Til' Death Do Us Part

Chapter Twenty

[Charlie's Pov]

    My great grandmother had lived and died in this town and to my understanding, everyone except my grandmother was grateful she'd died. She was in a lot of pain and nothing was aiding her in her old age. She had no family and so everyone stayed out of her reach so they wouldn't catch the bad luck Romulus had passed onto her. He was her nephew and everyone dear to him died. Then his house burned down and he'd become homeless.

    My great grandmother offered to home him and for a few weeks she did and all was well until she fell ill. It was right before that her husband died and she'd been left widowed and barren with no children.

    Romulus did nothing to help her and instead left to be with some woman of his. My great grandmother would have died if it wasn't for my grandmother who was also at the time, homeless. She was selling the last of her biological family's valuables. They'd all passed because of the Spanish influenza in the forties just sixteen years before she herself passed.

    She took my grandmother in her home and taught her as many domestic house duties she could before both of them thought she would die and miraculously, one day she'd woken up and been fine.

    Sixteen years later, she called my grandmother to this town and the two died. My great grandmother had died of natural causes but my biological grandmother was murdered, both in the same house. That same night, my mother was sent to an orphanage. Her father didn't want to raise a girl and four boys, he didn't even want my mother since she'd come right when he'd planned to retire.

    My mother slowly went erratic through the years but she hadn't truly lost it until I was twelve. I'd looked so much like my grandmother, she'd become more and more lost in the depths of her own memories. My mother was sent to a hospital before I graduated and once I did, I got a job at Dimitri's bar. I was a stripper for a few years and it was all well until one night I'd found myself drunk and vented my entire generational story to him. Most of the early details I'd learned later but after hearing it, he'd paid me off to work at Ms.Percy's with the other dancers and from then on, she took me in and I'd worked there ever since.

    It was my way of rippling the kindness when I met Elizabeth. She was obviously sick, that much wasn't hard to tell. I'd seen sickness in more forms than one and from the start I could tell through all the fake smiles she wasn't really happy. She seemed to be convincing herself when she wasn't deep in thought and Ms.Percy wasn't that nice to everyone, especially not upon just meeting them.

    It was because of Romulus that she was so sweet and because she could tell too. That the girl was sick. She always had that sad look in her eyes when she met another woman. Romulus had only ever brang one around me, that being Elizabeth but Ms.Percy had met one about thirty years ago. The woman was sick and leeched off of Romulus, it was a bad experience with everyone involved and Rome was so dense he couldn't see that the woman was sucking the life force out of him as well as herself.

    "The last one was bad but Charley, could I entrust this conversation to you?"

    "Of course, Ms.Percy. I would never tell a soul about any of this."

    "Thank you child. I fear this Elizabeth will not be good for Romulus-I've in so many words grown up with him and at some point I grew a fondness for him but he's never acted like this towards another woman. Not one that I've seen. Every time he talks to one, it's out of pity and he's nothing but kind. He always gets attached to them and I fear that he feels more than pity for her. I don't know how long his heart can take the longing for his late wife, Victoria but I do hope that one day he settles down with someone he can spend the rest of his life with."

    "I completely understand. I wish he'd already settle down as well but I don't think he ever will. He's still stuck on his wife and she hasn't been in his life for over a hundred years."

    "Yes. When he took his vows, he meant every word in that forsaken time. I was worried he wouldn't ever move on. But now, dear.. I'm afraid he's moving on to the wrong woman."

    Word Count: 795