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“Why are they on timeout?” I ask instead of trying to call out her evasion tactics.
I can tell she doesn’t want to answer, but her need to please runs deep. There’s a little amount of pride over her resisting this long. She’s been conditioned for so long to listen or have abuse thrown at her. She was so docile and not childlike in the slightest when we first started caring for her. This slight bit of defiance is just proof that she is growing out of her trauma. That she feels safe enough with us to misbehave.
“There's food in our playroom,” she finally relents.
“I see,” I hum as if in thought. “And Grandma Charlene has a rule about that, doesn’t she?”
Roe nods, not trying to deny it. She scrunches up her little nose as she meets my eyes. “We just wanted to save it and bring the bunnies back,” she exclaims all of a sudden.
Okay, well not where I thought this was going. We can deal with the bunnies in a second. First things first. “We?”
She stays silent but her whole body tenses in my arms. After a few moments she nods. “The old house had bunnies but there are no bunnies here. We just thought that maybe if we put food out, the bunnies would come back. That’s it. We didn’t mean to be bad. I just wanted to see the bunnies.”
I don’t respond, looking up at the others. I’m not even entirely sure how to respond. I don’t want to yell at her for lying. I don’t think I’m even capable of that. Before I can worry too much about it, Scar steps in and pulls Rowan from my arms.
Tears immediately spring into our little girl’s eyes as she looks at her mom. Scar chuckles lightly, holding her tightly against her chest. “Let’s talk, Roe baby. Okay?”
“Okay,” she sniffles as she wipes her nose. Scar coaches her through taking a few deep breaths until she isn’t crying anymore.
“Now before we talk about the bunnies,” Scar starts, “let’s talk about when Grandma Charlene found the food.” She waits for Roe to nod again before she continues. “Why did only the boys get put in timeout and not you?”
Tears fill her eyes again, but she catches herself, taking another deep breath. It doesn’t stop the tears from spilling over through. Scar gently wipes them away while she waits for an answer. “I knew mommy and the daddies were coming,” she says through her tears. “Kai, Trev, and Cal told Grandma it was their idea to surprise me, but I knew too.” Her little body shakes with her cries as she tells the truth. “I didn’t want to be on timeout when Mommy got here,” she admits.
Scar holds her tightly as Roe cries on her shoulder. It’s clear she had a lot of big emotions over the whole thing. I’m happy Scar stepped in when she did, cause there was no way I would have been able to continue the conversation once the tears appeared.
Scar waits until Roe has settled back down a little bit. “It feels pretty yucky to have the boys in timeout for something you all did though, right? You know that you should be in timeout too and now you have bad feelings?”
Roe gives her huge nods as she wipes the snot from her nose again.
“So what do you think we should do?” Scar asks.
Roe drops her little head as she stares at her feet. “Go on timeout too.”
“That’s right, sweet girl. Let’s go put you in timeout and we can talk about the bunnies when you’re all done. Okay?”
“Deal, Momma,” she whispers.
She goes off without another word, heading down the hallways to where her bedroom is. Little sniffles sound out until we hear the door shut behind her. Collectively we all let out our breath, smiling and shaking our heads.
“Why is she so fucking adorable?” Kade laments. “Do you know how hard it was to keep a straight face?”
Declan snorts but doesn’t bother responding. Charlene chuckles again. “She’s been feeling guilty ever since those boys took the fall for her. I’ve been waiting for her to break.”
Jade walks into the room, her amusement clear. “Roe finally crack?”
“Like an egg,” Scar jokes back. Ian steps in behind her only a moment later.
“It was sweet the boys didn’t want her to get into trouble, but they were not slick in the slightest,” he laughs.
“I’ve had my suspicions that Roe is the mastermind behind a lot of their little plans,” Jade admits.
Scar puts her face in her hands, trying not to laugh and failing. She looks up at each one of us. “Are we raising a little dictator?”
I smirk. “She gets it from her momma.” She flips me off from across the room. Just then a timer goes off and Charlene sends Ian to go get the boys from their timeout.
Each one runs out of their separate rooms and heads straight for us. Each one looks around, confused when they see all of us here but no sign of Roe. They must not have heard her little breakdown where she told the truth.
Charlene gives each of them a stern look.
