I ride my bike to Dr. Peter’s office. I am running a few minutes behind, so it will get me to his office quicker than hoofing it. I take my usual place on the chaise and lay back. The dead ferns are still taking up space. I shake my head. Why doesn’t he throw them out?
He takes out his pad and pen, and for once his actions don’t seem to irritate me like they normally do. I notice that he is looking at me strangely; he has an odd look on his face. Almost as if he is somewhere else, a vacant expression of sorts. Perhaps he his lost back in time somewhere, I know how he feels. I find myself trying to revisit the past often. I snap my fingers at him breaking his thoughts.
“Sorry, I am not myself today, Bella.” He shakes his head momentarily. “You know you look more like your mother every day.” He scratches his chin and crosses his ankles.
“You knew my mother?”
“All of her life, I took her to my senior prom. We went our separate ways for college, but yeah, I knew her well. How much do you know about your parents? That’s one thing we haven’t discussed.” He doesn’t pick up his pen and pad to make notes like he usually does.
His choice of topic today catches me off guard. I don’t know much about them, other than what Gram has told me. I tell him the basics, which is all I know. Gram has said that my mother died shortly after I was born due to unspecified complications. My father joined the military, and later went into the CIA or something of that nature. He was killed on a mission overseas. I live off money that was left to me for his bravery, at least that is what I have always been told.
Doc wants to know why I don’t talk about them much and I explain how I couldn’t miss something I never had. I don’t feel much like discussing the whole parent thing.
Gram always tried to make me feel special on days like Mother’s Day, but it was apparent at school, when they would have days to have your mother there—or when they would hold a father/daughter dance that I didn’t have a traditional family. Gram tried her best, she really did, but taking your Gram as your date for the daddy dance was not a cool kid move.
Changing the subject, I tell him about my run in with Brianna. I figure it will please him to know I am trying to make friends. I don’t tell him anything about Cutter. Don’t need him reading more into it than there is. And I definitely do not want to slip and tell him about the crazy deal I entered into with Cutter—the one where he is giving me a year to complete my list. He would not like the idea I am sure. I suppose he’d like the part where Cutter stopped me from taking my own life, but that’d be about it.
After my session, I leave his office in a better mood and head to Nelly’s Kitchen to meet up with Cutter for lunch.
“Thought about that tattoo yet?” He asks as he rips into his bag of chips. He pours them out onto his plate beside of his steak sandwich.
“I think I want a rose vine with drops of blood trickling from the thorns. I want it to start on my lower back and curve up under my left breast.”
“Perfect,” he mumbles between bites.
I play with my grilled chicken salad, shuffling the strips of meat around with my fork. I’m not really all that hungry. My medicine is causing my stomach to be upset since I didn’t take it with food. I am supposed to take my doses around the same time every day for it to work properly.
“I hope you don’t mind but I invited Hurley and Brianna to go with us. Hurley said she was going to talk to you today. Did she?”
“Yeah, it’s cool. She and I have had a lifetime of misunderstandings. I am willing to try to give her the benefit of the doubt though. I will tolerate her—for you.” I am starting to think there are a lot of things I’d do for Cutter, it makes me feel uneasy.
“Don’t let this go to your head but you are sort of awesome.” Cutter steals a bite of my salad.
“Here take it, I can’t eat it,” I insist, sliding my dish across the table to him. He must be starving. The guy he eats over half of my lunch along with his.
He runs his fingers across my jaw before we go our separate ways, he has to get back to work, and I want to pay a visit to my Gram’s house. Dr. Peters has my parents on my brain. I know Gram still has some of their things in the attic. She would never let me go in there as a child, but I am an adult now. I can’t help but wonder what it is that she doesn’t want me to see or find out.
I never thought much of it when I was younger, but now looking back, I find it odd. She was always reluctant to talk about them with me. Was always making sure to keep the attic locked up tight. You’d think she has a national treasure stashed up there.
I light up a smoke and grab my bike from the rack out front. Mrs. Rivers is coming from the flower shop up the street. I duck into the nearest alleyway and go through the back streets to Gram’s house. I weave between the dumpsters located between the back entrances to the shops that line Main Street. I hate coming through here, the trash always smells awful, not to mention the crazy stray cats that are lurking waiting to pounce on their next meal.
I am still not ready to talk to her—Mrs. Rivers. I can’t bear to look into her eyes and see her grief. It is too much. An ache tears through my chest. My heart shreds once more as I think of her missing Harlan. His mom has always been good to me. She would always make comments about me making a beautiful bride someday. I think she had hopes of Harlan settling down and getting serious with me. And I too had those hopes for a while, but now that will never be—at least not in this lifetime.
I try to stop the poison from bubbling and coiling around my heart, willing myself to remember what I have set out to do today.
Mission discover who I came from commences.
I round the curb by Gram’s and push my bicycle through the back gate. I take pause when I spy Gram sitting on the patio with Dr. Peters. He must have driven over here after I left his office and parked out front.
She is serving him tea. It appears they are having a lunch date. How sweet. Gently laying my bike in the grass, I slowly creep behind the tool shed. They haven’t spotted me, so I try to get a closer listen at their conversation.
“How much does Bella really know about Adeline’s death?” I listen intently as he takes a drink of his tea.
