Chapter 7: Iain

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When Quinn asks me if I remember my mother, I knew I was telling her the truth that I barely remembered her.

Some memories I have as a child were forcibly blocked so I could deal with the pain. I know that whatever transpired between her and my father broke something inside and forced me to grow up.

When my mother left my father, he was heartbroken. He had remarried several times, but couldn't stay in a relationship because he either cheated on his wives and they eventually found out, or that he divorced them on grounds that 'it wasn't working'. But I knew better. My father never got over my mother. She was his one and only true love and he lost her forever.

  She was his one and only true love and he lost her forever

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But there was this one memory that I still have of her. I was four years old at the time and it was during that night when my father brought my mother to the opera. My mother was in a beautiful full length gown with her pale blonde hair coiffed into a neat chignon. I went inside their room because I didn't want them to go out without me, but my mother assured me that they would return. She kissed me on the cheek tenderly as I caught a whiff of the Chanel No.5 perfume she had put on. She grabs one of my father's neckties and patiently teaches me how to tie it.

After demonstrating to her twice that I had gotten it right, I remember following her until the top stair cases as she descended down to the hallway where my father was patiently waiting for her.

He looked dapper in a tuxedo and smiled gently at my mother as he bowed gallantly and told her she was 'more beautiful than Grace Kelly". He took her hand and kissed it and he pulled her towards him and twirled her around as they danced while my father hummed to "Moon River". All the while, my mother blushed and laughed heartily and I knew from the looks that they gave each other that they were truly, deeply in love.

It was both the happiest and the saddest memory I possess. I was sent to England a month after my parents' date to the Opera when my great grandmother found out that I was a child prodigy with a genius level IQ.

Genevieve Rolfe-Stuart insisted that I was to live in England, with private tutors. It was to not only appease my insatiable curiosity and enhance my knowledge, but also to prepare me for Gordonstoun, a private co-educational boarding school in Scotland where my ancestors before me attended. I was to be separated from my mother, who had visibly objected, but was helpless once Madame (great grandmother) made her choice.

My transfer to England broke my mother's heart.

Four years later, she and my father divorced. Since then, my father was too busy to pay me any attention because he buried himself with work which I knew was the only way he coped with the pain.

Genevieve didn't waste time making me wallow in self pity. She hired tutors, most were retired professors from the one of the world's respected Universities like Cambridge and Oxford. I was a curious child and a quick learner that my grandparents and Genevieve had taken it in themselves to hide me from all the gossip and emotional turmoil New York had spun from my parents' divorce. When I was older, I moved further away to another boarding school in Scotland, where the weather was so cold that I actually forgot to feel miserable and enjoyed my time, especially whenever my mates and I snuck out of school grounds to pick up local girls.

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