Bad Boy (An Indecent Proposal)(33)

One of the reasons I sent you to boarding school was that I hoped you’d never be alone. I wanted you to discover the blessing of friendship. I wanted you to learn the earthy, practical things in life rather than be homeschooled, and at the constant mercy of others. I couldn’t let you make the same mistakes I made, and most of all, I couldn’t let you witness my gradual mental decline.



Clint has without a doubt told you that I was insane. It’s a lie we concocted together…a means to hide the fact that my illness takes away my memories and makes everyday tasks impossible. My illness has started to transform me into someone I’m not. I’ve become someone I no longer recognize. Sometimes I think of the loss of my memory as a blessing, but then I remember that I’m also losing myself, that I forget how to be a mother to you, that all the good things will be erased, too, and I realize just how much of a loss I’m about to suffer.



In the beginning, we were hopeful, thinking the medication I was prescribed would take care of my little problem, but now we know my illness cannot be cured. The doctors have told me that it’s only a matter of time until I lose my memory, the ability to breathe, eat, and I’ll die. They tell me I have months left, but I don’t feel like I have months. I feel like it can happen any time now, which is why I’ve been up for thirty-six hours to draw up my Last Will and the letters.



So, please forgive me if the words seem jumbled or hard to understand. It’s not my intention. I’m just trying not to sleep and forget. If I fall asleep, I’ve no idea in what state I’ll be when I wake up, and days, even weeks could pass before I remember what I was about to do before my memory failed me.



I want to start from the beginning, what I deem the most important events first.



My name is Eleanor Hanson and I’m your mother. I was born Eleanor Stonefield to John Stonefield and Annette Fiddling. Your father is Richard Walker. Moving on from him was hard. Indeed, it took me a few years, but you were the one thing that kept me sane. You were a gorgeous baby, my love, my joy. Everything was easier with you. But living so close to your grandparents wasn’t. I’m not proud of who my parents are. I’m not proud of what they’ve done to me.



My father was a hard and strict man. My mother was very religious. You will know very little about them. That’s because I made sure you wouldn’t get to know them.



I wouldn’t say that my parents were evil, but they were cruel people. Every parent who harms a child should not be called a parent but a monster.



I cannot explain the pain I went through whenever they punished me as a child, each in their own way. Though I’m sure my parents loved me, they both turned a blind eye, abandoned me when I needed them the most. My mother knew what was happening to me. I confided in her early on. Yet, she proclaimed that it was all in my head. My father had this tendency to sweep everything under the rug to keep the family name untarnished.



The truth is, I didn’t know that being sexually abused by your uncle is wrong, until I got much older and had you. As a child, I assumed I had no choice and that I had to accept my family for who they were. As I grew older, I knew I needed to escape. Marriage was my only way to get away from them all.



That my uncle raped me throughout my childhood and adolescence is not something I’m proud of. In fact, I wished I didn’t have to tell you, but if it opens your eyes to the world I lived in, then so be it. I hope it’ll help you understand some of the choices I made in my life.



There’s something else I need to tell you. Something that’s even harder to put on paper. Something I still cannot live with, even after all those years.



My tears are falling as I write this, and I have to be very careful not to stain the paper.



You have a half brother. That’s when my parents could no longer deny the obvious. I was fifteen years old when they sent me to a monastery to bear my uncle’s child. I was left afraid and alone among strangers, so my parents’ rich friends wouldn’t find out. Among strangers I learned to feel safe until the day I was forced to give up my child.



I prayed. I pleaded with them to allow me to keep my son, but nothing I said could make them see my pain. Even to this moment, I still think of him. I miss him every day. The three days I had him might not seem like a lot, but they were the best of my life, until I had you.



In that short time I dared not sleep out of fear that I would miss a single moment with him.



Giving him away was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, much harder than the sexual abuse I had endured. After nine months of carrying him, I loved him more than I loved myself. I loved him and his innocence in spite of my hatred for the despiteful man who was his father. You don’t know how hard it is to give away a part of your heart until you experience it.



I cannot state how many tears I have shed about my broken family, or how many times I thought of killing myself.



As I’m writing this, my boy should be sixteen. He’s seven years older than you. By the time you get the letters, he’ll be almost thirty. The name I chose for him is Kaiden—Kaiden Stonefield—though his new parents might have changed his name.



I don’t know where he’s living, but I can feel him in my heart. Like I can feel you in my heart. Two children, both linked by my blood and womb.



I pray he’s with a good family. If I could tell him that I would never have given him away out of free will, I would. I would hate him to think his mother didn’t want him because she didn’t love him when the opposite is the truth.



Having a real family has always been my dream. Ever since I was a child, I wanted to be a mother. When you were born, I was older, wiser. I knew you couldn’t replace Kaiden, but you filled a big hole in my heart that your brother had left behind.



My God, Laurie. I was so happy when I held you in my arms the first time. You had the tiniest hands and feet. Born with the cord around your neck, the doctors were sure you would never breathe. But as I was holding you in my arms, my tears staining your little face, my fear that I would lose my next child paralyzing me, I whispered, “Breathe, Laurie, breathe for me.”

And you did. You did it for me. And when you opened your eyes and looked at me, I knew I would love you forever. I knew I would never give you up, no matter what happened. That I would protect you with my life because you were my little girl.



I was so afraid that the same history would repeat itself and what happened to me would happen to you. I could trust no one. It’s one of the reasons I married Clint. You needed a father figure. And I needed to get away from my family.



Only a few people know what happened to me: my parents, Clint, your father. The truth was, my life was a complete lie to everyone else. I met your father when I was seventeen. He was my first friend. He was also my first love. He was also the first lie I told you. I hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me that I claimed we were married before he died. None of that is true.



He isn’t who you think he is. He’s not an honorable man nor is he someone with a good heart. They were lies I told you to protect you from the truth. Lies I told myself to help me move on. When he got me pregnant, our parents insisted that we marry. When the day came, he ran off and left me behind. As a child, you wouldn’t have understood, but now that you’re older, I hope you can feel the heartbreak he caused me. Lies are not honorable, but sometimes when the truth is too painful and we have no choice, we have to lie. I think I mostly lied to myself and I got to a point where I began to believe my own lies.



As far as I know, your father is still alive. I wish I could tell you that he loved you and wanted to see you, but the truth is he’s always been a coward who feared my father.



I tried to contact him on many occasions. I told him about you. I sent him photos. But he never replied. In my heart, I wanted to believe he loved me for a long time, that something or someone held him back, but the truth is, he wasn’t in love with me. I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought I was a rich, spoiled, and strange young woman. At some point, I even believed that my father paid him off to be my friend. That’s the downside of being rich—you never know if anyone ever likes you for who you are.



Choose your friends carefully. Most of them will run when the going gets rough. Most of them would rather take the money than stick around. I can’t blame your father, though. He was younger than I was when I found out that I was pregnant with you. He wasn’t ready to be a father. He wanted to be a physician, study, travel the world, and that’s exactly what he achieved.



If you decide to contact him, I have included everything about him below, though you should know that he is now married with children.



I married Clint because I wanted to be loved rather than hurt. Even though I’ve never been in love with him, I’ve always respected him for who he is. Before we married, he chased me for years and taught me that I could rely on him.



Now that you know my story, you will see that my life’s been a lie for a long time. I’ve been carrying too many secrets. The burden has become too heavy to bear.



If you’re angry with me, please know, I still love you.