Of Love, Signs and Logic (Completed)

56 - When It Rains, It Pours

Photo credit: Kalyeserye, day 116

A/N: If you have noticed, there were tidbits of clues about RJ's parents, scattered  across the chapters as early as chapter 3. This will be quite a long read. Please bear with me, explanations are in order.

RJ sat on the floor in his darkened room, with his arms around his knees, as the memories came rushing back. Not that he has totally forgotten them, but he has his mind pre-occupied in the past few months since he started thinking of Meng instead. And it only took a careless observation from a reporter for the painful memories to come back.

Memories of the call that he received from a police officer, that fateful night informing him that his parents met a fatal road accident. That according to some witnesses, his father avoided an oncoming traffic, causing him to veer off the winding mountain road and the car falling off a cliff throwing off his parents into their instant death.

Memories of the trip he had to make to the province where it happened to identify the bodies that almost got burned beyond recognition due to the explosion that ensued. And he was the only one to do it.

That aside from the plate number of car, It was his mother's handbag and its contents, which got thrown off when the car was falling, that helped the police to determine the identities of the victims.

While the accident, minus the details, made it to the news owing to his father's business and his parents' philanthropic acts through the Foundation, the internment was limited to the immediate family. Due to the nature of their death, the bodies were immediately cremated and their loss mourned in private.

Only few related his mother's name to the actress who once showed promise in theater and stage plays. To the public, the one who died with her husband was Mrs. Isabel Faulkerson, a loving wife and mother of two.

What was not known neither by the public nor by RJ's family, even his sister, was that a letter was also found in his mother's belongings, which RJ kept to himself. A letter to him and his sister. A letter from a mother asking their forgiveness. Isabel Faulkerson was leaving them and her husband as soon as they arrive from the trip. Her flight was already booked. She made this decision because her children were already grown up.

To discover that your happy family life had all been a lie was devastating to RJ. Through her letter, he came to know of his mother's agony. To learn that he owed his happy childhood to the sacrifices of a woman to please a jealous and possessive husband broke his heart. There was no domestic violence, but the emotional torture were just as fatal.

He had to hand it to his mother. She was really a great actress, and it seems, so was his father.

That she disappeared from the limelight just as her career was peaking was no accident. They eloped because his father had gotten his mother pregnant at age 20 and kept her a virtual prisoner ever since, threatening to take her children away if she as so much entertain the idea of leaving him. He had always wondered why his sweet and ever caring mother only had a few friends. He had his answer through the letter. His father doesn't want to share his precious actress with her friends much more with her adoring public. It was ironic that the Foundation that had saved him from pain after his parents' death was built not to channel his mother's energy but to be her prison. But bless her and her good heart, she had transformed it to become what it is today.

RJ thinks his lola is clueless of what was happening since she only moved with them after the death of his parents.

So he isolated and insulated himself from the world outside of his immediate family.