Her Safe Haven

Chapter 5 - Jonah and Rohan's Discussion

Previously on Her Safe Haven: Dean and Winter introduced the school to Rohan Garrison. Rohan found out that Winter was mute, and Winter was scared that Rohan might cancel the sponsorship because of it. At the end of the chapter, Winter was shocked to find that Rohan could speak sign language.

'You know sign language?'

He shrugged, "I learn a few words now and then."

'Then why didn't you tell me before!' she grinned. Her face quickly lighting up.

Rohan stared at her for a few seconds before shrugging again. "I... didn't know how."

She inwardly squealed. 'This is great! Now I can talk to you freely without an interpreter!'

Dean returned at that moment with the other two guests, Lennox and Jacob, and their escorts.

The rest of the afternoon, as far as Winter could tell, passed by smoothly. Though it was easy to say that she had been overjoyed. If her guest knew sign language, gone was her worry that he would think badly of her and cancel the sponsorship.

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"You never told me about her."

The sun outside was setting. He saw some people still running on the running track and the soccer field below, bathed with the orange rays of the sun. Compared to Dews Private High, Lakeside definitely had a warmer side to it, he decided.

Jonah looked up from the accounts book and tilted his head. "Huh?"

"The escort," he said from his seat at the windowsill, "the McHalen girl."

Jonah frowned. He closed the cap to his pen and sighed. "Her case is different from yours, Rohan."

Rohan shifted his eyes to look at him. "Case? So she wasn't born mute?"

Jonah's eyes widened and he gulped, "uh... Heh, well, you know..." his eyes wandered around the room as he looked for a topic for distraction, but he came up with none. Finally, he sighed and stood up, walking to sit at a chair next to the windowsill. "No, she wasn't."

Rohan looked at him quietly, signalling for him to go on. Jonah shifted uncomfortably on his chair and stood up, leaning back on the windowsill and looking out at the school yard.

The rest of the student council had gone home for the day, and Jacob and Lennox had been asked to have dinner with their respective escorts, along with Dean and Winter. Since Jonah had some extra work to do, Rohan decided to stay behind with him in the council room.

"I don't really know what happened except from what I've heard," Jonah started, eyes glued on the window. "When she was six, her family was living in China for business. They were living near Beijing when one day Winter was... kidnapped."

"So it's not medical-related?" Rohan turned to look at him in surprise.

Jonah shook his head. "No... But none of us really knew what happened. Her brother, Gray, told me that Winter never said anything about the incident. The police also couldn't figure out anything. Winter was kidnapped one day and found seven days after; no ransom, no phone calls, nothing.

"It's just that when she was found after the police had tracked her down, she was unconscious. When she woke up, she refused to meet anyone except her mom, and she refused to speak anything to anyone. Her mother then asked only for female doctors and nurses to care for her because she had... seemingly developed a fear of men.

"Only after two weeks did she agree to meet her father and brothers. Even then, she still wouldn't make a sound. The doctors found nothing wrong with her vocal cords, and so they asked a psychiatrist to see her. Every time the psychiatrist asked her to talk she would either cry or stay silent. The psychiatrist then decided that she must have been traumatised during her kidnapping, resulting in her fear of men and of... other things, one of them includes speaking.

"Her father was enraged," Jonah made a small bitter chuckle. "The whole family quickly moved back to the US after her doctors discharged her. I met her around three months after that, when my family first moved to Lakeside. Since her family and friends consist of mainly males, it seems that it was relatively easy for her to overcome her fear of men.

"But she remains mute until today... And until today she never speaks of that incident," Jonah trailed, gazing straight ahead out the window. He noticed a small dead leaf falling off the branch of a large tree in front of him — in the middle of Spring, nonetheless — and smiled bitterly as he thought of how the scene matched the sombre atmosphere.

Rohan shifted his gaze back to the window. "She's a McHalen," he said, his eyebrows creasing slightly, "whatever happened to the vast amount of bodyguards I heard about?"

Jonah chuckled. "Back then their father wasn't as paranoid as now," he said, "and the small amount of bodyguards they did have seemed to be useless, too. Gray told me that Winter just sort of... disappeared."

Rohan raised his eyebrows. "Disappeared?"

"Yeah," Jonah said, scratching his head to recall Gray and Caleb's recount of the incident. "She was taking a walk at the local park with her oldest brother, Caleb. One minute she asked to go to the restroom. Three guards and her brother stood guarding in front of the restroom. The next thing they knew, she never went out."

The furrow on his eyebrows deepened. Rohan tried to think of the many possibilities that may have chanced inside the small restroom in that park: secret exits, disguises... the possibilities were endless. "Did they find out who the kidnapper was?"

Jonah frowned. "No... but they suspected it was someone from her father's rival company; though they couldn't really make arrests due to lack of evidence."

Rohan stared back out the window. There seemed to be many peculiarities with the recount, but it was too hard to tell — neither he nor Jonah was there to witness the incident.

Jonah looked at him and chuckled. "It's quite unusual of you to be asking about a girl, Rohan," he grinned and gave a pretend gasp, "don't tell me you've fallen for my Winter?"

Rohan scoffed lightly. "It's not that," he said, seeing how absurd that possibility was. After all, he was never interested in things other than school, work, and business before, especially not in trivial things such as love and relationships. "It's just unusual for me to see children of rich families with... disabilities going to school publicly."

Jonah scratched his head. "Well, it is a private school... She could still follow lessons like other students, too, and it's not like the school can refuse a McHalen, right?" he laughed lightly before frowning, seriousness returning to his face. "Rohan, I'm telling you this because I trust you, okay? Don't go around telling others about this, now."

Rohan closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Jonah was staring at him firmly.

He looked back towards the soccer field and sighed. "Why would I?"

And he noticed that the sky was now purple outside.