My Name Is Rowan: The Complete Rowan Slone Trilogy

by Tracy Hewitt Meyer

  DAN MET Gran at the door, helping her inside so she didn’t slip on the wet tile. Her hair was drenched from the rain. She had no coat, no umbrella. She’d been crying. Hard. Her eyes were red, her cheeks and lips pale, almost blue. She looked like someone in shock.

  “Rowan…” She stopped at the door. “Did you tell her?” Her voice was strained, choked as she looked at Mike and Jess.

  He nodded, his face tight. “We told her. She knows the truth now, but she needs to hear it from you.”

  Gran blinked several times.

  No one spoke for several minutes. The whirl of the fan was the only sound. I didn’t drop my eyes from Gran’s, but I also wasn’t sure if I was seeing her either. Mike had said something about Aidan. About my mom. And I didn’t want to hear anymore. But I couldn’t turn away.

  “It was your mom,” she whispered finally, so softly I’m not sure I heard her. “Rowan, I’m so sorry.” She clutched her heart and started to sob.

  “What was my mom, Gran?” I demanded. Mike moved to my side, putting an arm around me. “What are you talking about?” My heart pounded like a bass drum. My hands broke out in a sweat and I clenched my shirt to stop the trembling.

  “Your mom, honey. She was responsible for Aidan’s death. Not you.”

  “I…I don’t understand what you’re saying.” My brain wouldn’t work; wouldn’t open and allow her words to seep in.

  Gran wiped her tears and they didn’t replenish, but they didn’t need to. Her distress was written all over her face. In the deep lines of her wrinkles. In the creases at her eyes. In the hardness of her lips. Her shoulders shook with each breath she inhaled.

  I resisted the urge to reach out to her. This was my Gran. My beloved Gran. She was hurting. Bad. And I never wanted to see my Gran hurt. But something stopped me. A need, far greater than any other I’d ever experienced, bubbled deep inside me. I needed to hear these words. I didn’t want to hear these words. These words would kill me. Or kill Gran. Or create a crater underneath our feet and swallow us all alive.

  “Can we talk? Alone?” She wrung her hands on her shirt.

  “No.” It was Jess who spoke. “Not alone.”

  Gran’s shoulders slumped and she looked down. Just then, she looked like a ninety-year-old woman, far older than sixty-seven.

  “Your mother smothered Aidan that night. She killed your brother, Rowan. Not you.”

  “What are you saying?” I demanded, my brain opening just a little.

  “She told me the next day. After they took Aidan’s body away.” She held her hands out toward me, palms facing upward. “She snapped. Something in her snapped.”

  Dan spoke next. “Do you mean to tell me that her mother was responsible for his death? That her mother, Rowan’s mother, killed the baby? On purpose?”

  My legs gave way and Mike caught me before I fell.

  Gran’s lip quivered. She looked around, her eyes pleading for help. She wouldn’t get any here, though.

  “Gran?” Hysteria bubbled through my blood.

  Her shoulders lifted and fell. “I’m sorry. Rowan, I’m so sorry. I thought I could save you both.” She pulled in a quivering breath. “I thought you would be okay. That she would be okay if we handled it this way.”

  “It’s true?” I fought to stay upright as the floor moved in waves under my feet. “Aidan dying wasn’t my fault?”

  She shook her head, quickly, as if she didn’t want me to see it. “Aidan dying wasn’t your fault,” she whispered.

  “But…but…why? Why did I think it was all these years? Gran?” My voice echoed off the walls in ear-piercing octaves.

  “Rowan,” Gran stammered.

  Words did not form inside my brain. Instead, filling up the insides was a flaming pit of red. Of rage.

  I stared at her for a long, devastating time. She cowered under my stare, shrinking into herself; shrinking away from me.

  “My mom killed Aidan and let me take the blame?” Each word was like a little bomb going off.

  She pulled in a shuddering breath and finally nodded her head that yes, Mom had killed my baby brother and yes, she’d let me take the blame.

  I BOLTED through the door and was in my car before anyone could stop me. Just as I put my foot on the gas, Mike jumped into the passenger seat. He hadn’t even closed the door before I peeled out of the parking lot.