Gram’s reply catches me off guard. Deep down I suppose her story of my parents never really fit, but when you are child, feelings like those are easily forgotten, or buried until they resurface, like today for instance.
“Well, I told her what we agreed would be best to tell a child of her age when she began to ask questions. I told her that she passed away after childbirth, due to complications. Bella was young enough she didn’t press it any further and I always have left it at that.”
My Gram looks agitated, and not happy with his questions in the least. She takes a bite from a cookie and folds her hands across her lap.
“And her father, she knows nothing of the truth about Rob either?”
Gram places her hand in her pocket and pulls out her lace hanky. She blots the tears that I didn’t notice to be there moments ago. Why is he here and asking the questions I should be asking of her? Part of me wants to intrude upon their conversation and demand the answers I seek, but the other half of me knows that they will shut down, and tell me nothing, but the same bullshit I have heard before. My best bet is to lay low and hope they go into further detail. I lie and wait and yet my Gram says nothing. Dr. Peters keeps the conversation going.
“It’s just the more I see her and treat her as my patient, I am reminded of Addy. I can’t help but wonder if Bella’s life might have been different had you let me take her like I had wanted and raised her as my own daughter.”
Him. Raise. Me. The words confuse me. Why would Doc have wanted to raise me, is he my father? I am so confused and hurt. I don’t know if I want to hear the rest. I mean if he is my father and not Gram’s son, Rob, why did Gram bring me up, and not my mother’s family or him—Dr. Peters for that matter. I realize I have no idea who I am or who my real family is. I have to get out of here.
The urge to cut is burning through my veins so hot.
I can’t take this.
Tripping over a rake in the garden, I let out a whimper when my knee scrapes over a rock. I hear the scraping of the metal chairs against the cement of the patio. I rush to my feet while leaving my bike behind. I hear Gram call out to me, but I don’t dare turn back. I’m not ready to hear more lies come from her mouth. All I can think about is making the pain stop.
*—*
Next thing I know I am sitting in my bathtub with the cold water running over me as I graze the top of my thigh with a razor.
It’s not working, the poison is festering. It bubbles and claws in my chest and I can’t breathe.
I don’t want to be like this.
I don’t want to feel this way.
I need answers that I won’t get by hurting myself.
I clean myself up and decide to go to the library. They are bound to have old yearbooks. Dr. Peters did mention taking my mom to prom. And the way he spoke her name back there was with pure adoration.
What are they keeping from me? I make my way into the town archive wing of the University’s library.
I start scouring the shelves for yearbooks.
“Whatcha doing?” I nearly jump out of my skin at Brianna’s breath against my ear.
“Jesus H. Christ! You nearly scared the piss out of me. What are you doing here?”
“I work here part time. What are you looking for? I may be of some use to you.” She flips her hair from her shoulder in a confident manner. At least she looks like she takes her job seriously. her boobs aren’t hanging out.
I explain to her what I am searching for. I just leave out the why. I am not entirely sure what I expect to get from this myself. A few minutes later, Brianna leads me to a table, with a stack of yearbooks. She offers to pull up the newspaper archives for me and I agree to have her do a search for my mom. She says she will text me once she gets them ready.
I spend an hour combing over the yearbooks and the only useful information I come across is that in school my mother’s last name was Rose too. Surely, she wasn’t married in the tenth grade. And there is no Robert Rose, why isn’t my father in any of these books? I am able to find Alex Peters easily enough.
I do resemble my mother. We share the same nose and facial shape. I look nothing like my doctor. I don’t think he and I are related in the least. So why was he talking like he wanted to be my dad? I get a text from Brianna to meet her downstairs at the computer lab; she has found something she really thinks I should read.
Whore Barbie: 911! I found something. You really need to read this!
I feel nauseated and my palms are sweating. I don’t know what I am about to see, but I feel so uneasy.
I feel Harlan near me. “Harlan,” I whisper his name to no one, but I think I see someone standing by the shelves, but it is probably my imagination.
Bella, you have got to stop doing this to yourself, Harlan is gone. I shake the thoughts of him away at my own verbal reprimand and walk downstairs.
Brianna takes me by the shoulders and orders for me to take deep breaths, but I can’t. What the hell is she about to show me that has her so freaked out? I glance down at her hand on my shoulder and she has been chewing her nails. If you knew her, you would know she must be pretty upset to chip her manicure.
“Okay, I found something interesting, but I want you to promise me that you won’t flip the fuck out when I show it to you.”
I can only nod as she ushers me into a chair and then my eyes hit the screen.
Former Soap Opera star Adeline Rose was found hanging in the attic of her parent’s home.
There is no way I am reading this correctly. The article says that early Sunday morning, tow resident Clara Rose discovered her daughter had committed suicide sometime within the night. Her daughter, I read the words over and over again trying to make sense of them and soap star. How could my Gram lie to me about who I am and what happened to my mother?
“I couldn’t find any record of a Robert Rose anywhere in the database. I’m so sorry, Bella. What can I do to help? I feel like I should do or say something, but I don’t know what you need.” Abruptly, I push back my chair, sending a loud screech echoing through the building.
“Thank you, Brianna. Really, you helped me a lot actually.” I give her a small hug and return to my Gram’s home.
She owes me so many answers.