Parallel Lies Chapter 07
After just three days with Rosamund back home, the Silverstones had reached their breaking point.
She refused to sleep in my old bed. She complained that the perfume was too strong, the bedsheets were too thin, and the lights were too bright. Yet when Amy turned the lights off, Rosamund hugged her head in fear and shuddered.
Roger had run out of patience. He flipped on the living room light and growled, “What the hell do you want?”
Rosamund immediately shrank against the wall, her breathing growing rapid. “Don’t shout! You’re hurting my ears!”
Amy burst into tears. “God, Rose, I didn’t bring you home just to watch you invent new ways to suffer!”
“I’m not making it up. I am suffering!” Rosamund protested.
Amy stopped crying mid-sob. It was as though she had never heard anyone say those words to her face before.
That night, she made garlic bread topped with cheese and prawn pies. “Here. Your favorite food.”
Rosamund sniffed them and immediately gagged, her face turning pale. “I don’t like any of this! I’ve told you so many times. The smell and the taste are too overwhelming for me!”
Roger could no longer continue eating. “But you always ate them when you were a-”
“I ate them because you and Mom always said I had to eat everything I was given. You said a good child could never be a picky eater. And whenever I spat it out or threw up, you called me a drama queen!”
Caelan grew more and more uneasy in his seat beside her. He reached over with a cup of water, but the moment he came close, Rosamund jerked backward. The cup slipped from his hand and crashed onto
the floor.
She clutched her head and started screaming again. “Don’t push me! Don’t tell me to buy candles
anymore!”
Amy’s face drained of color. “What are you talking about?”
Rosamund’s lips trembled. “It was my eighth birthday. You and Dad were fighting because… there were no candles on my cake. You wanted them right away, but I told you the traffic outside was too bad.
“Then Dad got angry. He said I had to stop acting like an abnormal child and made me go buy them. You even told me not to come back if I couldn’t somehow bring candles home!”
Roger froze. Suddenly, it felt as though the sound of the rain from that fateful day had returned.
Rosamund hugged her knees to her chest. “The streetlights were too bright. The horns were too loud. Everything was too much. I could only stand by the roadside with my hands over my ears. Someone told
me to step aside, but there was no way I could have heard them!”
Her breathing became ragged.
Amy tried to hug her, but Rosamund shoved her away. “I told you not to touch me! You did that to me that day too! You grabbed me. I slipped and fell, and then a car came straight at me. All I saw was the light!”
Caelan’s face turned as white as a sheet. He had always believed Rosamund died trying to save him, but it had been a lie all along.
“I didn’t want to save you!” she cried, staring at him with red-rimmed eyes. “I just wanted to run away from the noise. You fell into the road, so I tried to push you out of my way. I wanted to live!”
Caelan swallowed hard as tears rolled down his cheeks.
Roger suddenly stormed into his study. He searched through every folder until he finally found an old box and pulled it out. Inside lay a yellowed psychological evaluation.
[Rosamund Silverstone: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Subject also experiences sensory hypersensitivity and is prone to sensory overload. Subject requires a stable environment with minimal exposure to loud or sharp auditory stimuli, bright lights, and unexpected physical contact.]
The report had once been torn into pieces. A strip of old, yellowed tape was the only thing holding it together.
Amy saw the report, and her knees nearly gave out beneath her. She reeled as though someone had
struck her.
She was the one who had locked the report away in that box before banishing it to the farthest corner of the study. Afterward, she had told their relatives that Rosamund was simply shy and introverted.
My palms had grown clammy as I watched everything unfold.
May didn’t ask what I was thinking. She simply handed me another cup of warm water.
Rosamund looked Amy straight in the eyes.
“Your memories of me are wrong, Mom. You and Dad convinced yourselves that I was this understanding, obedient child when I wasn’t. Then you forced Amelia to imitate a version of me that never existed,” she said. “The only thing you ever did was hurt both of us!”
