Jaguar turned toward Fati, who stood there with a smile of innocent longing after dropping her bombshell. His shock surpassed even that of Rosaline, who stood with her mouth agape in total bewilderment; he had never imagined the secret Fati guarded was the belief that she was a maid's daughter.
- My daughter? Me?
Rosaline asked, her voice filled with astonishment. Fati continued with a heartbreaking, childlike enthusiasm,
- Yes... my grandfather told me before he died that you were my mother
But Rosaline's response came like a bolt of lightning that incinerated everything:
- No, my dear... I have never given birth in my life
Fati's lips trembled, her eyes welling with tears of disappointment as hesitation clouded her features. She whispered in a shaken voice,
- How can that be? Aren't you Rosie, the maid?
At this, Rosaline's (Alina's) eyes widened even further, and she said in a trembling voice:
- Rosie?! Rosie was my mistress... are you her daughter?
Amidst everyone's confusion and under Jaguar's piercing gaze, Fati took a step back, shaking her head in panicked denial, as if trying to flee from the new truth beginning to take shape:
- It seems I was mistaken... it seems you aren't my mother.
Fati turned and fled, stumbling down the stairs and across the vast meadow, away from Rosaline's house and the truth that had just slapped her. Jaguar hurried after her, grabbing her hand to stop her, crying out in bewilderment:
- Fati! What did you mean by everything you said back there?
She wrenched her hand from his grip with a strength he had never seen in her, saying in a choked voice:
- Jaguar... please, I need to be alone!
- I won't leave you in a place like this!
He protested, fueled by worry.
- We don't know how far these fields stretch.
At that, the volcano within her chest erupted. She screamed with all her might through her sobs:
- Please leave me alone! I don't want to talk to you right now... I need to be alone! For once in my life, leave me when I want it, not when you decide! Leave me be... let me get lost!
She began to run away as fast as she could, leaving Jaguar standing there in stunned silence, torn between his instinct to chase and protect her, and respecting her resounding cry. He watched her figure with helpless eyes until she vanished completely among the thick bushes.
Jaguar returned to Alina with heavy steps, only to find her drowned in her own tears. She whispered in a trembling voice,
- She is Lady Rosie's daughter... and I have caused her pain
Jaguar sat her down, struggling to maintain his composure, and asked urgently,
- Rosaline, tell me... what happened that day? And why is she here, suspecting you are her mother?
Alina sighed, casting a sorrowful glance at the door where Fati had vanished.
- It's been so many years since I last heard my real name. I truly don't know why she thought I was her mother.
Jaguar pressed on,
- Just tell me, what happened to my aunt that night? And why did you disappear?
Rosaline gathered the fragments of her memory, bitterly returning to the hardest night of her life:
- I was sitting with your Aunt Rosie in her room, trying to calm her. Her husband treated her brutally. When she fled to her father's house, he forced her back to that hell despite her desperate pleas. She was crying with her head in my lap when, suddenly, a scream from downstairs pierced the silence.
She continued, her voice shaking,
- The Lady wanted to go see what was happening, but I tried to stop her; when her husband was drunk, he spared no one. But she insisted she would only watch from afar. As for me, I stayed in the room, terrified because I had tasted his violence before. Then... I heard a scream that shook the very foundation of the house! I ran out, and there I saw her... I saw Lady Rosie lying at the bottom of the stairs, with blood staining the floor in every direction.
Alina gripped her neck in terror, as if the fingers of death were still tightening around her.
- The first to reach Lady Rosie at the bottom of the stairs was her father-in-law. Her husband stood at the top, frozen. The father shouted, 'Come here, you madman! You've nearly killed your wife!' Only then did the husband realize she was still alive; he rushed down, scooped her up, and raced to the hospital.
Alina took a shaky breath.
- Meanwhile, the servants whispered. Everyone insisted he hadn't touched her; he had simply charged toward her in a rage, and she, paralyzed by fear, lost her balance. They even said he tried to catch her, but she missed his hand by a hair's breadth... and plummeted.
She took a sip of water, her hands trembling.
- I went to the hospital, where they announced that Rosie and her unborn child had died. I sobbed outside the room until I overheard the nurses saying the infant girl had miraculously survived but was placed in an incubator. But the husband asked the doctor to tell his family that she had died. I went to see her... she was so tiny, no bigger than the palm of a hand.
Her voice cracked as she finished,
- The husband saw me there. He threatened me, terrified me; he told me if I ever crossed his path again, he would kill me. So, I fled from his cruelty, changed my name, and disappeared so he could never find me.
Jaguar placed his hand on Alina's in a comforting gesture. "Don't be sad, Rosaline. Thank you for telling me the truth. Finally, I know everything." She asked bitterly, "Did that girl feel sad because I'm not her mother? Did she wish to be a maid's daughter instead of Lady Rosie's?" Jaguar replied firmly,
- No, it wasn't that. She is stronger than you imagine. By the way, her name is Fati... and now, I'm going to find her.
Meanwhile, Fati was buried in the tall, yellow grass, hidden from the world's sight. She sobbed uncontrollably, feeling as though she had returned to square one.
- Who is this Rosie?
She wondered in despair.
- And why did the maid call her 'Mistress'?
Her father had told her, her mother was a servant who died giving birth so why all these lies? Why had her grandfather hidden her in that distant village? She felt she had lost the last hope of finding a heart that truly loved her.
Behind her, Jaguar stepped out, following her path, but his phone rang. It was his grandfather, his frail voice trembling over the line:
- Jaguar... I need to talk to you. Come quickly. I must tell you a secret about Fati.
Jaguar let out a cold, confident smile and cut his grandfather off:
- You want to tell me that she is your granddaughter... don't you?
A Message from the Author.. From the Pulse of the Paper
"I have always believed that ink only flows when the heart bleeds first..."
I must confess that as I was writing the details of this chapter, "Fati" wasn't the only one weeping amidst those tall yellow grasses my own tears were carving their path across the pages long before hers.
It is never easy for an author to watch a protagonist, whom she crafted out of strength and resilience, crumble before a new kind of "orphanhood." Not the orphanhood of death, but the orphanhood of truth. To discover that the person you thought was your "refuge" is merely a witness to a tragedy, and that your father your first sense of security had woven a web of lies to hide your light behind the cloak of a "maid's daughter."
I wrote this chapter with a trembling heart. I felt every sob Fati took as she searched for a lost, true love, and every shock Jaguar felt as he watched the walls of his world crack before the realization that Fati is the very "blood" he had long wronged.
Thank you for feeling their pain as deeply as I do... and thank you for walking this rugged path toward the truth with me.