I gently dabbed the bruises I had gotten from my aunt pushing me towards the floor this morning. She told me to get her daughter's coffee, but I was a few minutes late.
This family had always looked down on me and treated me like I was merely a maid in this house; not even that, the maids were treated better than I was.
I heard my mom walk into the kitchen, only to glance at me with pity. "Oh, are you alright, my dear?" Her voice was just as delicate as she looked.
She quickly got distracted by a notification. She told me she was coming back really quickly and left the kitchen.
For as long as I had known her, my mother never looked as interested in my life as she had in the past few weeks. She sometimes looked right through me and pretended I didn't even exist, which wasn't surprising considering she wasn't the most mentally stable person in this house.
Sometimes she acted like I was nothing but gum under the shoe, and most times she would try her best to fix the cracks in our relationship. Even though she wasn't the best mom I knew, she still loved me.
I quickly got up and cleaned myself before the other daughter in this house heard me slacking around. I wasn't the only child in the house; there were two other children, my cousins.
They were the twins of the Davidsons; they were highly respected in our small town, and they were spoiled rotten by the Davidson family. Their lifestyles were in stark contrast with mine, even though we were from the same family.
"Where is my morning coffee?" Sage's voice stopped my train of thought as I quickly recalled the reason why I entered the kitchen again. I quickly got up to brew her coffee for her, but before I could, her sharp voice stopped me in my tracks, "Stop, I'll just do it myself", she said. I nodded and hurriedly left the kitchen before I started annoying her. I knew staying in that kitchen would make her more annoyed than she already was.
Not long after I left, I heard shouting from the hall between my mom and my aunt. I left the kitchen, and there I saw my mom kneeling on the floor with her hand on her cheek. This would be the norm around here; the only problem was the fact that my mom was also speaking up for herself.
I caught a glimpse of Sage, and I saw the slight look of shock on her face; even the maids were shocked by her audacity. It was obvious, listening to her, that Aunt Jade was stunned by her sudden rise in confidence.
"You can't talk to me like that. Do you know who I am?" My mom's voice made everyone silent; not once did Valerie Davis raise her voice after becoming pregnant with me.
This was sixteen years ago. Ever since her jerk first love slept with her and ran away with all her belongings, she had always stayed hidden away in the shadows of the other Davidson.
"Tell me then! Who are you?! You are nothing but a low-life slut", Aunt Jade shot back. She looked back with nothing but pain in her eyes.
All those years of sisterhood had died the moment Aunt Jade's facade of a caring sister had broken once she found out their parents would always dote on her over my mother. My mom's face quickly twisted from hurt to cold in a split second. Aunt Jade looked at her with arrogance, threatening her to speak up against what she was saying.
"I'm the wife of Lucas Stone; you can't do anything to me."
Everyone looked at her like she had lost her mind, and frankly, that couldn't be far from the truth; that was the most insane thing I had ever heard.
Everyone was wondering whether Valerie had finally lost her mind from all the bullying she had endured over the years from the Davidsons.
My mom looked like a madwoman, a very different look from her usual fragile and delicate face, though I saw nothing but a young woman who had finally cracked from all the bullying she had endured over the past few years.
"Hmph… I guess it wasn't long before you finally lost it. At the end of the day, you are really nothing, and this is probably the start of your delusions; I'll get you help soon", she said the last part with a hint of maliciousness.
I quickly went over to my mother's side and helped her get up. I led her out of the house to the guest house where we stayed. Even though the guest house was quite big, the interior looked plain and shabby; the exterior, on the other hand, looked very different from the mansion where the rest of Davidson's stayed.
I helped my mom onto our worn-out couch and gave her a glass of tap water, after I looked for painkillers for her swollen cheek. The ones I found were cheap and probably would do a lot to help her.
She glanced at the pain killers in my hand and, with the rest of the energy she had and shook her head slowly.
"It's okay", she lay down on the couch and looked up at the ceiling, "You should go do your chores, or not, in your new father's house, you wouldn't do any chores whatsoever. I told him about you, you know, he said he didn't mind that you were illegitimate as long as you were my daughter, he wouldn't care what you were. He's going to be coming here tomorrow evening, and he is going to take us both away. You should pack up", she kept going on and on about Lucas Stone and how they were 'without a doubt' in love.
She had been like this ever since she returned from her one-year trip abroad two weeks ago. She kept talking about how she was going to be swept away by her prince charming, and we were going to live a lavish life very soon.
Seeing my mother like this made me feel a bit sad, but it was a bittersweet moment for me. Though being her daughter, I had never seen my mom smile, not since she returned.