  The tires screeched across the wet pavement. My fingers were white against the steering wheel. The gas pedal was all the way to the floor and the wheel shook under my grasp. Rain pelted the windshield, the wiper blades slapping furiously.

  “Rowan, let me drive.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Rowan, slow down. You’re going too fast.”

  I didn’t ease up on the pressure.

  “Rowan!” His voice was like a whip.

  I glanced from the road to his face and eased my foot off the gas, letting the car slow down to just above the speed limit.

  “Where are we going?” He leaned forward in the seat.

  I knew where I was going; he just happened to be along for the ride. The silence in the car comforted me, helped me focus on the road so I didn’t bother to answer him. Words did nothing but upset the natural balance of things. Words brought nothing but heartache and pain.

  The tires skidded as I yanked the wheel and turned toward the hospital. My mom was standing outside the entrance to the emergency room, just under the overhang. She held a soda bottle in one hand and a candy bar in another.

  I slammed on the brakes and shoved the car into park, leaving it in the middle of the road.

  “Rowan, stop!” Mike’s fingers brushed against my arm as I darted out of the car. But he was too late. He didn’t get a grip.

  Mom turned when she heard Mike yelling. Her overweight body was huddled inside one of her worn sweaters. She looked sloppy, fat, ugly.

  “Is it true?” My screaming voice pierced the quiet. “Are you the one who killed Aidan? You killed Aidan?”

  I was on her now, and her eyes were wide, afraid. As they should be. My own felt crazed as fury tore through me. I shoved her and she stumbled backwards. She caught herself on the bench.

  “Did you kill Aidan?” I lurched over her.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” someone said.

  “Go get the police,” someone else said.

  “Rowan!” Mike ran up. He grabbed my arms but I wrenched myself free.

  “Is it true?” My face was inches from hers. Emotion tore through me with the force of a hurricane.

  This can’t be true.

  This can’t be true.

  This can’t be true.

  I grabbed her sweater in my fists and shook. “Aidan’s death is not my fault?”

  She was crying, tears and snot running down her red, swollen face.

  “Rowan!” Mike yelled. “Stop!”

  A crowd gathered around.

  “It’s not my fault?” I screamed into her face. “Is it true?” I shook her again. “Is it true?”

  She would’ve collapsed, fallen onto the concrete, but I held onto her sweater, shaking her back and forth like an enormous doll. I couldn’t let go. My hands were gripped so tight onto her sweater that even the officer who grabbed me from behind couldn’t get my hands loose.

  “I hate you!”

  Blubbering sobs poured from her lips and in an instant, I released her sweater and clenched my fingers around her throat.

  “Let go of her!” a deep male voice shouted in my ear. “Let go of her now!”

  “She killed my brother!” I squeezed her throat.

  Arms that were like iron clamps yanked at me until Mom was ripped out of my hands. These same arms snapped me off my feet. I hung in the air, feet kicking and hands clawing at my mom.

  “Stop!” the officer boomed.

  Another officer was by my mom’s side. Mike stood in the space between us, his hands out and his eyes wide.

  “What’s going on here?” demanded the officer holding me.r />
  A police cruiser pulled up, flashing lights bouncing off the side of the building.

  Two more officers got out and ran toward us.

  I stopped struggling and my rage settled into my eyes, shooting daggers full of poison at my mom.

  “Look at me!” When she wouldn’t, I shouted, “You did this!”

  But she wouldn’t lift her eyes to mine. I crumbled in the officer’s arms. My hands dangled to my sides. My shoulders hunched. And I cried so hard I wasn’t aware of anything else as the magnitude of what my mother had done, and my Gran had covered, washed over me.

  I SAT on the bench, my head in my hands. At some point, one minute ago, one hour ago, I didn’t know which, Mom left with two of the officers. My hearing wasn’t working, though. There was nothing passing by my eardrums but a vibrating void, a noiseless noise that was so loud, I couldn’t hear anything else.

