The Autumn Prince: Part 1 (Rewrite)

3. Fool's Gold

His composure broke completely. The only thing he had ever known about his mother was that she died during childbirth, and that was one hundred percent more information than he had about his dad.

"Wait!" he spluttered, "You can't—I don't—"

"You promised to listen, Thomas," she scolded.

Listen. Christen. Glisten. The periphery of his vision blurred and darkened as if he was staring into a tunnel that drew him forward against his will. Sounds began to muffle and echo in his head, his concentration fractured and threatened to break. He hadn't had a major episode in months, but the stranger's unwelcome revelation after a morning of dangerously high anxiety had softened his grip and he was rapidly losing control.

"No!" he forced the word past the fog. He may have said more, but in those moments his short term memory was unreliable. "You can't just—" he stumbled further, "you can't—you—"

"Be silent!"

Her voice pulled him back from the edge. It wasn't exactly an order, but it wasn't a simple request either and something deep inside him responded, as if the turbulence in his mind had heard it too and obeyed. He clung to that, forgetting everything else he might have said.

"I will hear your questions, but please do not interrupt." She paused again, her expression stern, as if addressing a poorly-behaved child. If only she knew how close he'd come to a melt-down, and what he was capable of when the world around him crumbled away.

"Your parents were never married," she continued calmly. "They met in a college town, not unlike this one," she gestured to their surroundings with one hand and a casual glance, "where he seduced her, bedded her, and murdered her."

"Murdered—?" The unnatural stability held, but he had no time to choke down the added shock before the words burst out. The woman's eyes went hard as she spoke over him.

"Thomas, if you want me to finish, do not speak out of turn again. You may hear many revelations today and you will have the opportunity to be overwhelmed by them on your own time." She gave him another chance to end the conversation, and he honestly thought about standing up and leaving.

He had never given his father much thought at all, except in typical orphan fantasies that he might be a billionaire or a secret agent, but her news was far outside his most ambitious dreams—or nightmares—and he found it hard to digest. Instead of leaving, however, he clenched his jaw and nodded. She answered with the stern, measured look of one accustomed to authority.

"They were together for a few fiery days and he left her without word or explanation. The shock sent your mother into a deep despair from which she never recovered."

"You told me he murdered her," he said without thinking. She shot him another glare but no reprimand followed.

"Her despair was not the irrational pining of a naive young woman. Your mother was addicted to a very rare, very potent drug and he was her sole supplier. When he left, she lapsed into a profound grief, never suspecting its true nature. I found her in the psychiatric ward of a local hospital where she was taken after she assaulted and seriously injured a fellow student. Her name was Janet Lane."

She withdrew an aged photo from her handbag and placed it on the table in front of him. He stared at the picture of his birth mother, not knowing what to do or say. This strange woman had spoken her name with unexpected warmth, and seeing that smiling, freckled face framed by wavy auburn hair, her light, penetrating eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, pushed everything else from his mind.

He remembered wondering about the woman who had given him life, trying to find the face of a kind, loving mother in his own reflection, some hint of his origin, but the few facts he'd been given were so vague he may as well have been left on someone's doorstep without a note. By the time he turned eight, the year he was placed into his first foster home, he had stopped asking.