Marie looked around the room. She was grateful that the crowd had fizzled out. She looked up to Cade, who was standing behind Ophelia, starstruck by what he had just heard. She wondered what thoughts must have been running through his mind.
“You are my mom, right?” Ophelia asked again after a while. Marie wished she could shake her head and just get out of this situation. She wondered what story her daughter had been carrying all these years and how much she must hate her now. A lot of thoughts ran through her mind, and she could not steady even one of them.
“Marie?” Carter said, moving away from the position she had left him in. He stood beside his daughter, staring at her. “What are you doing here?” he added.
“Are you sad that I am alive and well?” she asked, turning her head to him.
“What?” Carter let out shock at her statement.
“I mean, you wanted me dead, as at that time, I wonder if it is still the same.” She knew that Carter would never tell Ophelia the truth about how they got separated and she knew that now was not the right time or place to tell that tale but she had to do it.
“When did I ever want you dead?”
“Sixteen years ago, when you brutally kicked me out of the house and asked me to go to hell.”
“When did I ever do that to you?” Ophelia heard the stutter and fear in her dad’s voice. She glanced at him, and an expression she could not associate with him was written all over his face. He looked scared as if he were on the verge of losing.
“Are you still the same?” she murmured, taking a deep breath. “Do you still think that I am the one who caused our marriage to fall apart?” She asked, and he took a step back.
“Marie, I do not think now is the right place to…”
“When you did it to me, you did not care if it was the right place or time to do it; you just did it anyway. You embarrassed and humiliated me so much that I had to flee the country, and now you do not want me to clear my name in front of all these people?”
“Marie,” Charles said, rolling his chair towards them. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Charles,” she let out a sigh. “How many more years do I have to wait? How much longer would I have to wait till I can clear my name?”
“CAN SOMEONE JUST TELL ME WHAT IS GOING ON?” Ophelia said in a very loud voice, startling everyone there. “I have no idea what is going on; you are my mom, right? Your face is engraved in my mind, even though you left when I was seven. I cannot seem to forget you,” she murmured.
“I think we should go somewhere else to discuss this,” Carter began.
“Why do we need to do that?” Marie asked. “You want to know why I brutally abandoned you?” she turned to her daughter, and she nodded. “Okay then,” she clapped and then continued. “I will tell you the whole story right from the start.”
The people who were left in the room stalled just to hear what had happened. The news about Marie that had been making rounds sixteen years ago was that she was tired of the marriage and fled; no one could actually pinpoint what led to her disappearance. There were even more rumours about her being dead; if not, her disappearance made no sense to anyone.
“Twenty-six years, our parents forced us to get married, but surprisingly, we got along pretty quickly, and maybe we fell in love or maybe we just wanted to cpe somehow; we found ourselves attracted to each other.” Carter took a deep breath. He could not believe that Marie was doing this to him; he could not complain because of what he had done to her.
“Three years after we got married, we were blessed with the most perfect baby girl, and we thought that we were living the best life we could get at that time. I mean, his business was doing well, and my father’s business was doing well. Our family was growing; it was all good until he began to receive anonymous random letters.
“Letters?” Ophelia gasped; she did not know where the story was headed, but she was determined to see the end of it.
“Yes letters; at first we thought it must be misdelivered because they just contained a few words at times, some of them accusing me of cheating on my husband; it felt weird because I never did anything of such. I was barely out of the house, so how could I have cheated on him? It went on for years, and even the police could not do anything about it; the letters were untraceable, and they did not pose any risk or harm.”
Marie took a deep breath to pace herself; the story had been bubbling in her heart, ready to make its way out so others could judge rightly what had happened and see if she had done anything wrong. “I suggested we move, hoping that the letters would stop but even after moving, it was obvious that the writer of the letter was someone who knew us well. One day, after seven years had passed of us getting constant letters demeaning my character, a letter arrived with pictures in it; those pictures had me in bed with another man, a man I had never seen in my life.”
Marie ignored the gasps in the room; if she was going to mind what others would say, she would not have started to tell this story in the first place. “Turns out that the pictures were tampered with and his assistant was trying her best to ruin our marriage so she could have a shot at him and maybe become the next Mrs. Frost.”
“Marie” Carter said as if he had just run the marathon; if the story ended there, then he was a good guy, at least to an extent, but if it went on, he would become the bad guy instantly.
“Carter threw me out of the house without a second thought. I guess the pressure of seven years was too much for him to take, so he cracked and asked for a divorce. When I refused to sign the papers, he involved my family, and they disowned me. I was left without a family and all by myself.
“I only did that because of the evidence that was…”
“I thought you would have married her as soon as you were freed from me,” Marie cut him off. “I was anticipating it,” she added teary-eyed. She had tried her best to make sure that she never had her emotions all over the place because of this incident.
“Dad?” Ophelia turned to him. She hoped he had a fantastic story to make himself seem less bad. She had spent all her time resenting her mother for leaving her all alone, but now that she knew that her father was the reason, she could not help the anger she felt.
“Care to explain?”
“Is all she said true?” she followed when her father just stood there without a word. He was usually someone who voiced all of his concerns, so why was he so silent?
“YES”