"Roxana, dear. " Helen called her name to get her attention. Roxana spun away from the fountain she was peering at to look at her grave grandmother.
"What do you think of Valeria?"
Roxana stayed silent for a few moments, pondering. "She stays silent most of the time, almost never speaks unless spoken to. Totally opposite of me." She chuckled weakly at her joke. "She seems nice, but she also has a lot of secrets that she is not telling us."
"Why do you say so?" Helen asked.
Roxana hesitated. "I don't realize if it's important. Don't judge her solely on this basis, grana." She requested. She said this because she knew her family was a conservative one, and there were many things they deemed inappropriate. "I think I saw a swirl of ink on her back, but I can't be sure."
Helen nodded sagely. "I understand, and you are right about there being many mysteries surrounding her. Foremost is—Valeria didn't grow up at the orphanage. And she was so very young when she got abducted. The director there told me she found Valeria with two other kids at the train station."
It shocked Roxana to hear this. "Then where was she before coming to the orphanage?"
"We don't have any way of learning this, unless Valeria tells us herself." Helen took Roxana's hands in hers. "You have a way of making people comfortable and confiding in you, my dear. Please try to get Valeria to share her story with you. We need to learn what she's been through to understand how to get past her walls." Her voice cracked as tears pooled in her eyes.
Roxana was aghast.
Ever since she's known, her grandmother is a very tough woman who seldom cries. It's only her love and care for her family that sometimes sprinkles out as the salty drops.
"That girl is broken beyond anything any of us can imagine."
____________________________
"I never wanted to leave. It was her last week of pregnancy, and she was due any day. But, an emergency rose in our company's London office which forced me to attend to it. Your mother, she encouraged me to leave her and go there, and I, like a fool, acquiesced." There was resentment in his expression and regret in his voice.
Valeria listened silently.
"The work there kept me busy, and I didn't have time to return sooner. I got the call late at night there, about Eloise going into labour, and you were born. As if the heavens were against me, there was a bad rainstorm that delayed my flight. She would have returned home from the hospital, the day I finally got on a plane. When I got off at the airport, the driver received me, but instead of taking me home he took me to a crime scene."
The man extended his hand to take support from the back of a chair. He sat on it and rubbed his hand over his face before continuing, " Her car was burnt, it's blackened parts spread everywhere . First, they thought it was an accident caused by an oil leak, but from some witnesses they learnt that there was a scream before the blast that caught everyone's attention."
Valeria heard the scared shout of a woman in her mind, an image of a car blowing up into smithereens conjured by her mind.
She saw her father's face turning paler, but didn't understand what she could do. Pat on his back? Rub his head? Hug him? All the actions which she observed Clarisse perform to soothe troubled children back at the orphanage.
The hardened girl- like a diamond is from all the high pressure and temperature it bears for years- couldn't find enough courage to comfort her father, not now.
She imagined the face of Eloise she had become familiar with blowing up, and it felt like the woes of losing a mother overwhelmed her once again.
One of the very few times she felt such moving emotions that left her feeling weak and helpless.
"I couldn't recognize my wife as they took her scorched body away." A faraway look entered his eyes as he went back in time to that fateful day, reliving those awful memories.
He could never forget them, he didn't want to.
"It was there only that an officer came to me with a baby girl wrapped in the same blanket that I saw Eloise weave with a beautiful smile. The serene, sleeping face of the baby, free from all worry, suffering surrounding her, made me feel calm. Mother's hand on my shoulder and the young angel in my arms, they helped me not lose myself. Life continued. Without her, it was difficult. But we adapted to the drastic changes."
"Have you noticed the locket around Roxana's neck?" Valeria nodded. She had. And strangely, it caused a spark of recognition to light up in the back of her mind.
"It was your mother's. I found it around the baby and accepted her as my daughter, with no requirement for other proofs."
Valeria had some doubts. She didn't voice them out, however.
There was a knock on the door, and the two people inside turned to it.
"It's me dad." Called Roxana from outside. "May I come in?"
"Yes, dear." Julian answered loudly, his voice regaining its placidity.
The door opened and the blonde girl with her big Bambi eyes entered sheepishly.
"I hope I am not interrupting you two."
Julian smiled kindly and beckoned her to his side. "No, you're just in time. I was about to call you myself soon."
Valeria watched Roxana enter Julian's side-hug and how the two smiled at each other, so familiarly. They looked like a perfect pair of father-daughter.
Julian's gaze returned to her before he continued.
"A week later, from my connections, I got the information that there was a bullet hole in all the three bodies. "
Roxana stiffened in his arms. 'The story of mom's- her mother's death.'
She had heard its abridged version when she was ten on her persistent insistence.
The tale of how she was found. It made sense and at the same time it didn't, now that she learnt the other fact recently.
But this was new information. She didn't remember hearing about the death of anyone else.
Julian affirmed, what she heard was correct. "There were three bodies found in the car-your mother, my sister and her husband."
'What the horrible deck! I never knew I had another aunt!' This fact revelation stunned her.
"A month later, my father passed away under mysterious circumstances. His health was stable and yet it declined so frightfully that we could not save him." This, Roxana knew.
She tried to watch Valeria without being obvious about it. The red-head still had no expression on her face, but there was an evident turmoil in her eyes.
Julian poured himself some water and took two sips. He matched his gaze with both his daughters, one by one.
Gone was the dimming sorrow from his eyes, replaced by an intense fire, "I have spent the past sixteen years burying myself in my workload, not to forget the pain of losing my wife, and my sister, but preparing for revenge from our enemies who chose the wrong family to mess with."