Black (Clashing Colors Book 1) (10 page)

“Like make pictures for the walls?”

“Yes… why not?”

“Sure, what kind of pictures would you like?”

“Whatever you feel inspired to make,” he replied. “Just tell me what you need. We already have some art supplies here and if you need more I can get them for you.”

Cia looked intrigued. “I just need large pieces of good-quality paper and quality pencils,”

“But what if I wanted some pictures in colors, could you do that?”

“I don’t know, I’ve only ever worked with pencils”

Bruce smiled. “Then this will be a challenge for you.”

Cia was quiet for a few seconds before she spoke. “I think I could do it.”

“Wonderful. Therese can show you where we keep our art supplies,” he said and got up from the chair. “Also, since you are now five years old, it might be fun for you to take a hike with your father. Nature here is breathtaking.”

“What about boots?” I asked since Cia only had sneakers on.

“I’m sure her black boots will do fine for a hike; I’ll have them brought to your cabin,” Bruce said and got up to leave. “Enjoy your day; I’ll see you at dinner.” 

“I’ve been dying to hike ever since we got here,” I said and was pleased when Cia seemed as eager about the idea as I did.

Ten minutes later we set off with a water bottle each and big smiles. I was holding Cia’s hand and she didn’t object. It was crazy to think how much she had moved mentally in the last forty-eight hours.

“I think I already have an idea for a painting,” Cia said and whistled happily.

“Wanna tell me about it?”

“Nope, I’m just starting to see it in my head… you’ll have to wait for the finished painting.”

We walked for about an hour and spoke mostly about nature and my memories of being a recruit and doing survival drills in the forest.

“They really had you walk through ice-cold water?”

“Yes. Carrying our bags above the water. One of my pals lost his balance and got ducked under with his backpack.”

“Oh no.”

I grinned. “He had no dry clothes for days.”

“How is that funny? Didn’t he get sick?”

“It’s not funny, but shit like that happens in the army and you learn how to deal with it.”

“Yeah, I can relate to the dealing with shit part,” she said. “I spent my first four days as a homeless person on a park bench and it rained every night.”

“And you were only a child.”

“I was fourteen and scared shitless.”

“Was there something specific that made you run away?”

I knew the answer instinctively from the look on her face.
Yes
, there had been something specific, but she closed down on me and wouldn’t answer.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

When she tried to walk away, I grabbed her wrist and pulled her into my arms. “Hey, I’m sorry, but whatever happened, it’s over now… no one is going to hurt you anymore. I promise”  

If I had done this yesterday, I know she would have pushed me away, but today she didn’t. Instead she stood passively and allowed me to hold her tight.

“Do you want to go back?” I asked her after a minute. There was no reason to push my luck, and I understood that she was already far out of her comfort zone.

When we walked back I said, “I almost forgot, that guy Mark came over to talk to me while you were drawing. We agreed that you two girls can have a play date after dinner tonight.”

“Did you now?” she said dryly.

“Yes, I wanted to ask you but he said that a father doesn’t ask a five-year-old for her opinion and that it would be fun for both of you.”

“Huh.”

“You wanna hear something funny?”

“What?”

“He literally asked me if you play nice.” I laughed. “As if you were some sort of danger to his daughter or a dog that might bite his precious poodle.”

Cia rolled her eyes. “That guy takes this role-playing thing way too seriously.”

“I know, but now that we are getting used to it, though, it’s not so bad.” I pulled her under my arm and used my knuckles to rub the top of her head. “Although you’ll never feel like a daughter to me… more like a fun little sister.”

She gave me a playful elbow to my ribs. “First of all, you big dork, I’m not fun, and I’m not your little sister. I’m not even your real niece.”

“I know, but you let me call you Candy, and Sugar, and Sweetie and stuff, and I like that.”

“I would never let you call me any of that in real life, you know that, right?”

I grinned. “Yeah, I figured that much.”

“Good, just wanted to make that clear.”

“Pull my finger,” I said with an earnest expression.

“Why?” she asked with confusion on her face.

“Just pull it,” I said and leaned forward.

She did it and I don’t know what was bigger, my grin or my fart, but I was clapping my hands, amused at how naïve she was.

Cia placed her hands on her hips but smiled. “Very funny.”

  “Ohh, come on, every dad does that joke with his kid – you can’t go through a simulated childhood without being fooled at least once. I can’t tell you how many times I pulled my dad’s finger.”

“Why would you do it more than once if you knew what was going to happen?” she asked.

“Because it was fun and it was our thing… you know. Didn’t anyone ever pull that trick on you?”

She shook her head. “No, my mom never did that.”

“Didn’t your mom have any boyfriends?”

Her smile vanished and a dark cloud fell on her face. “Yes, she had boyfriends.”

