Erin had been notified of the arrival of Alicia’s parents. The women were pretty excited as they prepared to witness a happy reunion. Erin asked them to calm down and be at their best behavior. For a moment, she felt like having to manage a bunch of schoolgirls. The young ones in the shelter were, in fact, quiet and calm. They simply looked on with wide eyes, unable to comprehend the sudden joy and excitement among their elders.
Ariadne Silver and Lucien Valier were almost at the front door. Erin quickly moved and held it open for the couple to enter. She had a wide smile on her face as the two of them approached. Erin was as excited and joyed at the occasion, only she did her best not to express her emotions. As the manager of the place, she had a certain code of conduct to maintain but it was far from an easy job. After all, it was not an every occurrence to have parents showing up and taking their daughters home!
II
“Mister Valier?” Erin asked when Lucien and Ariadne had reached the front door.
Lucien nodded. “We have been expecting you,” Erin said. “Hope you had a pleasant journey?” she inquired.
“Yes thank you!” Ariadne said, smiling faintly at her.
“Please come this way. Your daughter is waiting for you,” the lady said and led her down the hallway towards the living room. Lucien and Ariadne followed her, he with an arm wrapped around his wife’s shoulders. For a moment, it felt almost as if time had come to a standstill. The walk down the hallway seemed to take an eternity, every step felt like travelling a mile, the seconds seemed to resemble months! Finally, Erin stopped in front of a door.
“I’ll leave you two with your daughter while I make the necessary arrangements for her departure,” she said and returned back the way she had come. Both Ariadne and Lucien stared at the door in front of them. It was ajar but they could not see anything inside the room. With trembling hands, Lucien pushed the door open. It was similar to an experience of stepping into the unknown – they had not seen Eugenia for more than five years and did not know what they could expect to see in front of them. However, the sight that greeted them was something straight out of a fairytale!
There she was seated on the sofa, dressed to resemble a princess. Her little daughter was sleeping in her arms and the two of them looked absolutely picture-perfect. The sight of his daughter after all these years made Lucien forget the last drop of anger that lingered somewhere in his mind. He walked across the room and knelt down beside her. She had grown up to be a fine young lady, he thought. The signs of her struggles in life thus far seemed to tell on her face and she looked older than she was meant to be. Lucien stretched out his hand and touched his daughter on the cheek. He was overcome with emotions and the tears started appearing on his eyes.
“Eugenia!” he said through misty eyes and a hoarse voice. He felt choked; the tears seemed to be preventing him from speaking. “Eugenia, my daughter…”
Eugenia had been living under the name Alicia for so long that she had almost forgotten her real name. When she heard her name being called out once again after so long, it was almost as if she seemed to recollect her true identity. Eugenia too was choking with emotions. “Papa,” she called out as clearly as her tears would allow. Both father and daughter burst out into tears. There was no longer any reason why they should hold back their emotions.
III
Ariadne stood at the entrance to the room watching the emotional reunion of father and daughter. She wiped away the few drops of tears that had appeared at the corner of her eyes and walked over to Eugenia. Carefully, she took her sleeping granddaughter into her laps and looked at her. The little baby was sleeping peacefully, unaware of all the troubles that her mother had to go through in order to bring her into this world. Ariadne recollected her own life, how she had been deprived of the love and affection of a grandmother by the arrogance of her mother. Life had come full circle for her, she felt. With the little baby doll in her arms, Ariadne vowed that she would always remain close to her granddaughter till her last breath so that no harm should befall her. She would not allow the same misfortunes that she had suffered over the course of her life to befall her granddaughter.
A knock on the door brought Ariadne out of her own world and back into reality. It was Erin and she entered with a police constable following behind. Ariadne and Lucien stood up surprised. The shelter manager smiled and reassured them that everything was fine. The constable addressed Eugenia. “Misses Alicia Garvin?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Is Damien Garvin your husband?”
“Yeah he is. Why?”
