Maybe the optimism is misguided or misplaced, hell, it could even be delusional but I’m choosing to believe it’s not. I think it’s genuine, it’s the real deal and whether or not it’s warranted is something I’m choosing not to focus too much on right now.
So yeah, I’m scared. I’m afraid of going through more trauma with the potential of losing the fight against surviving it but I’m not letting it run my life anymore.
That’s why, as I watch a tear slip down Justine’s cheek, I set my mug on the nightstand and scoot toward her, resting my head on her shoulder as I wrap my arms around her waist. “I know why you’re worried, and I know there isn’t much I can say to change it, but I really am ok, Justine. I’m scared, I won’t lie to you about that. I’m just, I guess my headspace is different.”
“I know,” she says as she wraps me up in a brutal hug. “I can see it in you, the way your strength is shining through the darkness, but I willalwaysbe afraid of losing you, Leonor. I did once, and none of us can go through that again.”
My nose stings as I hold her tighter, closing my eyes while I breathe in her jasmine scent. “You’re the only reason I’m still here, Justine.” She takes a deep breath as I feel her press her cheek to my head. “You and Pierre. If you hadn’t stuck with me, hadn’t had faith in my ability to survive and push through everything, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
Justine simply nods as she pulls me closer.
But I don’t think she really understands what I’m saying. Not in the way I need her to.
“It’s funny, in a sort of ironic way,” I pause, briefly debating on sharing what only Franc De la Grange and I know before deciding I should. “My biological parents, they were worse than any of the foster ones I had and that’s saying something.” Justine tenses and I can almost feel her curiosity bloom right between us. “My sperm donor, he was a high-ranking member of the Irish mob who came down here from New York in the late seventies. He was hiding for double crossing someone; I don’t know all the details and I really don’t care about them but I found out enough. I guess he met my birth mother on his way down here, picked her up while he was heading to Louisiana.”
Kidnapping her is more like it.
She was only seventeen, totally naive and inexperienced but when she met my biological father it was some sort of twisted love at first sight, maybe even Stockholm syndrome but based on what I read she loved him once.
Until she didn’t.
“Leonor,” Justine says with a sigh. “You don’t need to tell me anything you aren’t ready to share.”
I nod with a yawn but keep going anyway. “I know and I love you for that, but Idoneed to share this. Maybe not with anyone else, but I need you to hear it.”
“Ok.”
I honestly think Justine doesn’t want to hear this, not what she thinks I’m going to tell her anyway. But I have my reasons for finally sharing part of my history, and the role Justine and Pierre stepped into over the better part of fifteen years means I need one of them to hear it so they can start to understand where I’m coming from now.
“He pimped her out.”
Justine tenses again as a little gasp of surprise moves across my hair before she sits up. I almost laugh at that but if that seems scandalous, everything else I have to tell her is going to shock the shit out of her.
“I still don’t know how they discovered my last name but when they did, they found my biological parents because of their criminal records.” Which were extensive as fuck. “Drugs, guns, prostitution. They’d been brought in for everything but more prominently, my sperm donor had multiple domestic abuse and battery charges. He pimped my birth mother out and whenever she stepped out of line, he beat her senseless. Including when she was pregnant with me.”
“Oh, Leonor…” Justine sniffles and squeezes me to the point of smothering but doesn’t say anything else.
For some reason, it makes me smile again. “I was about a year and a half when he killed her. He beat her to death with a baseball bat, left me with her dead body while he went on the run again, then got arrested on an unrelated charge a few hours before they found us.”
“But I thought, what you said about the firehouse?”
Sitting up, I look Justine in the eye. “It was all bullshit. There was no firehouse, no note pinned to my shirt. One of the cops made a comment about Poe but more or less because of how gruesome the crime scene was.”
Because my biological father was a sadistic fuck who beat my mother to death, cut out her heart and left it as a warning to therest of his girls, then split before shit hit the fan. And he did it all while I was a few feet away in my crib. The police report even said I had blood spatter on my face and clothes when they found mefour daysafter my mother was murdered.
Talk about fucking trauma.
“I didn’t know any of that until maybe five years ago, now? For some reason, being stalked the first time got me thinking and I went looking for answers to the questions I had been too afraid to ask before.”
“Because you didn’t want to think the story you’d been told since you were little was a lie.” Justine nods as she turns to face me, reaching out to push a loose curl behind my ear. “Because foster care wasn’t any better and you wanted some good somewhere in your childhood.”
She’s right and she knows it, but I’m not about to dive into how fucked up all of that was.
Instead, I simply agree and finally get to my point. “Being stalked and almost killed by Colin Hastings was only one time out of many where I could have died and while it was by far the worst time, pain and death have been a part of my life from the very beginning. Between my biological parents and countless foster ones, I’ve seen a little bit of every kind of cruel and twisted way this world works since before I understood it, but I truly believe right down to my bones, you and Pierre are why I survived it all.”
Justine frowns and opens her mouth but shuts it when I arch a brow.
“You might not have found me until I was basically a pain in the ass adult, but I know in my gut, the two of you were always meant to be my parents. Myrealparents.” Her eyes instantly fill with tears, and I can’t help but smile at that. “You weren’t the reason I went through everything I did but you were my reward for surviving it. And you abso-fucking-lutely are the reason I’vesurvived everything that’s happened since I met you.” I lift my index finger and swipe a tear that slips down her cheek. “You might not have carried me for nine months, and neither of you share my DNA, but you and Pierre, you’re mymama and daddy,and without you I wouldn’t be sitting here today. I need you to know how fucking grateful I am for the two of you, and how much I fucking love you because the biggest takeaway from living the life I have is that everything is conditional and temporary.”
