Page 15 of His Obsession

“I guess I can understand that,” I say with a sigh. “Thank you for helping me.”

“You are welcome,” Lucian says with a warm smile.

“You are still a pain in my ass,” I say, matching his smile.

I am pacing inmy living room, waiting for Lucian and Carol to get here. Laura is watching me, but eventually steps in front of me to make me stop. “You are making me nervous,” she laughs. “Carol is sweet. She will give you the information you are asking for.”

“I was mean to her,” I say. “Many, many times.”

“I’m mean to her all the time. It’s a thing. Just breathe,” she says. The doorbell rings and I sigh before walking over to open it.

“Hello,” Lucian says with a smile.

“Ms. Hart,” Carol says simply.

“Come in,” I say as I step to the side.

“Lucian said you needed to speak with me?” she says when we all sit down.

“Yeah. I’m not good at this, so I’m just going to blurt it out, and we can go from there,” I say.

“I suppose that works,” she remarks.

“I’ve been searching for answers about my birth family. Lucian helped me today with old census records for the town and… Jennifer wasn’t my aunt,” I say.

“I know…” she starts to say.

“Jennifer was… is my mother. She is the one who dropped me at the fire station,” I say. “She had no siblings. Her parents only had one child. She told me she was my aunt, but she lied. Lucian said that if she lied, there had to be a good reason for it. I know I was conceived around her twenty-fifth birthday. When I was dropped off at the fire station, she left all of my information with them. My name, date and time of birth, birth weight and height, and information about her pregnancy like gestation and any complications she had. I was born at forty weeks on Halloweenin 1999, so I was conceived around mid-January when she turned twenty-five.”

“Oh dear,” Carol says with a sad tone.

“What? What does oh dear mean?” I ask.

“Elise, honey,” she sighs. “Your mother, Jennifer, was raped on her twenty-fifth birthday.”

“Oh shit,” Lucian says, shocked.

“Was she dating anyone then? Maybe it was someone she was dating and not who raped her,” Laura suggests.

“She wasn’t dating anyone. She and I told each other everything. She would have told me if she was having sex with anyone,” Carol says, wiping a fallen tear away.

“That’s why she gave me up,” I say quietly. “I reminded her of the rape.”

“I don’t know why she wouldn’t have told me she was pregnant. I would have gladly helped find you a home, rather than her dropping you off somewhere,” Carol says. “When you were born… That was when she was out of town. She said it was for work, but I thought maybe she was just going through another depressive episode. She was so distant the first year after the rape… I guess now I know why.”

“I don’t understand why she went out of her way to find me, though,” I say. “When she found me, she had already been diagnosed with cancer.”

“She might have wanted to do something for you without having to relive the rape,” Laura says. “She didn’t want to die with the guilt of giving you up, so that was her way of trying to make up for it.”

“I want to be angry with her, but I can’t imagine having to be reminded of my rape every time I looked at my child,” I say.

“Question is… Who raped your mother?” Lucian asks.

“I’m going to go through her things that I have stored, and see if I can find anything,” I say.

“She wrote a lot, so see if maybe you can find journals,” Carol says.

“Was she happy?” I ask.

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