ROWAN REVIVED ADVANCED
Copyright © 2019 Taylor Danae Colbert
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, numerous places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. This book may not be resold or given away in any manner.
Published: Taylor Danae Colbert 2019
www.taylordanaecolbert.com
Editing: Lizzy McLellan Ravitch
Cover Design: Taylor Danae Colbert
ISBN: 9781691537945
Contents
Prologue
1. Lena
2. Lena
3. Jesse
4. Lena
5. Jesse
6. Lena
7. Jesse
8. Lena
9. Jesse
10. Lena
11. Jesse
12. Lena
13. Jesse
14. Lena
15. Jesse
16. Lena
17. Jesse
18. Lena
19. Jesse
20. Lena
21. Jesse
22. Lena
23. Jesse
24. Lena
25. Jesse
26. Lena
27. Jesse
28. Lena
29. Lena
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Taylor:
Note from the Author
To my babies. You are my reasons.
Prologue
Mrs. Rowan smiles as the young reporter gets out of her silver Nissan. Her too-high pumps crunch in the gravel as she approaches the porch steps.
“Beverly,” Mrs. Rowan says, pushing herself up from the white wooden rocking chair she had sat in every morning for the last thirty years. She noticed, these days, that it was a little more difficult for her to stand up from it. But if she used the momentum from a rock forward, she could get up on her feet just fine.
“Hello, Mrs. Rowan, thank you so much for making time for me this morning,” Beverly says. She’s tall and thin, with auburn hair and big, blue eyes. She’s probably no older than twenty-two or twenty-three. She’s fresh out of college, and the world is still so vast and exciting for her. Except, her world was limited to the shores of the Chesapeake, and anywhere within a fifty-mile radius of the Chesapeake Times’ readership.
“It’s my pleasure. I made some lemonade, and I thought we could go out back and sit by the water.”
“That sounds lovely,” Beverly says, clutching on to her laptop and two or three notebooks. Mrs. Rowan leads her through the vast foyer, framed by the grand staircase that splits at the top, cascading down on either side of it. She watches as Beverly followed her, jaw dropped, eyes all over the impressive entryway. Mrs. Rowan smiles. She still felt a bolt of pride each time someone fell in love with this place.
They walk through the foyer, passing a spacious sitting room with big couches and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and into the parlor.
“Wow,” Beverly whispers, staring out of the huge parlor windows at the Bay. “This is really, really beautiful. What a view.”
“Yeah,” Mrs. Rowan says, nodding out at the bay. “Still takes my breath away, every morning. Shall we?” she asks, holding open the door to the patio.
As they take their seats on two of the Adirondack chairs that are perched at the edge of the patio, a warm, familiar, bay breeze blows through stems of the weeping willows that lounge on the lawn before them.
“Okay, Mrs. Rowan,” Beverly says, pulling out a small recorder and a pen from her briefcase. “Do you mind if I record this?”
“No problem,” Mrs. Rowan nods, taking a sip of her lemonade and leaning back in her chair.
“Great. So,” Beverly goes on, clicking the on button, “first things first, what brought you to the Chesapeake?”
Mrs. Rowan smiles.
“Look around you,” she says, holding her hands out. “I like to think that I didn’t find the Bay, but that it found me. It’s a love affair, really, and once I found it, I knew I could never leave.” Beverly smiles, her eyes wide with wonder.
“So you ran the Rowan Inn for...”
“Thirty years,” Mrs. Rowan says.
“Wow. Thirty years. What an accomplishment. And now your son runs it, correct?”
Mrs. Rowan smiles.
“Yep. It’s all in the family. I still help out, inside, particularly, but he really took the reins. I’m really proud of him.”
“That is beautiful,” Beverly says, typing a few notes. “So, you originally ran the inn with your husband, right?”
Mrs. Rowan’s eyes flash to Beverly, then she looks down at the opal ring on her finger, wiggling it in the sunlight. She sighs, her eyes moving out to the blue line where the water meets the sky. She remembers the first time she laid eyes on him, and smiles to herself. She hadn’t realized it then, but he had her then, hook, link, and sinker.
1
Lena
I knew it was going to be a bad night the second I walked down the hallway to Millie’s apartment door. There was only dead silence on the other side of the door—a tell-tale sign that Tiger went off on one of his outbursts again. No sounds of Caleb’s little feet running, no television in the background, no toys crashing all over the place. Just silence.
I’m out of breath from running the twelve blocks between our two apartment buildings, then up three flights of stairs to their walk-up. I bang on the door, but there’s no answer. I bang on it again.
“Mill, it’s me, can you come to the door?” I ask. But again, nothing. I reach into my coat pocket with a shaky hand, and pull out my keychain, fiddling with the key to their apartment.
I finally shove it in the lock, and the second I open the door, I want to throw up.
The kitchen table is on its side, and the remnants of a spaghetti dinner lie scattered on the floor. My heart is beating in my throat as I start searching everywhere for my sister and nephew.
“Mill? Mill!” I call, but there’s still no answer. “Caleb? Cay, where ya at, buddy?”
