Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA
***TW for reference to abortion***
Pacing in front of the box, I eyed it as if I expected it to suddenly come alive and kill me. Inside that box were pictures of a woman I only recently discovered was my mother, journals she had written, letters she'd exchanged with Heroux's mother...
It all felt overwhelming. What if I discovered that my mother, like the Vautours, was a horrible person? After all, she fed and released with a married man whose wife had just given birth. Basse and I were only eleven months apart in age.
The box sat there and I eyed it like an alligator waiting to snap its powerful jaws at me. The truth of my mother, of my beginning, was in that box. The scariest thing of all to me was the possibility of discovering she hadn't actually wanted me, either.
She could have been a horrible woman...or she could have been wonderful. A wonderful woman who had extremely poor judgment and became involved with a vampire like my father. I wouldn't know until I actually opened the box and stopped allowing it to taunt me with possibilities, both good and bad.
Straightening up, I walked right to the box and lifted the lid on it. It was just a box, and I needed to stop making it more than it was. It held some truths for me; that was all. The truth was easier to accept than the unknown.
So stop being so scared, Odette!
The first thing I saw was a beautiful blue and green scarf, watercolors on silk. Had she worn this? Was it a gift or something she had chosen for herself? I lifted it out and wondered if she had been happy the last time she'd worn it. Bringing it to my nose, I inhaled to see if, against all odds, some trace scent of hers remained. Nothing.
I carefully set it aside and lifted out the framed picture. I knew the beautiful woman at once -- Heroux's mother, Violette, smiling happily, her arm thrown over the shoulder of her shorter, much less attractive, friend, who was also smiling so happily. My smile, I realized, as I saw that her mouth kicked up higher on the right side just as mine did.
I studied Aimée and started cataloguing other features that she'd passed on to her only child. The beaky nose, the thick hair, too much gum showing when she wasn't smiling carefully, the large teeth that my family had always told me to return to the horse I'd taken them from.
This was my mother.
Placing the picture on the table, I reached in for a packet of letters tied with a yellow ribbon. Friendship. These must be the letters between my mother and Heroux's. I set those next to the framed picture. Next was an envelope with about ten pictures inside that I rifled through quickly until I came to the last one: my mother, holding a tiny baby in her arms.
My mother was holding me and if her smile had been happy in the picture with Violette, that was nothing compared to the joy in her smile.
To the pride in her face.
To the love in her eyes.
She had wanted me. No matter how I came to be, my mother had wanted me and she had loved me. Somebody had loved me. For a moment, I closed my eyes and just let that feeling wash over me as if I'd been standing cold in the shadows and suddenly stepped into the warmth of the sun.
I saw a pressed spray of lavender tied with another thin yellow ribbon that I removed and added to the collection on the table, and below that were two thick, leather-bound journals that set my heart to pounding. I took them out and just looked at the books that contained my mother's unknown words for a minute.
YOU ARE READING
The Vampires #2: Heroux and Odette
RomanceMy father blackmailed Heroux Alarie into marrying me, with the promise he would tell the Alarie where the woman he loved was at the end of three years. He called her name out every night after he fed and released with me. He made it clear he was wit...
