“Oh my god,” Maya screamed, looking at the condition of the room while Caroline looked at a tiny beautiful kid who had thrown everything around him and looked angry, furious to be exact. “What did you do, Bobby?”
“Home” he screamed angrily. “I want Home.”
“Bobby…” Maya tried to reach near him, but Bobby pulled out stones from his stones and started throwing them at Maya.
“Gooo. Goooo away.”
“Bobby..”
“Maya.” Caroline held her wrist. “Let me. You can leave.” Maya was reluctant to do so but knowing that Caroline was close to the owner, she dared not go against her and left from there. Bobby looked at Caroline in anger and picked up his slipper and threw it at her, but Caroline caught it before it would have hit her face.
“Wow!! Nice aim.” She complimented, and Bobby hit her again with his other pair of slippers, and it hit her stomach. Caroline sat on the bed allotted to Bobby calmly while he kept looking at her in anger. He tried to hit her with his hand, but Caroline held both his wrist and made him sit on her lap. Bobby wiggled, fought, and shouted at her, but she didn’t leave him. After trying a lot, he failed miserably, and finally, he cried. Caroline hugged him in her arms to console him.
Caroline came to know that he hadn’t cried from the moment he came here but was just hurting everything and was angry at him, so she finally let him cry as much as he wanted to. She couldn’t understand why a baby of barely two years would try to hurt an infant.
After an hour!!
“Can we talk now?” Caroline asked, kissing his tiny hand.
“No,” Caroline chuckled, hearing him. She, too, used to say NO a lot when she was a kid. She looked at Bobby carefully and found his almost similar to Artemis’s grey eyes.
“Okay!! I’m Caroline. You can call me Caro if you want. All the kids here are my friends, so I just want to ask if you want to become my friends too?” Caroline asked.
“I not see you before.”
“That’s because I kind of was sick,” Caroline replied.
“So, you work here?”
“No. I just come here to spend some time with cute babies like you and look after old age grandma and grandpa on the other side of the road.”, Caroline replied. “I see you like asking questions, then let’s play 20-20. I will ask you 20 questions, and then you can ask 20 questions from me as well. What do you say?”
“Umm… NO.”
“I will show you magic if you will, yes,” Caroline said and shook her shoulder in the next moment, and her wing popped out from her back, widening Bobby’s eyes.
“Is that… real?” He said in a low tone, on which Caroline nodded her head. “You can do magic?”
“Little bit,” Caroline replied and hid her wings. “Now, the choice is all yours. Will you be my friend?”
“NO.”
“Why not?”
“I want mom, dad, not friend,” Bobby replied with a sad face. “I want home. Not stay here,” he added, and tears started filling in his eyes. “They… they left me here for that baby.”
“I will talk to them about it if you promise not to hurt that innocent baby.” Caroline offered to help.
“No.” Bobby shook his head in anger. “He…. he take my place” With this, he started crying. “Mom.. give him my room and shifted me… to.. Kitchen. Dad called me… ‘UNWANTED’ because of… of him.” he said between his cries. Caroline’s fist tightened in anger hearing this. Everyone was seeing what Bobby did and what he was doing, but now she understood the reason behind it.
Maybe his foster parents would have started treating him differently after their own baby, and maybe… maybe Bobby did this getting insecure from that infant child. Hell, she couldn’t understand what Bobby would be feeling at that moment.
Well, she came to know that she was adopted at the age of seven, and it took her some time to realize that she was loved equally or even more than Colton and Calvin. And when Lee and Tee entered her life, her parents had made sure to prepare them mentally that even though for a while their priorities would be the infants but their love hadn’t been lessening for anyone of them.
Caroline stayed with Bobby throughout the day by carrying him everywhere and kept telling him that he was a sweet and amazing boy so that he wouldn’t feel like he was unwanted.
*
In Evening!!
“Bobby, sweetheart!! I have to leave now.” Caroline told him the truth instead of fooling him or disappearing all of a sudden.
“Why?”
“Because I have to prepare dinner for my husband and my brother.” She replied, pinching his cheek. “I will be back tomorrow.”
“Don’t go. Stay here.” Bobby said, getting angry, and held Caroline’s wrist tightly.
“Bobby.”
“NO.”
“Okay, I won’t leave. Calm down.” Caroline said to calm his anger. She messaged Lucy to prepare the dinner tonight. At the same time, she knew Artemis would look for her after returning from a tiring day. She stayed for a few hours more with him until Maya came to her.
“Caroline, it’s eight now.” She said and found Bobby glaring at her. Caroline knew all the outsiders had to leave by eight, and only a permanent employee could stay there at night. Bobby's grip around Caroline’s tightened, hearing Maya. If looks could kill then, Maya would have been ten feet under the ground.
Caroline sighed and dialed Artemis’s number.
.
#TBC