“I am sorry to have to inform you ma’am that your husband has been tried in court and found guilty of several charges, the most serious of them being attempt to murder. As a result, the court has sentenced him to ten years of rigorous imprisonment. Here is a copy of the court order,” the constable said and furnished a bundle of papers tied with a red ribbon. This he handed over to Lucien. “I’m told you are a practitioner of the Federal Law. I’m pretty sure you’ll know exactly what to do with these!” he said and bid them goodbye.
IV
Eugenia had already completed all her packing the night before. She was ready to leave her adopted home in Los Angeles and return to Phoenix with her baby and parents. Lucien completed some of the official formalities at the women’s shelter and wrote them out a check of five hundred dollars towards upkeep and maintenance of the shelter, and wellbeing of its inmates. Erin thanked him for his generous contribution.
The party returned home safe and sound. Initially, it felt a little strange to be back in those familiar settings. A lot had changed around Phoenix but the core atmosphere of the place had remained intact. Eugenia’s rehabilitation process went smoothly and she grew accustomed to her old life without too much of a difficulty. She was once again Eugenia Valier and Alicia Garvin became a dead entity before long. Eugenia got her divorce from Damien: her father had that matter taken care of without much of an issue.
***
The place was far better than she had imagined it to be. There were colorful and brightly designed curtains on the doors and windows. Paintings and photographs of some famous cultural personalities in the United States hung on the walls, staring back at Eugenia. A beautiful chandelier hung on the ceiling and created a mystic effect of light and shadow inside the room. She sat alone in the room. There were seven people when she had arrived around 90 minutes ago. The penultimate person had been summoned just a minute back. Eugenia tried making herself comfortable in the plush leather sofa with its soft, cushiony interiors. She realized that the nervousness was starting to grip her, no matter what she tried to keep the negative feelings at bay.
A lady came into the room and asked for Eugenia. She got up from her seat and followed the lady. She took her to a large hall where a piano stood in the middle of the room. There were around a dozen unknown faces that made up the audience. The young girl felt a little uneasy. The lady read her feelings. “Don’t be nervous,” she said to her softly. “Everything’s going to be just fine.”
Eugenia sat down in her seat and uttered a brief prayer. The audience sat patiently for her to start playing. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that she was there to fulfill a dream. Such an opportunity would not present itself over and over again, so she wanted to make the most of it. She focused her mind on the tip of her fingers and started playing on the grand piano. The audience sat mesmerized. Eugenia was finally fulfilling her long standing ambition of auditioning at Julliard. She was supposed to have been there many years back but as the old saying went, it was better late than never!
V
Ariadne had become extremely busy, dividing time between her business and her granddaughter. Both were close to her heart and she could not imagine leaving one for the other. She was a good manager and did not find it difficult to fulfill her responsibilities, first as a business person and then as a step-grandmother.
At times when she was not so busy, Ariadne would sit and wonder about the even
ts of the past few years. When Eugenia went missing and could not be traced even after one year, she had given up hope of ever getting to see her. She remembered the mental agony and suffering she had suffered over that period.
Ariadne Silver had made many enemies in life yet undergoing the ordeal of having to locate their lost child was something she would not wish even upon her worst enemy. She did not want anyone else in the world to face the level of trauma that she had experienced while hunting for her lost Eugenia.
In spite of all the wrong things that she had done, it did not take Ariadne and Lucien much effort to forgive Eugenia. At the end of the day, she was their beloved daughter. They just wanted to put everything else beyond themselves and ensure a proper upbringing for little Lucy Ariadne Valier, or Aria as she was fondly referred to.
Many years ago during the darker days of her life, some wise old head had told Ariadne that love conquers all. She had not believed it back then. The recent turn of events, however, presented her with some food for thought. Perhaps, she wondered, the man had not been so mistaken after all!