  But my eyes were working fine and I watched as Gran crossed the parking lot and walked toward me. She wore a raincoat now, but the hood didn’t protect her from the rain as it washed over her face. Or maybe it was tears. Or maybe I didn’t really give a damn.

  Jess walked behind her, her cherry hair soaked and matted to her face. Gran stumbled on the sidewalk. Jess caught her before she fell. Gran looked so old, so very old. She stopped in front of me.

  I glared at her, and shoved my hands in my hoodie pockets. Between my thumb and my forefinger was the thin, silver razor blade.

  Her lips were moving and her hands were held out toward me. But all I could hear was a cartoon kind of sound. Something like, wa wawawa wa. I pulled my hood over my head and turned away.

  Finally she moved over to speak to the officer standing nearby. I didn’t hear a single word of their conversation and I didn’t try to. Mike sat by my side, his arm around my shoulders. But I didn’t feel it. I just knew, like I knew the sun was up there somewhere.

  I finally dug my nails into my palms to see if I could feel it; but I felt nothing, regardless of how hard I pressed. When I bit my lip, I tasted blood but felt no pain.

  “I’ll be back.” I jumped up.

  “Where–?” Gran started to ask but stopped at the look on my face.

  “Miss,” started an officer, “where are you going?”

  “To the bathroom,” I spat.

  I slipped through the automatic glass doors, an officer close behind, and into the overly bright waiting room. I darted into the bathroom.

  It was quiet inside of the stall. The metal wall was cold against the heat of my palm and I rested it there for a long time–taking in, then releasing, deep breaths. My mind cleared. The anticipation built with each breath I took; the anticipation of the oncoming release. By the time I slipped my hand into my pocket and pulled out the cold, sharp razor blade, I was almost giddy.

  At first I didn’t feel anything. Just release. Just simple, pleasant release. I sighed. Tiny dots of blood bubbled along the line. The pain set in. The pain felt good. There was nothing else. Nothing but the pain and the release of that pain.

  I exhaled, emptying my lungs until they hurt. Then I made another clean cut, connected to the other one at the end, to form a ‘V.’ This one was a little deeper and the shot of pain made my breath catch. My eyes teared. Finally, and with a quick slice, I connected the lines into a crooked, ‘A,’ unmistakable in the midst of other cuts.

  I pulled out several squares of toilet paper and wiped off the razor. I threw it into the waste basket hanging on the wall. Then I pulled more paper and held it against my arm, applying pressure until the blood stopped.

  “WE HAVE a few questions to ask you.” Officer Randall sat across from me in the living room. It was nearly eleven at night and I was at home. Levi sat at my feet. Scout was curled in my lap. Mike sat to my right. Jess to my left.

  Gran was in the kitchen, acting like she was making sandwiches. Mom was still down at the police station and I didn’t know if or when she would be back. And I didn’t care.

  “Okay.” I pulled my sleeves from my wrists down over my hands and rubbed Scout’s head. Since my time in the bathroom at the hospital, I felt calmer, with a greater hold on my thoughts and my emotions. Basically, I felt numb, and that’s exactly what I needed to feel to make it through this discussion.

  “What do you remember of the night your brother died?”

  My mouth opened, prepared to relive that harrowing time. The words swirled around, and instead of becoming a jumbled mass of pain, they settled into sentences, memories, words.

  “Mom and Dad had a fight. Dad left, saying he was coming back the next day to get Aidan. He was going to leave Mom and me and Trina.”

  He glanced up at me from his notepad.

  “Mom went to bed and locked the door. I didn’t see her again that night.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Ten.”

  “Your sister,” he looked down at his notes, “Trina?”

  “Eight.”

  “Was anyone else here to watch you?”

  “No.”

  “And where was the baby? Aidan?” He glanced at his notes again.

  “In his crib, asleep. Dad said he’d come back the next morning and he wanted Aidan ready.”

  “Did he say anything to you girls as he left?”

  “No. He didn’t talk much to us in general and didn’t say anything that night.” My words flowed on autopilot, completely buried in the past. If someone would have asked me what color the officer’s uniform was, I wouldn’t have been able to say. I didn’t see him. I saw the house as it was seven years ago. I saw that and nothing else.

