Take Me Home

31. The truth

Freya stepped outside the house, entering sunlight that shone through the tree branches, her eyes downcast as she tried to think of what Roger wanted her out here for. Roger followed Freya, closing the door behind him. Freya watched him sit down on the porch, leaving a space beside him. Freya lowered herself next to him, her blue orbs looking into his hazel ones as he stared at the ground, mixed emotions painted across his chiseled face. Freya looked away and toward the ground while Roger sat next to her in silence, staring at an ant as it crawled across the wood.

"Freya. I don't really know how to communicate." He began, voice low and causing Freya to lean a bit closer, her eyes focused on his as he avoided her gaze. "I've been through a lot in my life. I guess...I guess anger is the only thing that came out." He stammered, still avoiding her gaze.

Freya blinked, confused as she thought. She didn't know very much about Roger's personal past. Maybe he had been through something hard...

She slowly reached a hand out and laid it on his shoulder. He looked up. "Roger, you can tell me about this if you want. I'll listen." She spoke honestly, sincere as she removed her hand and waited.

His eyes seemed to warm a little and he looked back down at the ground. "I know...Thanks. I'll start from the beginning if thats okay." He asked quietly. Freya nodded, noticing how much different the tone in his voice had changed. He was almost allowing himself to be vulnerable.

Roger cleared his throat, looking at the ground as he began speaking,

"Ever since I could remember, it had always been me, my mother, father, and little sisters." He paused, Freya listening. "I was the oldest and it was always my responsibility to look after my little sisters. My father loved us all and he always spent time with us, but my mother was gone almost every night. I didn't know where she would go so late at night, but I knew that she didn't love us the same as out father. At...At night we would all hear them yelling and screaming at each other, it was common so we didn't think much about it." He paused to take a breath.

"Well then my father met yours and we met." He chuckled, staring at the ground as he continued, "I hadn't met you yet. Your father was always a good person and i liked him. He was different from mine." He sighed, pausing. Freya stayed quiet as she waited for him to continue.

"Well, I got older, was around seven or eight now. I began understanding why my mother left and then I found out where she had been going every night. She would leave late at night and go meet with another man. My father had found out earlier, after he had signed into the military. He would be leaving soon, but before he did he divorced her. My little sisters didn't understand much. My father made an agreement that she would stay with us until he came home. They both agreed that her boyfriend would never be let into our home." His eyes turned hard and he was silent for a long moment.

"Father left when I had turned eight, my sisters a few years younger than me. Mother mainly walked around and would drink quite often, so it was up to me to provide and care for my sisters. One night, me and my sisters were eating the food I had taken from the market when my mother and a man showed up. He was drunk, just like her, so I didn't know what to do. Mother and him left the room and stayed upstairs while I played and watched my sisters downstairs. I had to go outside to do some farm chores, (The farm was mainly run down by now because I was the only one who tried to keep it going,) and when I came back inside, the man was..."

Roger clenched his jaws and brought his hand up, holding it on his mouth for a minute before sighing and looking the opposite way. Freya lowered her gaze to the ground, shocked as she listened to his story.

"He was doing things to my sisters, my mother was no where to be found. I went over and let him know that he needed to leave them alone and that got him angry...and then he did let them go but he grabbed me, he was way bigger and I was still really small, he dragged me downstairs to our basement and he b-began beating me up, he would just hit me over and over again while I cowered in the corner, begging him to stop. He liked whenever I was scared and it became a, a," Roger's voice cracked as he kept talking, Freya sitting next to him as she listened, her eyes slightly wide and her mouth partly open. How did she not hear about this? What had happened?