Heart Rallies

Treize: Family History

Seff parked his car on an empty space before they went out of his car. Instead of going home, they headed to a restobar in Ayala. After talking to a woman, they were guided on a private room and were attended to right away.

"Cozy," she commented. The room given to them was sound proof and it was big enough for five people.

"This is Ethan's," he said. "He named it after his first child. This is his third branch."

"Oh," she realized the relevance when she saw the logo of the place. They remained quiet until their drinks were served.

"So, what did you hear?" Bea asked him while opening her can of beer.

"Hear what?"

"My dad and I's conversation. C'mon, I know that you heard us. I just don't know if you heard it all," she said. "Good for you because he likes you a lot."

"I heard some," he admitted, drinking his own. "And I don't understand it. It seemed that it goes a deep reason why you hate each other."

She laughed. "And painful."

"What happened?"

Beatrice paused for a while, unsure of what she would tell him and if she indeed should tell him something.

"It's okay if you don't want to tell me anything," he said. "It might be too private."

"He had an affair."

Seff became quiet as soon as Bea opened up.

"It happened while I was in college. He was serving that time as the Chief Justice. He met a lot of people until he met a woman much younger than him. She was just around my age. He was crazy over the woman and it just came to the point that he was willing to give up everything that he has for that slut," she said bittterly.

"I bet that was chaotic," he commented.

"Yeah, it was. It is," she said. "He was able to keep it down. No one knew about it for a while until my mother found out. I don't know how. Maybe she had some instinct because dad wasn't going home most of the time. I don't know how my father came out clean but my mother was devastated when she found out."

"She started questioning herself as to why my father looked for another woman. If it was about how she looked, how she dresses up, how she deals with people, how she acts, if it's about sex... She lost confidence and she had a breakdown that time. My mother loves my father a lot and when she found out about it, she did not do anything but cry. She did not fight. She spent days staying inside her room and wouldn't come out. It was horrible," she shook her head.

"Did you meet your father's woman?"

Bea nodded. "I asked my mother for the woman's name. She refused to tell me at first until I got it out from her. I looked for her and met her face to face."

"What did you do?"

Bea laughed. "I pulled her hair in front of my father. I slapped and just kicked her. And before I left her place, I broke one of her crystal vases. I know it costs a lot but they stopped me before I hit another one."

Seff laughed. "Cheers to that."

"But you see, no matter how many vases I break, it would never bring back what we lost. My mother is always scared that my father would leave us again. She's always fidgety, anxious... And from that day on, she became a wife and not a mother. At first, I understood it but it just came to a point that I wanted to hate my mother for always thinking of my father. We stopped being a family. But anyway, like what you see, my father went back to us and left that woman," she finished her story.