SETH (Book Four)

THIRTY-EIGHT

I glance back at the picture, and I can see the hate my mother put so much to cross an X over her father's face. It must have broken her heart once he told her she was nothing.

I always felt that while I was in the Order. I was nothing but a pawn, an item to be used however they pleased. They didn't treat me as a person.

I took one small picture and stuck it inside the back pocket of my jeans, then put the rest back inside the folder. I handed it back to Dr. Swanson.

"What about the birth certificate I found?" I pull out the paper from my pocket and hand it to him.

The older man unfolded it, made a glance, and handed it back. "I had it classified in the system before I erased it to give you an authentic document."

I fold the paper back into my pocket and sigh.

"How did she find out her lover is also her father?" I ask as he takes the Manila folder back.

"She already knew."

My brows furrow at his response. "She knew?"

Dr. Swanson nodded.

"Then...my mother fell in love with him and already knew that man was her father?"

"It wasn't that simple," he states.

"Enlighten me."

"As I said, Majorie wanted a father in her life," he placed the folder back in the pocket of his chair. "She had asked me to help look for him. Like a good brother, I searched for him, and when I did, she immediately decided to see him in New York and applied to the university there."

The doc gripped his cane and let out a halt. "Majorie didn't stay with him but lived in the dorms. She never told her father who she was and was happy, but her feelings changed when Majorie didn't see him as her father but a man."

He got up from his chair and walked towards a dresser behind me. I turn and see in his hands are handwritten letters.

"From the beginning, Majorie wrote how happy she was meeting her father." I took the stacks of letters and looked at each one from the day she started college. "Then, in the seventh letter, she told me she fell in love with a man. A man who is older than her. She describes how much the man showers her with love and devotion. It made Majorie want to marry the man once she graduates, but after the fourteen letters, she had to stop writing and showed up at the hospital with a swollen belly."

I read the intimate details of my mother's sweet words about my father. It started with how much fun and happy she was to meet her father. They spend time together as a professor and student and help her in any way. Then, the sixth letter tells how she has mixed feelings about him. One sentence described her heart beating fast whenever he is near her or her skin is tempted to touch herself while thinking of him. The following letter confessed her love for her father. My mother wanted to be his wife and saw him as a man, not a father. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him and have his child grow old with her. The love continues until the fourteen letters.

My eyes repeatedly reread each detail of what my mother wrote. She loves him. This forbidden love is rare in the relationship between two people. My mother grew up without a father, and meeting him would help build that father-daughter bond, but it wasn't expected when they fell in love as a man and woman.

I lick my lips and hand back the letters, not wanting to read them anymore as they already linger in my brain.

"Keep them," he pushes them towards me. "I don't want to look at them anymore."

"Why do you have them?"

"They will be in good use once Majorie sees that life continues. My sister won't listen to me. If she sees you, maybe she will understand. She needs to move on."