Book Samples
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Sample from The Love I Never Knew, Book 1 of the Ariadne Silver Romance Mystery Series
Chapter 1
I
It sounds like a fairy tale when you say it. It is definitely, not your run-of-the-mill fairy tale, but a dystopian modern world version of it. When you say it, it sounds like material for an award winning film script if executed meticulously. Ariadne Silver was born in a family of hate and perpetual misery. She naturally had no idea about the conditions of her birth. Her parents did not plan to start a family with Ariadne. They were simply inebriated one night and found the urges of physical attachment overwhelming. Their intoxication was so intense that they completely forgot about protection during or after the sex. The only time Ariadne ever felt at peace was when she was in her mother’s womb, though the peace was merely an illusion. Her mother did not even realize till it was too late that she was pregnant. The parents had a fist fight the day she was compelled to tell her husband of the pregnancy. The father accused her of being a whore who was disloyal to him and simply refused to acknowledge the pregnancy. Moreover, they were in no financial condition to raise a child. Whatever the parents earned was mostly spent on alcohol and heroin. It was a miracle that Ariadne saw the light of day even with her mother poisoning the bloodstream during the course of her pregnancy. Ariadne survived even before she knew what survival meant. She grew up in a wrong Wonderland and often wondered if what she saw was real. She couldn’t believe that her mother was dead even after she saw her unattended corpse, smothered in vomit. To a seven year old girl, “death by overdose” didn’t really make much sense. Ariadne Silver was forced to believe that her mother had gone over to a happy place. The memories of her mother were bittersweet. Ariadne felt she was a nice lady. Her mother mostly left her to herself. She was not a very good cook. Her meat was often undercooked. Ariadne disliked the raw taste, but she ate what her mother cooked anyway. She would often see her sticking a needle up her arms. Her mother would always be in a good mood once she had pushed the needle in her arms. She would share her chips with Ariadne then and eventually fall asleep. But Ariadne would also witness how her mother changed when she did not find the liquid to be put in the syringe. The mother, who would share her chips, would suddenly shake Ariadne violently and with a manic expression ask her, “Where is it? Where is it? Did you take it? Tell me did you hide it?” On not getting an answer, she would push away the little girl and sob incessantly till her father gave a needle full of the liquid to her mother. She grew up in a peaceful household as long as her father had a glass filled with a golden liquid and the mother had a needle in her arms. She remembered her father very vaguely and what she remembered did not make her very happy. The first thing that she remembered about her father was his smell. The strong, pungent smell repulsed Ariadne. He did not even know that she existed. She did not remember her father ever having a proper conversation with her. After her mother’s death, he had started drinking heavily. He created a storm if he ever missed out on a peg. She was raised by two very laidback people with severe disappointments in life. Drinking problem took over the household and soon led to the estrangement of familial relationships. Even their neighbors maintained a respectable distance from their house. The neighborhood children were specifically instructed to stay away from Ariadne as much as possible. They had tried helping the family in the past, but they were incorrigible. They were the proverbial ‘bad eggs’. At school, Ariadne was taunted as “white trash”. She didn’t have many friends in school and always kept to herself during recess. Ariadne Silver would spend most of her days under an acacia tree, reading Alice in Wonderland from a borrowed library book. She could really identify with Alice and was almost convinced that her living condition was nothing short of a Wonderland. The only difference between Ariadne and Alice was that Ariadne was born in a wrong Wonderland. With a history of sexual abuse running in her family, Ariadne found it difficult to talk to people in her locality. Wherever she went, people would look down upon her with pity and try to help her with a stray dollar or two. The first time Ariadne really understood the value of money was when she was really hungry and didn’t have a penny in her pocket. She went to the market and tried to coax the shopkeeper to give her a small slice of bread, she would pay him later. But people do not get free lunches in this world anymore. Ariadne Silver was ridiculed out of the shop. She was asked to do “give” the shopkeeper something in return. It was then Ariadne understood that the world