The Donor House: Advent Story (part 24)

[k_a_webb]

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5
Part 6; Part 7; Part 8; Part 9; Part 10
Part 11; Part 12; Part 13; Part 14; Part 15
Part 16; Part 17; Part 18; Part 19; Part 20
Part 21; Part 22; Part 23

Lily tried not to let her concern become apparent, but she was worried that, at ten years of age, she’d made a stupid decision that was going to affect whether the community at the House believed that she was telling the truth or not. Strangely, even though she’d never talked to him before, she trusted Sullivan and knew that he was being honest when he said he’d believe her no matter what. Unfortunately that didn’t mean the others would, because if her siblings went along with the decision they’d made almost a decade before, when they were in a very different position to the one they’d found themselves in, because they’d had no idea that something like the Donor House would exist.

“Why would she make something like that up?” Morgan asked, and Lily realised that it was Morgan’s hand on one of her shoulders. Once again she had to stop herself from turning to look at who else might be there, because it seemed like Sullivan had managed to get around the entire reception before returning to her, and she had no idea how he managed it. “She already told us that she was here to help you pay off the mortgage, like me, and even though I don’t know Lily as well as I could I don’t understand why she would make up a story on today of all days. Most of us were looking forward to seeing relatives and friends, but Lily had been dreading it since the day she rang you. The thing about being here is that we start to learn more about people and what they might be hiding. It’s part safety mechanism, true, but in general I’ve used what I’ve learnt more for donors than I have for vampires. It seems like there are more donors here who’ve made the decision to apply to protect themselves for some reason than there are donors who are here for money, but the money is always a good excuse.”

“She would never have applied to the House if we hadn’t asked her to,” Lily’s mother said, even though it wasn’t a reply to what Morgan was asking.

“Why?” Georgina asked, and Lily found herself smiling. “Is it because she didn’t want to apply or because she thought she was too worthless to come here? You see the thing I’ve noticed about Lily is that she’s always putting herself down and I’ve been wondering why for a while, but we don’t ask questions here. We wait until whoever it is feels ready to talk about their problems. Pressuring someone never helps and often makes them more likely to keep it a secret.”

“I wanted to apply,” Lily replied, surprising herself. “I just never thought I was good enough to be accepted and I knew if they found out what I was doing things would have been even harder for me at home.” She blinked away more tears. “Then when they asked me to apply I felt like I had no choice but to get in, because if I’d failed…”

“Lily!” Her father shook his head. “How can you say these things about us?”

“Your daughter can say them because they’re the truth.” Alice’s words surprised Lily more than anything anyone else had said. “I talked to your sister, Lily, and she told me that every word you said was the truth. From what she said they were hoping that being at the House would help you to gain the courage that you needed to tell the truth, because it was past time for everything to come out, and she’s talking to Lewis now about finding a flat for the three of them.”

“If you take our children away from us we’ll go to the papers.”

“That might worry me if I was taking your children away from you, but I’m not. What you might be surprised to find out is that your children have been planning this ever since Lily entered the House, because they have no interest in living with people like you any longer, even though you’ve never treated them the way you treated her. From the moment that happened they were willing Lily to tell us what had happened, so they could get out as well.”

Lily’s mother shook her head. “I don’t believe you. Our children love us.”

“Loving someone doesn’t mean you have to like them, especially when it comes to blood family. You made the wrong decisions when it came to Lily and you’re living with the consequences now.”

“If I could have got rid of Lily I would.” As her mother spoke Lily felt three hands tighten their grip on hers and then another hand take hold of her free hand. “Unfortunately it was too late to by the time I found out that I was pregnant with a vampire’s child. My parents threw me out, with nowhere to go, so I wandered the streets for a little while, hoping I’d be gathered or that something would happen to me so I wouldn’t have to keep her, but I wasn’t that lucky. I should have dumped her on the doorstep of the nearest social services, but a man I met convinced me to keep her – nothing that happened was her fault. For months I tried to love her and I might have been able to if she didn’t have his eyes, but she does.”

“So the man you’ve been telling her is her father actually isn’t?” Kisten asked, squeezing her hand. “He’s someone you met later on and thought might be able to love Lily?”

