18. Ivy #2
An asteroid could crash right in this magnificent library at this moment, and I wouldn’t notice. All I can see, all I can taste on my tongue, is my rage.
How can he sit there and say all of that about my grandfather with a nonchalant expression?
“H-how,” I grit out with difficulty. “Did you know my grandfather, sir?”
Emmett’s grandfather smiles at me, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Wow, you’re good,” he praises. “I have to say, you grew up well, Ivy Marie. The good doctor must be smiling from Heaven looking at you and how far you have come.”
I want to say something but the next thing I know, I’m sputtering and choking, having breathed wrong.
“Don’t kill yourself,” Grandpa Armando says while ringing a small bell. “You didn’t survive back then just to die in front of me now.”
Almost immediately, Ripley appears. “The young miss is in some self-induced death spell due to shock,” the old man says. “ Aiutala.”
“Sì, signore.”
Before I know it, a glass of warm water is placed in my hands, and I’m being directed to drink slowly.
The absurdity of the moment is not lost on me, but I have to keep my cool. I don’t have a choice.
I can’t let this man know…
After a while of drinking the warm water and wheezing here and there, which almost had me seeing the light, I start breathing better, but my mind is whirring with questions, possibilities, and fear.
Raw, potent fear.
Ripley offers me a pretty saucer with lemon slices. I awkwardly stare at it.
“Please bite on a few pieces, Young Miss. It’ll help.”
A memory from long ago flashes in my head…
Just like now, I was being offered lemon slices to suck on after a particularly nasty panic attack.
But at that time, the one who was kneeling beside me at the back of the science building at school, was a green-eyed boy who didn’t even attend my school, but he just happened to be there that day…
“Young Miss, please,” Sir. Ripley insists. Like a robot, I reach for a slice and place it on my tongue to shock my system back to life.
It somewhat does the trick, but I’m still stuck on what Emmett’s grandfather just said.
“Are you all right now?” Grandpa Armando questions, watching me.
“Uh, yes, sir. Thank you,” I whisper hoarsely. I turn and thank the other person in the room as well. “Thank you, Sir Ripley.”
He smiles gently and then bows his head before he disappears.
“You still suffer from panic attacks.” It’s not a question, but a frank observation. “I guess I said something that chewed at your soul.”
“More like you shredded it,” I mutter, to which he chuckles.
“I apologize,” he says gently. “Though I thought maybe you knew all this already. Didn’t Alessio tell you about how close your grandfather and I were? I mean, you two have a very interestingly close relationship, don’t you?”
Straining to subdue my immense curiosity, I stare at the old man in front of me and pick the safest of the two things he just said.
If I dwell on the fact that this old man knew my grandfather before… or that Emmett knew about that too, I don’t know what I’d do.
“Well,” I start, but my voice comes out rough and low, so I clear it. “If Alessio is who I’m guessing, then you’re wrong. We’re not at all close. If we were, he would’ve told me such vital information.”
Hell, I didn’t even know Alessio is his other name until now.
Grandpa Armando laughs, this time, it’s hearty and amused.
“The last time I heard that tone of passionate resentment was when I forgot my beloved wife’s birthday,” he says with a huge smile on his face that I never thought he could be capable of.
“She didn’t speak to me for a month! Can you believe it?
When she finally did, it was to bludgeon my heart with passive indifference! Ah, what a woman!”
The joy in his eyes as he says that…
“Ah, speaking of which, happy birthday, Ivy Marie.”
“Uh, it’s not my birthday,” I mutter, feeling even more confused.
Grandpa Armando watches me for what feels like an eternity, then he slowly shakes his head.
“I don’t understand,” he starts seriously. “Why did your beautiful grandmother, in all her wisdom and intellect, play into her daughter’s stupid lie about you?”
Confused, I tilt my head to the left, trying to think. “What lie?”
The fact that Beverly is something else is not news to me… All this time Grammy has believed her daughter to be dead.
“Let me guess, the overprotective people in your life made you believe you’re younger than you actually are, haven’t they?” Grandpa Armando says with obvious pity in his voice. “They used that amnesia of yours to their advantage, shaped a narrative that you so easily ran with. What a pity.”
“I-I’m sorry?” I stutter. “What are you talking about?”
Grandpa Armando only shakes his head.
