The Woman With An Ice Heart

Chapter Nineteen

Valerie's POV (eDiTeD)

We had a beautiful day at church and then decided to go home, since no one had any plans of going out after. I decided to not go to the orphanage today but just send money there. Layla would see the money when I sent it and made sure that it was used accordingly. Before Layla was there, there was another woman who stole some of the money and used it for her own use. After figuring it out, I made sure that she was removed from her line of work and looked for another caretaker for the kids whom I trusted.

With Claire ahead of us, Hannah and I walked inside the house. There was a ghostly silence in the house, since it was also the day off for all the maids.

I took off to Max's room since I hadn't seen him in two days and I missed him. He didn't even text me or anything. I wanted to make sure that he was okay and that his mother being here was not that big a problem. I knocked on his door, but no one answered. I knocked again to hear utter silence as a response from the other room.

"Max won't return until mother leaves."

I swerved to the right to see Claire coming out of her room, a deep scowl on her face.

"I'll text you the address of the hotel he is in and the room he is in. I squeezed it out of him this morning, after seeing him leave with a bag."

I couldn't help but sigh. As i was walking down the stairs with her, I saw Hannah sitting on the couch with her head in her hands. We quickly rushed to her side and upon hearing our footsteps, she quickly wiped away the tears that stained her cheeks.

"Mom?"

She looked at her daughter.

"Can I talk to Valerie alone, Claire?"

"Of course."

She patted my shoulder and left the room. We were now alone.

"Sit."

I quickly took the seat next to her and waited silently for her to speak. She took in a deep breath.

"I might as well tell you the whole story. My husband and i came from different rich families that wanted to merge their businesses and for that to be possible, we had to be married. Since we married without love, our relationship was mostly about yelling at each other when we met and avoiding each other at all cost. One thing led to another one night and I got pregnant with Max. At that time I was angry at myself for letting such a thing happen, because that meant that I was fully tied to the man I despised through a child. I then gave birth to him but i wanted nothing to do with him, and so did the father. We found nannies that would take care of him while we did our own things."

She quickly wiped her face from the tears that were rushing out now, and I took her hand in mine as a way of reassuring her. After a moment of deep breathing, she continued, quivering.

"As the years went by, my husband and I ended up getting close and then we fell in love with each other. After that, we began to go to church after a friend invited us to their church on guest day. We felt accepted and made sure that Claire and Nick went there with us when they were kids. When we wanted to talk to Max about it, it wasn't as fruitful as we had hoped. When he saw us, he had a blank face. For someone who was still in middle school, I didn't expect such a reaction from him toward us. I can't blame him though."

She held her head in her hands and spoke while she was crying.

"We pushed him away when he was just a child. Of course he'd resent us. We tried talking to him sometimes, but he'd burst out in rage and tell us to leave him alone. That's exactly what we did, without knowing that we were just making it worse. I thought that we'd given him time when we'd sent him off to high school but we'd just made the riff between us bigger. Now he's grown up, but he's still doesn't say anything to us. He doesn't burst in fits of anger anymore but-"