Max found Jeremy and Clara huddled in the garden, sitting on a bench hidden behind an enormous planter. Clara was still crying in Jeremy’s arms.
Max asked, ‘What happened? What triggered the tears? Is she okay?’
‘It was Celine. You made her laugh, and there was something about it that woke up all her memories. She kept saying she was her sister. We have to look into this. It might be the piece of the puzzle we were waiting for,’ Jeremy replied.
‘We’ve been looking for kidnapping stories, and we always come up empty. Maybe you should investigate Celine, see if she has any siblings that disappeared or something. Maybe she plays an integral part in this.
Max was thinking, ‘Fuck, I just met her, and we’re already entangled in this stupid mess. I want to be selfish and hope that Clara, for once, is wrong about something. But I want her to have closure at the same time. This is going to be hard.’
He nods at his brother. ‘I’ll do it as soon as we get to the hotel. This might be bigger than we thought.’
They both feel helpless when this happens to her. All they can do is soothe her and hug her until she stops crying or falls asleep, whichever comes first. Some would say it was creepy for them to still be sleeping together. They were all adults, after all. But growing up in an orphanage, and having abandonment issues, they never really outgrew their childish attachment to one another.
Max carried her while Jeremy hailed a cab.
-=-
Clara, Max, and Jeremy all grew up in the orphanage. That’s where they adopted one another as siblings. As young adults, this ragtag crew decided to change their last names to Johnson, in homage to the famous wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
Max got left at the orphanage when he was around 5 years old. Jeremy was only 2 at that time, so they had no recollection of the identity of their parents. Because the orphanage was very poor, they forced the older kids to care for the younger ones. To ensure that everyone would get taken care of and minimize the cost of hiring additional personnel.
The caretakers assigned Max to care for Jeremy and grew to love him as a younger brother. Occasionally, the boys gave into sibling rivalry, but the longing to have a family always kept them together. Clara was eventually added to the mix.
Clara got dumped outside the orphanage by her kidnappers. She looked severely dehydrated and badly bruised when Max found her lying on the ground. He had snuck out and came back screaming, fearing she was dead.
When she awoke, she had no recollection of who she was and what happened to her. She couldn’t even speak. The experience had traumatized her so much that her brain repressed most of her memories before the accident. The doctor who examined her diagnosed her with traumatic dissociative amnesia.*
It took her a year before she spoke again. Max and Jeremy were 7 and 5 respectively when Clara first appeared at the orphanage. The staff estimated her age to be 10 at that time.
Most of the kids avoided her, thinking she was weird. But Max had been smart for his age, and since he was the one who found her, he naturally became protective. The boys tried everything to help her come out of her shell and help her speak again, but nothing really worked.
The adults did not think she was going to get better, so they mostly left her alone.
When her wounds began to heal, and she was strong enough to walk around, the duo showed her how to sneak into the nearby forest to pick berries or catch fish in the river. But they were never lucky, so they just played in the water. She was quiet and shy in the beginning, but when she started to open up, the trio developed their own sign language just in case she never learned to speak again.
At a very young age, Max had a penchant for entertaining people. So he occupied most of their days with tales of his dreams and adventures.
Jeremy, on the other hand, was very taciturn because Max was so boisterous that he chose to be quiet most of the time. He only opened up when he was with Clara and Max. This was one reason he was never got adopted. He was happy to be held and hugged all the time, and it was why he loved Clara the most. She would always sit with him and cradle him until he fell asleep.
Before Clara regained her voice, she would frequently disrupt everyone’s sleep by screaming and crying into the wee hours of the morning. This didn’t make her very popular but gave all of them a strong idea that she knew how to speak or at least vocalize her feelings.
The nightmares made the caretakers at the orphanage miserable, so they left her in a room far from everybody so she wouldn’t disturb the other kids. Unfortunately, this measure backfired and pushed her deeper into neurosis.
At a young age, Max and Jeremy knew Clara needed to be with people and did not need to be isolated. So the brothers would sneak out at night to be with her, hoping to ease her fears. Being with them had eventually lessened her nightmares, especially when they held hands or embraced one another as they slept.
To help her forget her nightmares, Max would tell stories before bedtime. It was like they were kindred spirits who were always fated to find and care for one another. As they grew older, she just took on the role of their older sister. They never got adopted, so they just took it upon themselves to be each other’s family.
Their lives changed when she met Mr. Wong in High School. He was a self-defense instructor, training people to work as security guards for different companies and famous celebrities.
She had this innate desire to learn how to defend herself, so she begged him to teach her, but without the money to pay him, she volunteered to help him with chores instead. Cleaning around the dojo, the bathrooms, and throughout the building. After she was done with her classes and part-time jobs.
*Traumatic Dissociative amnesia occurs when a person blocks out certain events, often associated with stress or trauma, leaving the person unable to remember important personal information. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9789-dissociative-amnesia#:~:text=Dissociative%20amnesia%20occurs%20when%20a,to%20remember%20important%20personal%20information.