Chapter 33
There was only one person who I knew looked like that and that was—Vivian.
“Thank you,” I whispered to my landlord, squeezing a couple of dollar notes into his hands as I rushed inside our old apartment.
The musky smell of dust was the first thing to greet me immediately after I stepped inside.
I walked into the small space which I converted into a room for my mum in the past.
After searching each and every corner of the room, I still found nothing, not one document about the Harnes inheritance.
My eyes landed on my mothers old journal, and I stretched my hand to pick it up.
She always wrote in this old thing, and she valued it more than her life.
I remember trying to throw it away once and she completely lashed out at me.
I wonder what she wrote in here, that made her too busy to actually take care of me.
I flipped through the book’s contents reading how my mother described her failed love life with my father.
My eyes widened in shock when I read the contents of the next page.
“My dear daughter, Leah.
Would you ever forgive this stupid mother of yours?
Who spent her entire life dedicated to a man who constantly made her second best, but I had my reason my dear I promise.
I needed to protect you, trust me.
I know I have never been a good mother to you, and words are not enough to express how sorry I am for that.
Today, I realised how much of a fool I had been hoping and believing that one man would change and come back to us.
I let you spend your entire childhood in that wretched house.
I knew about what Vivian was doing to you, I knew how much she abused you, yet I did nothing.
All because I was too selfish to let go of one man who broke my heart continuously.
Holding my test results in my hands today made me realize how short life actually is.
It made me realize how much I actually failed you.
It made me realize how little I did for you, when I should have done so much more.
I should have taken you out of that house a long time ago.
A house like the Harnes mansion was never a place an angel like you should have had to grow up in.
Please forgive me my dear, forgive this foolish mother of yours.
I knew I did so little for you, but I had tried hard to rectify my mistake, even though I knew it would never be enough.
I know that I might never be able to tell you this to your face; so if you are reading this someday my dear, that means you must have discovered my long-kept secret.
Please guard it with your life, I was scared of him finding out.
There are so many things I kept from you, and I cannot write it all here.
I fear this might land in the wrong hands and then they can harm your life.
Don’t trust anyone my angel, it never got me anywhere.
Just know that everything I did, even staying in that house was for your protection my dear, and nothing else.
I left something precious.
It was my mother’s and now it’s yours.
It has always been yours, it’s in my box, I kept it for you my dear, even if it costs my life.
It’s the little I could do for you.
Take care my angel.”
Tears fell on the old pages, a sob breaking through my mouth.
I sat on the dusty bed, trying to process my emotions properly.
All these years she kept me in that house, watching Vivian do things to a child that even adults could not handle and she said nothing.
I hated her for it, I despised her for keeping me in that house throughout my childhood, while I watched as everybody fawned over Natasha.
I watched Natasha get things I could only touch in my dreams, and still she said nothing.
And now she says it’s for my protection.
What could possibly have made a woman, a mother so sacred that she’d keep her child in her abuser's home, watch the child get beaten and still decide not to leave.
What could have frightened her like that, and who was ‘him’ she talked about?
Who did she not want finding out exactly?
And what did she not want him to find out about?
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