The Autumn Prince

2. Fool's Gold

My composure broke completely. The only thing I ever knew about my mother was that she died during childbirth, and that was one hundred percent more information than I had about my dad.

"Wait!" I spluttered, "You can't—I don't—"

"You promised to listen, Thomas," she scolded.

Listen. Christen. Glisten. The periphery of my vision blurred and darkened as if I was staring into a tunnel that drew me forward against my will. Sounds began to muffle and echo in my head, my concentration fractured and threatened to break. I hadn't had a major episode in months, but the stranger's unwelcome revelation after a morning of dangerously high anxiety had softened my grip and I was rapidly losing control.

"No!" I forced the word past the fog. I may have said more, but in those moments my short term memory is unreliable. "You can't just—" I stumbled further, "you can't—you—"

"Be silent!"

Her voice pulled me back from the edge. It wasn't exactly an order, but it wasn't a simple request either and something deep inside me responded, as if the turbulence in my mind had heard it too and obeyed. I clung to that, forgetting everything else I might have said.

"I will hear your questions, but please do not interrupt." She paused again, her expression stern, as if addressing a poorly-behaved child. If only she knew how close I'd come to a melt-down, and what I was capable of when the world around me crumbled away.

"Your parents were never married," she continued calmly. "They met in a college town, not unlike this one," she gestured to our surroundings with one hand and a casual glance, "where he seduced her, bedded her, and murdered her."

"Murdered—?" The unnatural stability held, but I had no time to choke down the added shock before the words burst out. The woman's eyes went hard as she spoke over me.

"Thomas, if you want me to finish, do not speak out of turn again. You may hear many revelations today and you will have the opportunity to be overwhelmed by them on your own time." She gave me another chance to end the conversation, and I honestly thought about standing up and leaving.

I had never given my father much thought at all, except in typical orphan fantasies that he might be a billionaire or a secret agent, but her news was far outside my most ambitious dreams—or nightmares—and I found it hard to digest. Instead of leaving, however, I clenched my jaw and nodded. She answered with the stern, measured look of one accustomed to authority.

"They were together for a few fiery days and he left her without word or explanation. The shock sent your mother into a deep despair from which she never recovered."

"You told me he murdered her," I said without thinking. She shot me another glare but no reprimand followed.

"Her despair was not the irrational pining of a naive young woman. Your mother was addicted to a very rare, very potent drug and he was her sole supplier. When he left, she lapsed into a profound grief, never suspecting its true nature. I found her in the psychiatric ward of a local hospital where she was taken after she assaulted and seriously injured a fellow student. Her name was Janet Lane."

She withdrew an aged photo from her handbag and placed it on the table in front of me. I stared at the picture of my birth mother, not knowing what to do or say. This strange woman had spoken her name with unexpected warmth, and seeing that smiling, freckled face framed by wavy auburn hair, her light, penetrating eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, pushed everything else from my mind.

I remembered wondering about the woman who had given me life, trying to find the face of a kind, loving mother in my own reflection, some hint of my origin, but the few facts I'd been given were so vague I may as well have been left on someone's doorstep without a note. By the time I turned eight, the year I was placed into my first foster home, I had stopped asking.