She would smile at pictures on her phone and text someone into the night with a shy smile on her face.
I never thought I would ever get to see her in love like this. I just worried about her sometimes, what if it was another scumbag pretending to love her for her money again, then what?
I decided maybe it was best to leave her alone and head towards my room. My mom was depressed, but that didn't mean she was stupid enough to be tricked again. Maybe Lucas Stone was a nickname for her new love.
My room was spacious with nothing to fill its emptiness but a bed and some of my clothes scattered on the floor.
I pulled out the cheap tablet my mom gave me for my birthday and decided to watch YouTube videos of some of my favourite celebrities.
Before I could click on a video, I heard a car pull in the driveway. It sent a shiver down my spine; I knew exactly who that was, my other cousin Liam. Unlike his sister, he was rowdy, unkept and very unserious with his life.
This was a cause of our very conservative household, but nobody dared to speak up against the head of the Davidson family.
I could hear his friends in the car with him. Throughout the entire vacation, he had done nothing but party while his twin sister shadowed at their dad's company. He spent every single moment failing classes or acting like he owned the place.
It was very sad to see his dad's face every time he did something disappointing, but Liam was oblivious to it all.
I tried my best to ignore all the noise that was happening downstairs and tried to focus on the video that I was trying to watch. I pressed play, and I was immediately enticed by the glam that I saw. Deep down, I knew that life was never going to be true for me, but I still held onto that dream as much as I could.
It felt like a few minutes, but it had been hours, and I got called out by my mom for lunch. I opened the door, and to my shock, I realised I did not have to go to the mansion to have food, but instead she had brought enough for both of us.
She rarely ate lunch and usually sat around till she got hungry in the evening and had some leftovers; she only ate breakfast.
Ever since she came back, I had realised she had gained a bit of weight, and her skin looked brighter instead of her usual sickly pale. I wanted to ask what was up with her, but a part of me was scared to lose the mother I had now.
"Look, I made us dinner", my mom said with an expectant smile.
"You made this… for us?", I asked cautiously. I didn't mean to sound rude, but my mom had never done anything this nice before. She nodded vigorously and urged me to sit on the chair.
"Here, sit, sit.", she said. She then gave me an eager look as she tried her best to be subtle about it. I tried the food she had made, and it was way better than I expected.
I always knew my mom was amazing at cooking; I had heard growing up, but she quit after she became pregnant with me because she always used to cook for my biological dad after he abandoned my mom.
My eyes swelled up with tears, and I tried my best to hold the tears in. My mom had never been this nice to me. Though my mom tried to be nice to me, sometimes it was to no avail; she was always too depressed to do anything and especially parenting.
I stuffed my face with food since I had not had anything proper to eat for the past week. It was difficult to eat in a household where most of the people there hated me or were disgusted by me.
"It's amazing, right? I started cooking again when I left the country. You know, Lucas said it was the only food he could eat without feeling sick, my cooking. Other than that, he only eats food made by expensive chefs.", she was lost in a daze as she said this. I was very worried for her at this point. I wondered if she had finally snapped abroad and some shit bag took advantage of that.
"Yeah, the food is amazing, but who is Lucas again?" I treaded lightly as I asked that question. I tried my best not to trigger her by asking about her love life.
"Oh yeah, Lucas Stone, he's my husband, and he loves me a lot; he's going to come pick us up very soon." Yeah, my mom had officially lost it. I tried my best to hide my judging look and look trusting in her words.
"Oh, okay, can I see a picture of him?" I asked as politely as I could.
"Yeah, here come closer", she ushered me closer to her and showed me her phone. I then only noticed that she had the latest version; it was expensive, and considering the allowance my grandfather gave her, there was no way she could have afforded it.
"That's a really nice phone you have there." I pointed out.
"Lucas bought it for me, my phone hit the floor and you know how old my phone, it got ruined immediately, so he got this for me.", I looked at her in shock, the thought was already pacing through my mind, even if that wasn't Lucas Stone the person she had been talking to was comfortable enough to buy her that phone on a whim.
"Anyways, look, isn't he handsome?" She showed me pictures of her and Lucas; she looked extremely happy in all those photos. I also noticed the pictures she was showing me were from a shared album with her and an account called Stone Lucas.
I looked at her slowly. The shock on my face was undeniable now. I knew that face from memory, and there was no way that wasn't him, and there was no way that was AI either. It wasn't just that, in these photos, he had a smile in most of them. If I were to sell these, it could make us a fortune.
My mom had really met Lucas Stone.