I don’t even know this person who is supposedly my mother, but I’m already finding myself attached to her. It makes me happy that Logan has favorably compared me to her.Even though I can’t understand how he can possibly see a resemblance.
“It’s not only my appearance. I just… I feel so stupid and awkward all the time. I can’t count the number of people who’ve called me annoying. Ifeelannoying every time I open my mouth.” The words come gushing out of me, choking at my throat. I don’t understand how I can be showing such vulnerability to a guy I just met, when I never even shared those thoughts with the man who raised me. “This girl… Lia… mymother.... She has such an air of confidence about her. I wish I could be like that.”
I sigh longingly at her, gingerly touching the plastified face with my index finger. It hurts to lose someone I never even realized I had.
Then I startle as, looking up to take a swig of the coffee Logan has assured me was decaf, I notice him looking at me.
There’s a mix of sadness and love in his eyes that makes me feel a bit unsettled.
“You’re perfect the way you are,” he says simply. “And I know Lia would have loved you… had she lived. And I loved you too. Istilllove you. You’re my daughter, and you always will be.”
I swallow painfully. A thousand questions crowd my mind. I want to know why, if he really sees me as a daughter, he let me go. Why did he leave me to struggle with poverty, to face my bullies, to… to be raped in his own tower?
He seems to be struggling under the weight of some questions of his own as he watches me. I suddenly remember his words when I first met him. I’d been so confused by them.
Write me the list of everyone who’s made fun of you.
Has anything like that ever happened to you?
He seems very tuned in to the word vomit I just spewed, and I suspect he’s hesitating to ask me to make a list again.
Before he can form his questions, before I’m too tempted tovoice my own, I instead say, “I just can’t believe Dad… I mean, William Day…”
“Dad,” he corrects me. “There’s no one who better deserves that title than William Day.”
“Right.” I swallow again at this new confusing situation that does nothing to lessen the pain I feel when I think of Dad’s death. It only makes it all the more bitter. “How can he have lied to me?”
“He didn’t lie.”
“He never in a million years even hinted at the fact that I was adopted!” I cry out. “Let alone that my parents were in the mafia, and that I was raised until I was four by one of the founders of Devil! I didn’t know he had it in him to conceal that stuff from me.”
“He didn’t know.”
“Huh?”
“He didn’t know,” repeats Logan, as if I hadn’t heard him the first time.
“But… but…” I frown in confusion. “You said…”
“I said he adopted you. He made the decision, like some adoptive parents do, not to tell you, because he didn’t want it to change the way you viewed him. That doesn’t mean he knew who your birth father was.”
“But… but my mom…” I begin.
“Laura already had you when he met her.”
I shake my head, wondering once more if I’m really the person Logan thinks I am. Because that’s not true. I know it’s not true.
“They were married before I was born,” I inform him.
“I know,” smiles Logan. “I had my contacts draw up that document too.”
I frown, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “I don’t get it.”
Logan sighs. “Laura is an Astley girl. I guess you know that. When everything… turned to shit, I brought Lia to the hospital,with you. She…” He grits his teeth and pushes out the last words. “She didn’t make it that night. I had a four-year-old child in my arms and a whole lot of people who wanted you dead.”
“Why?” I breathe.
“Every single member of your family had died. Apart from you.”