Her➳ Damon Salvatore

There Goes the Neighborhood

"Hey, Bonnie, it's me just checking in, seeing how you're doing. We miss you here. Don't let your aunt drive you too crazy. Come home soon," I hung up the call and put my phone down as I saw Jenna walk up to me on the porch. I was just calling Bonnie and it went to voicemail so I just left her a message, I feel bad after everything that has happened so I wanted to see how she was doing, but she didn't answer. I am worried about her.

"What are you doing out here, it's cold," Jenna said taking a sip of her coffee. I shrugged and looked down at my journal.

"Thinking, writing. The funeral for Bonnie's grandma, it brought back a lot about mom and dad. I was wondering, you said you would do some digging about them, the adoption,"

"Right,"

"So, did you? Uh, dig?" I asked and Jenna smiled and nodded.

"Yeah, come on inside," I closed my journal and got up following her into the house. 

"Your dad kept everything from his medical practice- records, logs, old appointment books," she said as I took off my jacket and put it on the back of a kitchen table chair. She pulled out an appointment book and opened it showing it to me. "I found an entry form from the night when you and Elena were born. Patient and birth date, Isobel Petersen,"

"Do you think that's her real name?" I asked looking from the book to Jenna.

"For a teenage runaway. Probably not, first name? Maybe. But where did she get Petersen? Classmate? Best friend? So I binged it," Jenna added unlocking her laptop and opened the internet tab typing Petersen into the search bar. "I searched for all the Petersens in this area born the same year as Isobel, found 3-  2 men and a woman, Trudie, who lived in Grove hill, Virginia,"

"That's not far from here,"

"Well, watch this," Jenna typed in Grove hill high school after the Petersen and went to images. She clicked on the first photo and it went to a yearbook picture of two young cheerleaders. I looked at the woman and squinted at her. She looked like us. Elena and I.

"Isobel," I smiled and Jenna nodded. "She was a cheerleader,"

"Trudie still lives there. This is her address,"

"What about Isobel?" I asked taking the sticky note of the address listed on the paper from Jenna's hand.

"I couldn't find anything about her," she sighed and watched as I sat down at the table on a chair looking at one of the appointment books. "Listen, there's something else. Mr. Saltzman, Rick, his wife was from around here, and her name was also Isobel,"

"Wait, 'was' as in..." I trailed off and Jenna nodded.

"She died,"

*****************

"Alaric's wife, might have been your mother?" Stefan asked watching me put away some clothes I cleaned earlier.

"It can't be true right? I mean, the coincidence alone is just crazy," I sighed and Stefan shrugged crossing his leather jacket covered arms. I slipped the sticky note out of my pocket and waved it around making Stefan look at me.

"I have the address for her friend, Trudie,"

"You wanna talk to her?" he asked and I shrugged.

"I don't know. I.... I don't know. If it is true and they are the same person, that means that my birth mother is dead, and I don't know if I could handle that,"

"Tessa, did Jenna tell you anything about Alaric's wife? How she died?" Stefan asked taking steps closer to me.

"Just that she was killed and the case was never solved. You knew that already?" I asked and he licked his lips looking away from me for a second. Then finally nodded.