
Once inside, Tom closes the door behind us and sits me on the bed. I silently shudder with tears as he draws up a chair to sit in front of me. His hand reaches out for my burnt one and squeezes it reassuringly. My eyes stare down at our intertwined fingers as he rubs his thumb pad over my scars.
“Would you like me to leave?” I eventually mutter because his silence is too much to bear.
“No!” he says almost instantly. “But…you’re pregnant?” I nod silently and listen to him sigh.
“You think I’m awful,” I whimper, “and ugly…unnatural?” I begin to cry more audibly; I can no longer help it. Tom gets up and sits next to me on the bed where he pulls me against his shoulder and rubs his hand up and down my arm. He kisses the top of my head affectionately, but it only makes me cry harder. I haven’t had true affection in such a long time. I only know abuse and anger.
“God, no,” he says softly, “I think you might be the most beautiful girl who I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
I let out a weird noise, halfway between a laugh and a sob, because I feel pretty far from beautiful right now. He continues to rub my arm as he lets me cry next to him without battering me with questions like I thought he would. Right now, he feels like the big brother I never had. Hell, he feels like the parent I never had. This is what I had expected from my mother when I had told her Carl had raped me on my sixteenth birthday; this is the reaction I never got…until now. From a stranger.
“Rosalie, darlin’?” he breaks our silence with a croaky voice. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen,” I murmur. Eighteen years old and eighteen months married to a monster. Eighteen and pregnant. Eighteen and broken.