listens to money and sex. Whoever had both would get anything they wanted. Ariadne Silver had neither money nor the resources to cultivate her feminine graces. She was a woman who loved playing on the fields with boys. She could throw spitballs and give wedgies to whiny crybabies. As a child, Ariadne teamed up with the local hoodlums and beat the good kids of the neighborhood. No one said anything to her because people treated her like an orphan, pitied her and showed her the way out of things. Ariadne Silver was an unwanted child, left to rot in the veritable dump of human interactions, with nowhere to go and no one to look up to. She was born in a wrong Wonderland and did not know how to get out of it. With her mother at the “happy place” and her father somewhere out of reach, Ariadne Silver was declared a legitimate orphan and immediately handed over to the stern and silent hands of an orphanage in remote Arizona. Growing up in an orphanage was tough and enlightening. Ariadne got tutored by the stark reality of her existence. She always kept to herself and trusted nobody. Since her mother’s corpse had lied to her, Ariadne felt betrayed and let down by humanity. She couldn’t come to terms with her mother’s death. How could she go to a happy place and leave her all alone in a strange little world? Since Ariadne had nowhere to go and nothing to hold on to, she decided to hold on to anything and everything that came her way. It was this decision that separated her from the autumn walls of the orphanage and led her to the path of prostitution. Ariadne Silver was not an ordinary prostitute. She was a woman of content, having been tutored by life, and knew her way around the world. Her customers called her Alice and she called them “Hatters”. Ariadne Silver lived her life to the fullest on the dark side of the wrong Wonderland. She played her tea parties well and often pleasured customers with some recreational scolding. Having had no guidance in morality and institutions, Ariadne learnt to differentiate between good and bad on her own. She trusted her instincts the most and made the right choices for her well being and sanity. While her other friends were busy spending their money on shoes and naughty lingerie, Ariadne ‘Alice’ Silver was busy saving them for something bigger and grander than shoes and a whorehouse. There was a reason why customers always came back for Ariadne. She knew the art of sexual intercourse better than her sisters. She knew what aroused a man and what disappointed a customer. She wrapped her customers in delicate fragrances and essential oils and basi
cally took them to a “happy place”. Alice was an excellent masseur, better than the best professionals in town. Ariadne was waiting for her day in the sun. She always dreamt big and saw the world through tinted lenses. There were places she had to see, people she had to meet. She had heard about models in Paris and actors in New York. She had heard about talk shows and reality shows. She liked to dream big. Ariadne Silver dreamt about the sunny side of the wrong Wonderland. She dreamt of fragrant parlors and shady boulevards. Alice wanted to shop in France and drive through the streets of San Francisco. Ariadne ‘Alice’ Silver didn’t just dream big, she breathed life into her dreams. It all seems like a fairy tale to her now. She has a vague recollection of her past life now. She is Ariadne Silver, a moderately rich spa owner in the arid parts of Arizona. She lives in a house that looms taller than that orphanage she vaguely remembers. It is a veritable mansion, a palace fit for a fairy tale. Ariadne ‘Alice’ Silver believed no one and did not let anyone get too close to her. She always avoided company and dated men as impersonally as she did her job. Ariadne loved freedom and money. The dry vegetation of Arizona and the screaming sun overhead always made her head spin. She spent most of her day offs at the pool in her back yard. She liked to swim languidly like an aimless fish waiting for a hook. Sun and cacti, that was all that Arizona had to offer. She was almost tired of being rich and bored in the quiet corners of her suburb and wished life would teach her a lesson soon. Although she had the money to afford a recreational break from her ennui and go off to another place, Ariadne didn’t like to do anything outside the “plan”. She had to make a lot of money first. She was too young and too free to want to take a break. She knew her customers well and her job was more presentable than what it used to be. No one would dare call her a whore for doing what she does. She offered recreational massages and relaxing aromatherapy. Ariadne knew the tricks of the trade and always made her services interesting for her clients. She offered them different themes and settings in which they would prefer to relax. In short, she was brilliant.
The Love I Found: Contemporary Romance Mystery (Ariadne Silver Romance Mystery #3) Page 6