I make my way down the hall to my sister’s room. A chair is knocked over in the corner of the room, a picture frame broken, hanging crooked on the wall. Clothes are strewn everywhere. This is definitely the worst I’ve seen the apartment look. I run back down the hall to Caleb’s room, but before I push the door open, I take a long breath, steadying myself for what I might see.
When I open it, I almost drop to my knees.
My sister is lying on the floor, her eyes closed, blood trickling from a deep gash on the side of her head. There’s blood pooling on the ground beneath her, and onto my four-year-old nephew’s pants. He’s lifted her head onto his lap. With one hand, he’s stroking her blood-soaked hair. With the other, he’s clutching his teddy bear to his chest. His teddy bear that is now also covered in blood. Caleb’s eyes are glassy, glazed over. He looks up at me, but I’m not confident that he actually sees me. I’m not sure he can see much of anything, except for the memory of what his father just did to his mother, playing over and over again in his mind.
“Jesus Christ, Millie!” I scream. But then I remember Caleb. I’ve startled him now, and he’s slid himself across the floor, still clutching his gory bear.
“Hey, Cay, hey buddy, it’s okay, everything’s gonna be okay, you hear me?” I ask him, fighting like hell to swallow back my tears. He can’t see me cry. He nods slowly, and I see the tears welling in his eyes. The shock has passed, and the horror of what he’s just seen—for probably t
he hundredth time in his short life—is starting to creep in.
“Okay, Cay. Remember where the towels are?” I ask him, calmly checking my sister’s wrist for a pulse. There is one. Thank God.
He nods.
“Okay, good boy, Cay. Can you go ahead and grab a few towels for me, buddy? And when you’re done, I want you to go to the living room and turn on some T.V., okay?” I ask. He nods again, scurrying out of the room. He’s back in a flash with a small hand towel. I survey the amount of blood on the ground, and I know this won’t do the job. But hey, he’s four. He shouldn’t have to be cleaning up his mother’s blood. Especially when that blood came from the hands of his father.
He also shouldn’t have to know to call his auntie whenever his daddy gets angry. Yet here I am.
“Good job, buddy. Okay, now, go watch some TV while I help Mommy, okay?” I ask. As soon as he’s out of sight, I have my phone to my ear, dialing 911. As they answer, Millie’s eyes open, slowly at first, then they flutter wildly.
“Mill...” I say, knowing that she will panic as soon as she comes to. “Mill, it’s okay, I’m here. I’ve got you—hi, yes, my sister has been attacked and we need—” I start to answer the operator, but Millie’s flailing hands knock the phone from my ear.
“Don’t, Lena,” she manages to get out. I almost snort in laughter. We’ve been through this a million times. She never wants me to call 911 because she’s afraid it will make him more mad. A few threatening sentences on a restraining order aren’t exactly strong enough to hold back Tiger Bentley. We know that. But it feels so irresponsible, so ignorant, not to do anything. In the grand scheme of things, she’s probably right. The cops will come, they’ll take her to the hospital, they’ll get Tiger’s information. They’ll look for him, they won’t find him, and they will give her another restraining order—which, as we know from experience, won’t make a difference. She will likely give in and let him back in before he gives up and moves on.
It’s not because my sister is weak. She’s not. She’s actually really fucking strong. But she still has it in her head—the one that son of a bitch has beat on too many times—that she loves him. She still believes that if he didn’t love her, he wouldn’t get so mad. That he loses it sometimes only because he cares so much. That he’s her only way to survive. That staying with him is the only way to keep a roof over her son’s head. Her brain is wired to see what Tiger wants her to see.
And I know that I can’t make her see what I see. I know that I can’t force her to see it until she’s ready. I know this from a childhood’s worth of experience, watching our mother. And that’s why this kills me so much, each time it happens.
“Ma’am? Ma’am?” I hear the 911 operator calling at me from my phone on the floor. My eyes meet Millie’s, soft and green, and right now, surrounded by blood and purple skin. My beautiful sister, reduced to a bloody pulp. Again.
God, I want to kill him.
I take a breath, reach down and grab my phone.
“I’m sorry, it was a mistake,” I say into the phone. “No need to send anyone. We’re okay here,” I say. I click the end button, my stomach filling with a swirling mix of nerves and anger. I reach down, dabbing her open wound with the hand towel.
“Can you sit up?” I ask her. She nods, her eyebrows knitting together in pain. I help her up slowly, leaning her against Caleb’s bed. I grab another towel from the hall closet for the blood on the floor, and a third for her head. I swipe the first aid kit from the bottom shelf, all too familiar with where it’s kept. After I survey the cut, clean it with peroxide, and cover it with gauze, I sit back against the bed, pulling her into me close. My beautiful, brave, battered big sister. I need to cry so badly right now. But I can’t. Not now. We sit in silence for a few minutes.
“Is Caleb okay?” she asks.
“Yeah, he’s watching TV,” I say. Then I look around the room. All the late-night calls I’ve gotten, all the times I’ve come to the rescue, my sister has always been in her own room—when she knows Tiger’s growing angry, she leads him to their bedroom, away from Caleb. But tonight, she’s in her son’s room.
