Chapter One: The Silence That Stole Her Childhood

 Chapter One: The Silence That Stole Her Childhood

 

Rowan’s earliest memories weren’t of love or warmth. They were of pain.

 

Before she even understood the world, before she could form words to explain what was happening, it had already begun. She was just two years old when the first violation occurred. Too young to comprehend what was being taken from her, too small to fight back.

 

The memories from that time were blurred, locked away in the deepest parts of her mind. But the body never forgets. The fear, the shame those stayed with her, buried beneath the surface, shaping the girl she would become.

 

Then, at six, the nightmares took a face.

 

Her cousin.

 

It started with small things, a touch that lingered too long, a whisper in her ear. Then it escalated. Dark corners, empty rooms, moments stolen while the adults laughed and talked nearby, oblivious.

 

At first, she thought it was just a terrible secret she had to keep. That maybe this was something normal, something she simply didn’t understand. But deep inside, she knew it wasn’t. She knew it was wrong.

 

One day, with a pounding heart and shaking hands, she told her grandmother.

 

She expected comfort. Protection. Justice.

 

Instead, she got a stare colder than the winter wind and a sentence that sealed her fate.

 

“ will never speak of this.”

 

Rowan learned in that moment that her pain did not matter. That silence was safer than the truth. That the people who were supposed to protect her never would.

 

Her mother reinforced the lesson with every cruel word and every slap across the face.

 

Rowan stopped trying to please her mother by the time she turned seven. Nothing she did was ever good enough. If she cried, she was weak. If she was too quiet, she was ungrateful. If she made a mistake, even the smallest one, the punishment came swift and harsh.

 

The bruises faded, but the words never did.

 

“You are  worthless.”

“No one will ever love you.”

“You are just like your father.”

 

Her father. The man who drifted in and out of her life, never staying long enough to be more than a ghost in the background. She used to wait for him, staring out the window, hoping that this time he would stay.

 

He never did.

 

By the time Rowan was ten, she stopped waiting.

 

She stopped hoping.

 

She learned to survive in a world where love was conditional, where safety was a lie, where the people who should have cared the most were the ones who hurt her the worst.

 

By twelve, she had mastered the art of silence. She held her secrets close, swallowing them whole, locking them away.

 

But silence was a heavy burden to carry.

 

And one day, it would break her.