Simon blinked his eyes a few times, trying to hold back. She was swapped at birth. Nancy said it, she said her baby was born alive and she heard her cry.
She insisted that he should investigate it but he shoved it aside. He felt she’s getting worked up unnecessarily because she cannot accept the reality that her months of expectations would end up with nothing.
But he should have listened to her. He should have investigated it back then and who knows, they might have known that fact many years ago and forgotten about the emotions that now clouded their hearts.
For twenty years, Nancy had secretly mourned the death of a child that did not die. How can their daughter accept them as her parents? How can she suddenly be found and be told that the parents she’d known all these years are not her real parents?
Who knows the kind of life she now lives? All these thoughts crossed Simon Blake’s heart within seconds that he pulled his wife into a hug to console her.
They’re together in this. They both have lived the past twenty years of their lives without their only daughter. Just what kind of parents are they?
“I think we should be celebrating now, Mom. I’ll find my sister, I’ll bring her to you Mom and we’ll be happy together” Santiago promised.
“Twenty years Santiago. For twenty years, she’d lived without her real family? Will she accept me as her mother, will she accept us as her real family now?” Nancy stuttered and sniffled.
“She will, Mom. She’s Blake. And we are people with great minds. With our evidence, she would believe us and acknowledge you as her mother and we as her family. I can assure you of that” Jimmy declared.
“I’ll get to the root of this. I’ll see that whoever has done this to us pays for what he or she has done. I will not forget this so easily” Simon Blake promised.
For the rest of that day, Nancy Blake and her husband went to the hospital. Santiago and Jimmy already got the address of the family who took their sister as their own.
And they are working on it to find out their location. From the record so far, the culprit of this deed was at the verge of death when she confessed.
She did so because of another family, to hurt them and at that time, she was mentally unstable but knew what she was doing. It was only years later, after her retirement that she confessed to doing it.
Simon Blake filed a case against the hospital for why they don’t know the mental state of their employees. His daughter had been separated from him for twenty years and everything was blamed on mental instability?
Few hours later, Santiago informed his parents that the family who took their sister away were out of X-city.
It was as if Nancy’s heart was cut through with a knife. She started sobbing profusely. Taken away from the shores of their city, probably to an unknown destination?
A daughter of Blake’s family? A girl whose father was once a president of that country, gone away from the city and land of her fathers?
Oh her life was about to come to its end. She cannot take it anymore. Oh her daughter was either suffering or working hard to impress her foster parents. She doesn’t think they would love her like she would have done.
Why is her life in despair? Simon tried to calm her down, telling her they would trace her through her parents address and find out where she is. Their daughter would return home.
Had she forgotten the dream he told her? She would return but he cannot tell her when exactly that would be.
***************
In New Jersey, Well wishers gathered around Clara and she erected a little mourning hall for her husband. She cried because even in his death, he had no child to stay by his casket.
She stayed awake all night keeping a vigil for Sam. She sobbed until she felt her eyes were dry of tears. She cannot say if it’s because of Sam’s death or her daughter Ava.
At least Sam was dead. He was going to die anyway. His heart has failed, it could no longer carry him. She had envisaged this coming for months now. But dying at the foot of a boy they saved, was what she never envisioned.
Even Anna doesn’t seem to remember the good she and Sam did for her and the Lester family. She didn’t forget, rather she claimed not to know it.
She said without missing words that Ava would die in jail. She was bragging about it. She wants her to die early like Sam. She wants to erase their family from existence.
What evil did they ever do to the Lester family? They are poor but her husband worked for them and was loyal to them until his last day with them. And they chose to pay him evil for the good they have done for them?
In jail, Ava Leon curled up in a corner. She is thankful that her torture hadn’t led to a miscarriage. She doesn’t know what she’d done to some bullies, they often tried to pick a fight with her.
If she refuses to fight, they’ll either kick away her food or take it away from her completely. Sometimes she sleeps without meals but that evening, she was taken to another cell and she was with an elderly lady.
She greeted the elderly lady but she didn’t respond to her. She has her eyes glued to a book she was reading. Hence, she curled up in a corner and dozed off.
“I stopped by to say goodbye. Be happy my daughter and make your mother happy too” Sam said, looking all chubby and younger than he was.
“Papa. You came to see me? I didn’t know you could make it. You’re not on your wheelchair?” Ava asked, surprised that her father could stay upright, looking good.
Sam nodded and waved his hand and gradually disappeared and she woke up with a start. It was a dream and Ava knew something had happened to her papa.
“Papa!!!” She screamed.