herophine - Trouvaille

Chapter 12

Los Ángeles, 2026

- Have I ever told you that I have a daughter?

Laura is very professional and with many years of experience in this job, so she doesn't alter her gesture. She lets the blonde girl continue talking.

- Actually... it's not my daughter. - Josephine tries to find the words. - Yes, I was pregnant with her, but I never... - She feels lack of air.

- Josephine. - Her psychologist interrupts. - Breath. You know that nothing you tell me, will get out from this room.

Jo takes a deep breath and the lump in her throat, which she didn't know she had, fades. Hundreds of journalism companies would pay dollars for that information but, of course, Laura won't tell anything.

- When I was 23, I got pregnant by... Hero. My... co-star.

- And you had it. 

- The executive producer from the film project we were in, planned everything. It was a cautious plan. The baby was born in Australia, but I... I didn't want anything to do with it. - Josephine whispers the last sentence.

Little by little, Jo spells out the details of the story that she has never told Laura , even though they met three years ago. Not even to Katherine, who helped her sister to find a the treatment Jo had needed since her pregnancy. Josephine told Katherine she wasn't feeling herself and how she felt, but omitted the baby part. She knows Kath will do what her sister needs, but Jo is afraid that either her or their parents will react in a bad way.

Laura lets her pacient talk, without showing any  emotion. Inside she is furious. Not because Josephine didn't want her baby, because she is nobody to judge her. But owing to the fact that no one had seen the depression the girl had been carrying for so long. 

When Jo finishes talking, she looks at the floor exhausted. Releasing it has removed one of the many thorns that are nailed inside of her. She talked about the plan, but mainly about how she felt since that happened. Or maybe about how she never felt after giving birth. 

Laura mentions several symptoms to which Josephine feels completely identified: postpartum depression. During the first sessions Josephine visited her, she already told her that she might have depression. Afterwards, keep going to the psychologist and the medications, helped Jo to get a bit better. Neverthless, Laura can now clearly understand why this girl is still hunted by negative feelings. 

- If I have gotten better this past years... why didn't I try to contact them? 

- You tell me.

Josephine bites her nail and she briefly reviews mentally the past years: her return from Australia after giving birth, being casted as the main lead from Tangled, photoshoots, interviews and premieres, more projects and the frenectic rythm of work she started having.

- Maybe. - She slowly starts speaking, because she doesn't want her next words to sound as an excuse. - Maybe it was too much. Thinking that I abandoned my baby... maybe I was afraid of my parents' reaction.

While she admits it, Josephine is conscious that she is not telling the whole truth. However, what she told is part of the truth and it is already a very big step.

Crosby, Liverpool - England, 2026

Hero walks non-stop through the living room. Sofía is already sleeping in her bedroom. 

That afternoon, just when he finised training soccer to the fifteen year old boys, he received Inanna's call. Inanna told him that she has seen Josephine today in the new project they were in and that she has asked for him. 

After hanging the phone with Inanna, Hero called her sister Mercy who was babysitting Sofía around her college campus and told her to bring his daughter back home, without giving her more explanations. He cancelled the coffee he had proposed to Miss Mary that morning, also with no explanation given. If he stops for a minute to think about it, he would realize he has behaved like a real jerk with Mary due to the fact that it was him who asked her out. But right now, he needs his daughter close to him. His mind goes one thousand per hour. 

Josephine is looking for him, for them. Almost six years without knowing anything from her and now she is looking for them.

Hero's first instinct is taking her daughter and run away in the middle of the night. They say Norway is a beautiful place this time of the year.

When his heartbeat recovers its usual rythm and blood reaches better his brain, he calms down a little.

Hero never thought in what he would do if Josephine looked for them, because he never considered it a real possibility. He doesn't believe that a woman who didn't flicker twice before giving up her newborn, can suddenly feel now a mathernal instinct. He isn't mean to be cruel, but he doesn't understand what could she want now about them.

He sits on the couch and closes his eyes. Then opens them quickly because if he closes them, it appears an image of her that he had forced himself to get rid off long ago: a Josephine with sparkly-blue eyes and a contagious laugh. And that image is dangerous for Hero because he is in danger of forgetting that it's the same girl who abandoned her daughter. The same way that he ignored all those years that the woman he feels disdain, it's the same one who he loved like nobody else.

The truth is that there is little he can do is Josephine wants to meet Sofía. And it's not only about legal rights, but because of the kind of person Hero would be if he wouldn't let that happen. For Josephine, for Sofía and for himself.

"Tell her where we are". 

He sends the message to Inanna, plus an adddress written. 

It is Josephine's decision now.