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There are a few families speaking with their loved ones. Tears are being shed as they catch up on what’s happening outside these walls. I search the room, but I don’t see Fiona. The officer leads me to a table where a young woman is sitting, obviously uncomfortable being here.
When he stops by the table, indicating she is here to seeme, I arch a brow, confused. “We should head. I don’t know her.”
But when she turns over her shoulder, when I lock eyes with her, I realize that I do know her. I just don’t know this version of her.
“Bout ye, Punky?”
I stare at her, words escaping me because there is no way this is Hannah. She’s a wee chile. But this girl sitting before me is no chile.
“Will ye sit?”
All I can do is slump into the hard seat, placing my cuffed hands on the table as I try to get comfortable. The cuffs make her uncomfortable.
The officer nods with a smile and leaves us alone, but he stands close by.
“Hannah?” I ask, utterly shook.
She nods slowly. “Aye, it’s me.”
“But yer so grown.”
“That’s what happens when ye get older. Ye grow,” she sarcastically says, rolling her eyes. “Maybe if ya bothered to see me, or answer my letters, y’d know it was me.”
“How old are ye?”
Her lips part, and pity overcomes her. “I’m sixteen. Almost seventeen. Y’ve been in here for ten years.”
Shaking my head, I refuse to accept this future. The Hannah I know was scraping her knees and fighting with Ethan…
“Ethan?”
When tears fill her eyes, the truth slaps me the fuck awake, and after ten fucking years, I see clearly. I see the life I’ve missed.
“What’s happened to him?”
She wipes her nose and sighs. “Why wouldn’t ya see anyone? Why did ye push us away? Ya promised me ye’d come back, but ya never did.”
“Yer coming back?”
“Of course, I am.”
Those words were spoken a lifetime ago.
“We wrote. We visited. Ya didn’t even want to come to Dad’s funeral. How could ya turn yer back on us, Punky? Ye were all we had.”
Connor’s funeral. I’d forgotten about that. I hope he and Uncle Sean had the sendoff they deserved.
“And that’s the reason so. I’m nothin’. I offer ye nothin’ but trouble. Yer better off without me.”
She narrows her eyes, and at this moment, I see her—the stubborn six-year-old I left behind without an explanation as to why. I broke her heart.
“Ach, that’s fucking bullshit!” she spits, her anger also growing with age, it seems. “No one told us what happened. Ya just disappeared. D’ya know how that feels? The day Dad died, ya died with him. We lost everythin’.”
I do understand how that feels because that’s what happened to me when my ma died. And I did the same thing to the twins. I’m ashamed.
But her comment has me arching a brow.
“What d’ye mean?” That wasn’t supposed to happen.