I knew I had stumbled on a bomb in that minefield Bruce had described as her childhood. And I wasn’t so sure I had the right safety equipment to detonate it, so I carefully withdrew to a safe topic and asked her how old she would guess the trees in this part of the forest to be.

CHAPTER 10

The Play Date

Cia

“Hey, I’m Anna, I’m seven,” the woman said and gave me a good long looking-over.

“I’m Cia and I’m supposed to be five, I think.”

“Do you want to play with Barbies?” she asked.

“No, not really – how about a board game?” I suggested and couldn’t believe Anna actually broke into a pout.

“Daddy,” she cried out, “Cia doesn’t want to play with Barbies.” 

What the hell?

Mark, who was sitting close by and talking with Gabriel looked over. “Sweetie, try to find a compromise, maybe you can play ten minutes of Barbie and then do what Cia wants to do.”

“No, Daddy, I don’t want to compromise,” she pouted.

“Baby, I want you to be a good girl. You know what happens to naughty girls.”

Anna lowered her eyes. “Yes, Daddy,” she said in a tiny voice.

I was still temporarily in shock that she was so invested in the role-play but agreed to compromise and picked up a male doll that she handed me.

“You can be Ken and I’ll be Barbie,” she said.

“Okay, what do you want me to do?”

“Well I don’t know, you’re the man, you’re in charge.”

“Excuse me?”

“Hi, Ken, how was your day, would you like something to drink or maybe a massage before dinner?” she said in an annoyingly high-pitched voice. 

Okay, here’s my two cents. The brilliant thing about playing with a person who is a cuckoo is that you can have fun with it. I made my best imitation of a deep male voice and said; “Hey, Barbie, honey bunny, you look good. I don’t want anything, my dear, except maybe to rub your feet and make sure you feel good… would you like me to cook dinner tonight?”

Anna shot me a displeased gaze but continued in that horrible voice.

“Oh no, Ken darling, you know my greatest joy is to please you, my dear. I made your favorite meal and I was thinking I could run you a hot bath.”

“Only if you come with me, ha ha,” I laughed in my deepest voice, trying not to crack up over the stupidity of two grown women playing with dolls.

“Sure, I’ll come with you and do that thing you like so much,” Anna purred.

“Oh, you mean wash my hair,” I said a wiggled the doll from side to side.

“No, that other thing,” Anna said amorously.

Eww!
I threw Ken down. “I don’t want to play this game. It’s stupid.”

“No, it’s not,” Anna said and tried to make me pick Ken up again.

“If you want to play, we can find a board game or something,” I said and felt damn proud for setting my personal boundaries. I don’t know in which disturbed reality Anna lives, but I’m not stupid and I have no interest in playing a porn version of Barbie and Ken for her amusement.

She pouted but agreed to play Candy Land.

“Daddy,” she called out to Mark. “We need more players – can you and Cia’s daddy come and play with us?”

“What do you say, sweetie?” Mark said in a very strict parental voice.

“Please, Daddy.”

I swear the look of male pride that Mark shot at Gabriel made me want to vomit. I don’t know what kind of problems Anna had, but I doubted they could be fixed in two weeks. That woman had to learn how to stand up for herself, because it creeped me out how Mark acted like her goddamn owner or something.

“Good girl. Yes, we’ll play with you,” Mark said and joined us at the small table where I had already spread out the game.

“Your Daddy told me you went to the woods today,” Mark said to me with a smile.

“Uh-huh,” I answered, picked my first card, and moved three steps forward.

“And as I explained to him, we like the woods too,” he lowered his voice. “There are no cameras.”

I honestly didn’t know the hidden meaning of his words but I gave him a strained smile.

“Your Daddy mentioned he is looking forward to a bit of private time, and I offered to babysit you if needed.”

Gabriel at least had the decency to try and dismiss that comment, but I knew it was true. Gabriel and Therese had been flirting since we arrived and he wanted to be alone with her. Most likely because he wanted to have sex with her.

I clenched my jaw and played the board game, but I didn’t talk except short answers to direct questions.

I was happy when it was time to go to bed but more than ever I wished I could be alone. For someone like me, who is used to being alone eighty percent of the time, being with others constantly drains me.

I wished I could pause this stupid program and take a time-out to catch up to all the emotions inside me. Especially my jealousy toward Therese.

I had no right to feel possessive about Gabriel – it was lame – but try to explain that to the knot in your belly.

“Do you want a bath?” Gabriel asked me when we were back in the cabin.

“No,” I said and curled up under the blanket still fully dressed. I didn’t even want him to undress me or brush my teeth. I just wanted to be left alone.

“What’s wrong?” he asked and sat down next to me.

“Nothing, I’m just tired.”

“Hey, if I said something wrong, tell me.”

I shrugged his hand off me and pulled the blanket over my head, trying desperately to stop my tears.

But I couldn’t.

