Page 69 of Take Me Slowly: part 2
She exhaled loudly and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. "Fine." She drew the word out wearily and gestured to the living room. "I suppose we could sit down for a minute or two." As if she was doing me an enormous favour.
Resisting the urge to roll my own eyes, I stepped over and sat, the guys sitting around me.
Felicity lowered herself into a chair and placed her hands on her lap like she was queen of the house. "What is this about?" She looked from me to Brooks and back again, basically ignoring the other guys.
Silence fell for a few long moments while I gathered up the nerve to blurt out what I wanted to say.
"If there's nothing—" Felicity started to stand again.
"Am I Coral Clarke?" I said finally.
She flopped back down, staring at me. Her face was pale, bleached of blood.
“What?" Her voice was shaky. "Of course you're not. Why would you think that?"
In as few words as I could manage, I told her what I knew. At least, what IthoughtI knew. By the time I was done, she looked ready to cry. Of all the responses I expected, that wasn't one of them.
"Who am I?" I kept my voice low, but insistent. I needed her to be honest with me right now. I needed her to tell me the truth once and for all. Then maybe I could start to get on with my life. And Josiah could do the same.
"You're who you've always been," she said, tucking hair behind her ear and patting the rest as if it was out of place. "Why would you go up there? You know how I feel about that place."
Why was this suddenly my fault? I didn't know what I'd find when I went up there. If I had, would I have gone? That was a question I'd never be able to fully answer. I couldn't unlearn what I knew. If I hadn't gone, I wouldn't have met three of my boyfriends. In spite of all the confusion, I would never regret that. Not for a moment.
"That doesn't matter now," I said evenly. "Who am I and what do I have to do with Coral Clarke? I know it's not nothing. If I'm not her, then who am I?"
Felicity rubbed a hand over her forehead. "I can't believe we're having this conversation."
"Why?" I asked. "Did you hope it'd go away? That if you didn't think about it or talk about it, maybe it would all disappear? Somehow I'd never think to ask about the past? Never realise something was going on?"
"I thought we put it behind us," she said, just this side of snappy. "In the past, where it belonged." She sniffed and wipedtears off her cheeks. "You have no idea how hard it's been. All these years, I thought…"
"What did you think?" I hated seeing her like this. I didn't want to make her cry, I only wanted to understand what was going on. "What happened?"
Did it matter this much? She looked at me like I was breaking a piece of her heart. I could stand up and walk away right now, let her live her life and forget about all of this. Pretend this conversation didn't happen. Pretend I didn't know anything about a missing little girl. Was it so important that I needed to rip my family apart?
But I couldn't walk away now. No one in this room was going to forget. None of us was going to put it aside until we knew exactly what was what. If I didn't insist, then one of the others would. Connor looked like he was just about to jump out of his chair and demand answers. Brooks was almost as impatient. If I didn't insist, one of them would.
I took a long slow breath and sat forward, towards my mother. "Who was Coral Clarke?" I asked gently.
She looked over at me with eyes so much like my own. "There is no Coral Clarke. There never was."
28
LEAH
The thickest silencefell while I tried to process what she said.
"What do you mean there's no Coral Clarke?" Connor was the one who finally spoke. "We have photos of her. And memories of her." He nodded toward Josiah. "Of course she existed."
"She did, and she didn't," Felicity said slowly. "She was a real person, but she was never Coral Clarke."
"You're not making any sense," I said.
She closed her eyes and wiped her cheeks again. "A couple of days after you were born, I made friends with another woman in the hospital." She opened her eyes again. "Her name was Susan Clarke."
"Coral's mother," Josiah said, his voice low. "Gavin's ex-wife."
I nodded and placed my hand over his. "What does Susan Clarke have to do with anything?"