  He flipped to a clean page in his notebook.

  “Then what happened?”

  “Mom stayed in bed all night. At one point Aidan woke up. It was time for his bottle. I made him a bottle, changed his diaper and rocked him back to sleep.” A twinge of pride flickered in my heart. I had cared for him the right way. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Maybe I had even done a good job.

  “I put him back in his bed. Trina and I went to bed soon after that.”

  “Did Aidan wake up again?”

  The black mass of pain wound its way into the appropriate box, where it would have to stay if I were to finish this conversation. And I realized I very much needed to finish it; to tell my story.

  “No.” I swallowed and rubbed the ‘A,’ safely hidden under the sleeve of my shirt. It was sore and I was careful not to reopen the cuts, not wanting to bleed through my clothes. “He didn’t wake back up. By the morning, he was…dead.”

  Gran hovered nearby, wringing her hands. I didn’t look at her. I didn’t need to. Mike had his arm around my shoulders. I huddled in his warmth, his security. Jess was rubbing my leg. I glanced down at the nail polish that always looked so perfectly chipped, I wondered if she’d done it on purpose.

  “Did you put a blanket on him?”

  I patted the ‘A.’ “Yes. I didn’t cover his face, though. I put the blanket over his lower body.” I wanted to say the details. That I was careful; careful to not cover his face. I had studied that blanket for several minutes, judging that if he turned, would the blanket ride up or fall down. I had determined it would fall down toward his feet. And for all of these years, I thought I was wrong, devastatingly wrong.

  “How heavy was the blanket? Is it still here?”

  I shuddered. That blanket. That damned blanket. I hadn’t seen it since that morning. “It was…it was…” I tried to mentally take measure of the blanket. It wasn’t a baby’s blanket; being a little larger than that. But it wasn’t the size of a twin bed’s blanket either. And it was thin. Thin, but bigger than the crib. I had bunched it up at the bottom to make sure it didn’t cover his face.

  “It was bigger than a baby’s blanket,” I finally pushed out. “But smaller than a full size.”

  “And what happened the next morning?”

  “He was dead.”

  Levi curled his head back to look at me. His large chocolate eyes were wide and searchin
g. I scratched his chin. Scout nipped at my fingers.

  Officer Randall looked down at his notes, reading words someone else had already told him. Were they Mom’s? Gran’s? Had they interviewed Dad? Had they even found him?

  What would he think about this? Did he know his wife was capable of murder? And that she was capable of laying the blame on her daughter?

  After several moments of silence, he asked, “And what were you told happened?”

  My shrug was painful. Scout licked my finger and I tried to smile. I really did. But I couldn’t. There was not enough inside of me to push my lips upward. “I was told he died of SIDS. That it was the blanket. That he’d gotten overheated.”

  “And who told you this?” The other officer, Officer Schmidt her name tag read, finally spoke.

  “My mom.”

  She nodded and Officer Randall looked down at his notes.

  “Was there any discussion of other possibilities? That some foul play could’ve been involved?”

  I shook my head. “No. There wasn’t. Not with me. When they found out he had a blanket on…he was only two months old…and the autopsy didn’t…I don’t know. Nothing else was ever said. That I know of.”

  “And you believed all this time that you were the one responsible?”

  Mike’s arm tightened around me. Levi sat up straight and stared at the officer. Gran had eased into the room and stood at the armrest of the sofa. Jess turned to look at me, my hand now in hers.

  “Yes. I was led to believe that I was the one responsible for Aidan’s death.” I stared at Gran as I said these words. The expression on her face was unreadable.

  I scratched my nail over the top of my shirt, catching the wound against the fabric. I felt the skin and its fragile new scab tear. I placed my palm over my shirt and sat there in silence until the officers left and Gran went down the hall.

  The officers gave Jess a ride home. I could tell she didn’t want to leave. That her heart was broken. That she felt my pain. It was written in her heavily-lined blue eyes, the tears that dwelled there, illuminating them. It was written in the soft touch of her hand.

  But she had to go home. And I was okay with that. I didn’t want there to be any problems with her dad for her being out late.