“Mill...why are you in here?” I ask. I swallow, not knowing if I want the answer.
All the times Tiger’s raised a hand to my sister, he hasn’t laid a finger on Caleb. Yet.
She swallows, reaching a hand up to the gash. She squints her eyes. Then she looks at me. I stare back at her, wide-eyed.
“Millie...did he touch him? Did anything happen to Caleb?” I ask. My voice is shaking now, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to stop it. I scoot back, prompting her to give me an answer. She shakes her head slowly as tears start to roll down her face.
“He didn’t,” she says, and I let out a long breath. “But I think he was going to.”
She looks up at me, and there’s something different in my sister’s eyes tonight. Usually, after these nights, she’s tired, broken. She is again tonight, but she’s also got a fire in her eyes. I take her hand.
“Mill,” I say. She looks up at me. “We have to go.”
I’ve said this to her before. I’ve tried to convince her and Caleb to move in with me. It would be cramped in my tiny little apartment across town, and Lord knows that Beth, my high-maintenance roommate, would have nothing good to say about a four-year-old joining us. But we would make it work until we could afford something bigger. And then we’d go, and be far, far away from Tiger.
Tiger Bentley. The name alone makes me dry heave. I had a feeling about him, the moment Millie introduced him to me. Something about a guy who goes by “Tiger,” sort of sets you off. But she was in love, and it was fast. My sister was always dating, our whole adolescence. Constantly searching for the love we never got as kids. The Winter house was a cold one to grow up in, figuratively speaking. I, on the other hand, took the opposite route. I’d rather be alone than risk loving someone who masked their anger, their demons, as love. Someone like my father.
But try as I had, I could never convince her. She was in love. And Tiger is Caleb’s father. He needs his dad, she’d say. But we both know that it’s not true. We both know she just needed to find a little bit of strength.
And tonight, I think my sister has found just that.
“Yeah,” she whispers. “We need to go.”
That’s all I need—just a quick confirmation and I burst into action before she can second-guess herself. I spring up, reaching for Caleb’s small backpack underneath his bed, looping it around my arm. If we were going to move, we needed to go fast. After a boxing match with my sister’s face, Tiger usually hits a few bars and strip clubs to cool off. Then, he’d come back at God knows what hour, drunk, apologetic, dripping with sweat and booze and self-hatred for what he’d done.
I help my sister to her feet, and tell her to go sit with Caleb. I’ll take care of everything. And I do.
I throw every article of clothing I can find into any type of bag I can find. I grab a few pairs of Caleb’s shoes, and a few pairs of my sister’s. I grab toothbrushes, hair brushes, coats, a few of Caleb’s toys. I pack a few snacks in a baggie. I help Caleb scrub the blood off his hands and change his clothes. As I walk down the hallway, I pause at the door of my sister and Tiger’s bedroom. I go back to Caleb’s room, grab his miniature, blood-soaked pants and lay them ever-so carefully on Tiger’s pillow. Just a sweet little reminder of what he’d made his little boy witness tonight. I scan the apartment for anything I might have missed.
“Okay, guys,” I say, “let’s get going.”
“Where are we going?” Caleb asks, looking up from the couch. I see tears forming in Millie’s eyes again. I swallow back my own.
“We’re going to go on a little trip, buddy,” I tell him. “You, me and Mommy.”
“Where are we going?” he asks again. I look at Millie. I don’t quite know the answer to that yet. “Are we spending the night at your house, Aunt Lee?”
“No buddy, not tonight. It’s a surprise,” I tell him. “But w
e do need to stop at my apartment so that I can pack a few things, okay?”
He nods and stands slowly from the couch. He turns back to Millie and patiently waits for her to stand.
“Is your head okay, mommy?” he asks. She smiles and kneels down to kiss his head. My sister really is an amazing mother.
“Yes, baby. I’m okay,” she says. Then Caleb looks back to me.
“Is daddy coming with us?” he asks. Millie swallows so loud, it sounds like a cartoon.
“Not this time, buddy,” I answer, reaching out a hand to him. He thinks about it for a moment, and I wonder what thoughts are flying around in that little head of his. I run my fingers through his curly brown hair—inherited from my sister. He smiles shyly and takes my hand, wrapping his palm around my fingers. Millie kneels down to pick up some of the bags, but I stop her. The gash has stopped bleeding, but I need to get ice on it. The swelling is bad. I fetch a bag of frozen broccoli from the freezer and press it to her head. Once she’s holding onto it, I grab every bag except for Caleb’s, which he has strapped to his back like a big boy, and we walk out the front door. As we reach the top of the steps, I hear someone calling out to us.
It’s Mrs. Hinders, Millie’s sweet-as-pie, ancient-as-dirt next door neighbor.
“Is everything okay with you kids?” she asks. “There was so much commotion tonight.” Then she catches a glimpse of Millie’s face, and she gasps. “Oh, Millie,” she whispers, covering her mouth.
Millie’s eyes drop to the floor in shame.
Rowan Revived Page 1