Midnight Angel [Jenlisa FF]

~'~'~ Chapter 19 ~'~'~

"Good evening, Lisa," Joo Won greeted. "I was, um, hoping I may speak with Jennie."

Instinct warred with what was right. Lisa wanted to tell the man to go away. Jennie had been having such a nice evening, but that would certainly end with a visit from her father. she couldn't tell Mr. Kim, to go away, though. So she nodded her head and led the older man into the living room where Jennie was waiting.

"Jennie?" Lisa said as she entered the room. "Your father is here." As expected, the smile left her face instantly, and she said nothing in response.

"Jennie, how are you?" Joo Won asked, walking up to her.

"Fine," she answered tightly, her whole body tense.

"Good, good." Kim nodded, shifted nervously. "I was, umm, hoping that you would be ready to come home."

Home. That one word meant almost nothing to Jennie. Her father's house wasn't home. It had stopped being home the night she'd awoken to find her family murdered. It had stopped being home four years earlier when her father had tucked her away in the attic apartment, telling her she couldn't leave. At one time, that house had been her home, the place where she'd run wild with her siblings and grown from a child to a young woman. But it wasn't home anymore. It would never be home again.

"No, I'm not," she told him firmly. "I'm going to stay here at Lisa's." The second the words were out of her mouth, Jennie looked uneasily at Lisa, realizing what she'd said. What if she didn't want her to stay here? But her smile assured her that she was welcome.

"Oh." Joo Won frowned, glanced from her daughter to Lisa. "Are you sure that is wise, Jennie, given the circumstances?"

She hadn't forgotten her circumstances, but her father's statement brought them to the forefront of her mind. Seeing her father standing there, expecting her to just follow along and return to her cell, made anger boil within her. Anger at everything. The feeling was relatively new to Jennie. For so long, she had just taken everything, sat back while her life fell apart around her. Well, she was damn tired of being a victim. The last week or so, since her friends and Lisa had shown up in her attic rooms, had shown her what her life could be like: normal. She could visit with her friends, have actual conversations, watch a movie, and play with a kitten. She could just be Jennie. There was no way she could go back to living in the solitary bubble her father had, inadvertently or not, placed her in.

"My circumstances?" Jennie parroted, standing to face her father directly. "You mean the fact that you think that I... that I..." she stumbled over her words, hardly able to say them aloud. "That I killed Mom and Donna and Owen?"

The night before, Jennie had a hard time accepting everything, what her father believed, the blank spots in her memory, her friends, and Lisa's belief in her innocence. But now that it had all had time to sink in, she knew... she ~knew~ - despite her empty memory of that night – that she could not have killed her family. They meant everything to her; she loved them. There was just no way she could have killed them. She may not know what really happened, but she knew that her friends were right. She just couldn't have done it.

"How could think I killed them," she whispered, near tears.

"Jennie," Joo Won said with a sigh. he'd had a long time to deal with this, a long time to face everything that had happened. Jennie hadn't. "I know it is difficult to understand or accept what."

"NO!" Jennie all but shouted at her. "I did not do it!"

At this point, Lisa decided it would be best if she stepped in. she didn't want the situation between Mr. Kim and Jennie to get any worse than it already was. "She's right, Joo Won. She didn't kill them."