“How could a smart girl like you with such sharp survival instincts believe such a watery lie about having a twin sister? Ivy Mare, I’m quite disappointed.”
I start trembling with anxiety and dread.
“Are you saying Melissa is not my twin?” I whisper hoarsely.
“Come on now, I’m sure you must’ve already suspected it,” the old nan says dryly. “Just because you look similar does not mean you’re the same age. As an aspiring doctor, you should know that.”
Like a statue, I sit there with an unfamiliar feeling gripping my heart harshly.
“But seriously, my grandson didn’t tell you about that either? Alessio obviously knew about that too,” he says casually, but I can see the seriousness blended with the glee in his eyes.
He’s not lying. This isn’t a joke.
Melissa really isn’t my twin sister. Beverly has been lying all this time… and I believed it.
And Emmett knew everything all along…
“I mean, just hiding you and scaring you off a path of destruction didn’t work, did it?” Emmett’s grandfather presses on, slashing my wounds wide open without care. “Why wasn’t he honest with you? Is it because you’ve been lying to him all along too?”
Like a bolt from the blue, I’m struck in my vital organs without a defense.
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie. “If anything, he’s obviously the one who’s been lying to me, if what you say is true.”
“Is there a benefit in me lying to you, Ivy Marie?”
The distance between us is so close that I can see the pleased smile hidden in the old man’s eyes, a replica of how he looked that night a long time ago.
“In any case, it really is your twenty-seventh birthday today! And in case you’re debating it in your head, I intentionally allowed the delay for two weeks because I want you to remember your real birthday forever! Isn’t that nice?”
Like an idiot strung up on LSD, I stare at the man in front of me, not seeing him at all.
Today is my real birthday.
I’m twenty-seven years old.
The fifteenth of October…
As if I’ve been frozen in place, my mind starts replaying all the other years I received gifts, like extremely rare and precious gifts that I’ve cherished since on the fifteenth of October.
One time I received a velvet box with fifteen perfectly arranged pencils, all of different shades, grip, design, and feel. When I googled the brand, I found they were made by a Japanese master craftsman who lived in seclusion.
The following year, I received sketchbooks on different types of paper.
The year we were forced to leave Westbrook Blues was no exception.
I had been so deeply depressed that I felt like dying was better.
Then one day, I started watching Chinese wuxia martial arts dramas. They made me feel so much better. I could rot away for fifty-two episodes at a time without noticing the time.
Soon after, an addiction formed. Then I learned they were based on novels, so I found the author but no matter what I tried, I couldn’t find the paperbacks in English translations.
I was back to being sad again but one day, on the fifteenth of October, I received a beautifully wrapped package full of all the author’s works, the first editions of the original books in Mandarin and the newly translated ones.
In the box, I found a handwritten note from the author dedicated to me, thanking me for the massively generous publishing deal under Pandora House.
Pandora…
There was only one person in the world who knew my obsession with Pandora’s box—so finding out that a publishing house with the same suspicious name translated, distributed, and represented the author I had fixated on…
How could I not fall hard for Emmett Easton?
From then on, every fifteenth of October, I would get meaningful, precious gifts from someone I believed knew me intimately judging by the content.
“Oh my God.”
All these years, he never celebrated the day I thought I was born. No gifts. No acknowledgement, and it killed me each time.
At one point, I believed the gifts came in October simple because it was the time he thought of me most.
But each year on the fifteen of October, I always received seemingly random gifts with no name.
But now… Emmett had been celebrating my real date of birth all this time!
“Oh, and that fool of a senator is not your biological father either. Alessio knew that too,” he goes on.
“You’re lying!” I accuse, but even my own voice is weak with disbelief.
“All these years, your brother and that illusive grandson of mine have been doing their best to dissuade you from finding your mother. Why do you think that is?” he questions with an expression that makes me feel so small and stupid, I want to crawl into a ball.
“Wasn’t it to protect you from the disappointment that awaited you? ”
Another blow.
“I’m also not sure why your mother abandoned you, like she did her first child,” the old man muses as if finding amusement out of the tragedy he’s weaving. “I have theories, but you should confront her yourself, because guess what, Ivy Marie?”
I can only stare, overwhelmed by the soul-shattering pain.
“You’re no longer a child, as we just read from the Holy Book,” he says with a smile. “It’s about time you embrace being an adult and take responsibility like an adult!”