“No, he’s the man I was going to marry, before I fell in love with a man who ended up abandoning me. Maybe it wasn’t his fault, but that doesn’t make what happened any easier, and my parents came to me with a way of making things better between us. Even though I hated the child I couldn’t get rid of her and I would have to marry the man my parents had originally chosen for me, before I decided that I was going to follow my heart. We had children, children that we both love, and Tara realised early on that we weren’t treating Lily the same, so she came to ask us why. I couldn’t tell her what had really happened, so I came up with a lie I hoped would be good enough, but it never was.” She shook her head. “One afternoon I found Kieran going through our files, hunting for Lily’s birth certificate, because he was certain that she wasn’t his full sister. I lied to him again to keep him away, but I know he didn’t believe me. They all did everything they could to help her and I couldn’t understand why. Even now I still can’t. Wasn’t it enough that we loved them?”

“Mother, it was never going to be enough,” Kieran said, making Lily and her parents jump. “Don’t worry, Lil, Tara’s still on the phone with Lewis, we were just hoping today would be the day, so I was close enough to come as soon as she text me to say that it was done.”

Even though Lily didn’t want to step away from the community that had chosen to believe her that was exactly what she found herself doing and she threw herself into her much taller brother’s arms. “I thought…”

“We were never going to go along with that unless we had to. If we thought for a moment that they might punish you for us telling the truth we would have lied, but you’re safe. They can’t do anything to you here.”

“They might hurt you.”

“Sweetheart, they already hurt us. They lied to us about you, they treated you like you didn’t deserve to exist, and every time you cried yourself to sleep you broke Tara’s heart, because she knew she couldn’t help you the way she’d always dreamed of.” Kieran squeezed her tighter. “Finally we can look after you the way we always wanted to.”

“Kieran…” The sadness is her mother’s voice made Lily wish she was the one who’d be able to make it go away, but she wasn’t. “We…”

“Don’t. There’s nothing either of you can say that will change the way I feel about you. Lily was innocent. The punishment you meted out on her because of what happened to the man you love wasn’t right and we knew that from the time we were old enough to understand what was happening. None of us ever accepted the lie you gave us, apart from Lily, because we were never trying to make you love us. She spent the whole of her life doing things for you both, because she thought it would make you love her, but you never were and that was something we could never bring ourselves to tell her. We didn’t want to hurt her more.”

“Why did she matter so much to you?”

“Lily is our sister. We never knew about what had happened, we never had any reason to dislike her, and we accepted her for who she was: a girl who’d spent all her life wanting the love of her parents, even though they didn’t deserve her. The girl you tried so hard to destroy accepted the lies you told her in the hope that one day all the hard work she did for you, that the way she gave up her chance of having a life for you, would change the way you felt about her. Even though I know you hoped we accepted the same lies we never did, we wanted to help our sister, and Tara spent hours trying to convince Lily that talking about what had happened would help. Maybe it was for the best that she never believed Tara, because it meant she was here when she finally gathered the courage to tell someone about the way you treated her.”

“You’ve all put in applications to become donors,” Nick said, as Lily took a step back so she could look up at her brother, unable to believe Nick’s words. “I was reading through them the other day and I realised that I needed to talk to Lily as soon as possible about it, but I didn’t have a chance to before. There’s rarely a monetary reason for more then member of a family to apply as donors, so I knew there was something we were missing, and if she hadn’t of wanted to talk to me I would have gone to Tara or you to find out the truth.”

“I’m glad you would. It’s good to know that we were right to put our faith in the community that you’ve created here, because we weren’t certain, we just knew you were our best option. Honestly, we don’t all want to be donors, but we needed a way out, and sending in applications seemed to be a good way of getting you to notice us. Tara thought that if you noticed us you’d go to Lily.”

“Kieran, you shouldn’t have done that.” Lily stepped back, biting her lip, and stared at her brother, still not quite able to accept everything they’d done in order to help her, when she didn’t think they really had a reason to. They had everything she’d ever wanted and they were throwing it away because of what their parents had done to her. “The choice was mine.”

“We both know you were never going to say a word. I don’t doubt that you were planning on returning home once you’d finished your time here, because you don’t know how to walk away from them, and we decided that we weren’t going to let you put yourself through all that pain. You’ve been though more that enough, Lily, for something that was never your fault, and it was time for us to look after you.”

“You found her birth certificate,” their father said, a statement rather than a question, as Lily realised that they must have already known about her parentage.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.