From deep inside my wounded soul, heartbreaking sounds of sorrow broke through and I had a complete meltdown, sobbing in a fetal position.

At first Gabriel tried to comfort me and when that didn’t work, I heard him call Bruce, asking what to do, but even that didn’t stop me.

I cried like… a five-year-old.

⦓∞
⦔

Gabriel

I had been warned about this, and knew it was to be expected. Still, to see it actually happen was worse than I could have ever imagined.

Cia was falling apart and I couldn’t reach her. She was sobbing her eyes out, and after being with her for days it was impossible not to be deeply affected by her pain.

I didn’t know what else to do but call Bruce.

He told me to let her cry and meet him outside the cabin.

When I closed the door behind me and took a seat on the small porch, I felt like the biggest piece of shit.

Two minutes later Bruce came walking calmly toward me and sat down with a satisfied smile.

“How can you look so happy when Cia is lying in there crying?” I asked. I really didn’t like the guy at that moment.

“I’m happy for her, because we’re finally at the point in her regression where some of the pain is stored. This is what we’ve been looking for.”

“What do you mean? Are you saying that you’ve been waiting for her to break down? What are you, a sadist?”

He chuckled. “No I’m not a sadist. But you need to understand that before every breakthrough there is a breakdown.”

“Why?”

“That’s not important. It’s just how it is. When Cia was a small girl she faced situations she couldn’t cope or deal with, things that were painful or frightening.”

“Didn’t we all?” I asked.

“Yes. I want you to think of a child finding something so frightening that they store it in an inner closet and slam the door shut. For years the child doesn’t dare to open that closet, and in time they forget what is actually in there and only remember that’s it’s something terrifying.”

“All right.” I had followed him this far.

“Now, our job is to empower Cia to open those rattling closets and confront whatever she has stored in there.”

“How?”

“That depends on what is in there. But I can tell you that for the most part it’s not half as frightening as people fear. You see, when we go back as adults and take a look at the frightening memory we have a different perspective and a new cognitive understanding. Let’s say that the sound of dogs barking always makes you uncomfortable and you don’t know why, since you like dogs in general. When we dive down you realize that as a child you were told something traumatic, such as your parents announcing their divorce or telling you that someone has died, and at the same time the neighbor’s dog barked like crazy… years later you are left with that uncomfortable feeling every time you hear a barking dog even though you don’t remember why.”

“Okay, that make sense, I guess, but then what do I do about it?”

“As an adult you’re able to cognitively separate the two and once you understand the reason, you can remind yourself that it’s just a dog barking and it means nothing to you.”

“But how do we find out why Cia is crying?” I said with a dampened soundtrack of her sobbing from inside the cabin.

Bruce smiled. “We ask her, of course.”

“But what if she doesn’t know?”

He arched a brow. “She might not know, but her body remembers and it will tell her if she listens.”

“So what do I do now?”

“You wait.”

“For what?”

“For her to be ready to talk.”

“And when is that?”

“When she is calm and has digested all the sadness and fear that is running through her right now. She can’t talk at the moment, and you should never seek to have a rational conversation with someone who is upset – they’re not open to dialogue. My guess is that right now she just wants to be alone.”

“So no bath tonight?”

“No, not unless she calms down and accepts your closeness. You don’t want to overstep her boundaries.”

“Is that a joke? I’ve been overstepping her boundaries ever since we got here,” I said.

“Yes, well, sometimes it serves a purpose, but now we’re on the right track and we need to give her time.”

It sounded like the sobbing had slowed down.

Bruce patted my shoulder. “She’ll feel better tomorrow, you’ll see.”

A bird landed on the ground in front of us and distracted us for a few seconds before it took off again.

“I think something happened with her mom’s boyfriend,” I said. “She got jumpy today when I asked about it.”

Bruce tilted his head. “Interesting; good to know.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know what happened.”

“It’s good that you’re watching for clues. Remember we’re looking for hidden bombs, and something happened tonight to set off one from her early childhood. This could be important.”   

Bruce left and I went back inside the cabin. At that time Cia was no longer sobbing but quietly sniffling.

I didn’t speak but brushed my teeth and climbed into bed without a word. For a few minutes I lay there wondering what to do; my instinct told me to offer my support, so I tested the waters by placing a hand on her back. She didn’t jerk or shrug it off so I stroked her gently and then I moved a bit closer. 

When I tried to pull at her shoulder she stiffened. She didn’t want to turn around and face me, and I could respect that.

Instead I just brushed her arm gently, up and down, while humming that lullaby from the other night.

It didn’t take more than five minutes before I could tell from her breathing that she had fallen asleep.

I had a ton of questions in my head and wasn’t so sure I agreed with Bruce that tomorrow would make for an interesting day. I felt pretty shitty and afraid that something I had done or said had caused this reaction.