Eva's Sins.

VIII

„If you don't know the mystery's source, try to live in the shadow"

  London. A city Eva knew once, for she was born in that city and also there she find out, for the first time, what betrayal means, one day when she was walking as usual with her governess, with Miss Anne Ground, and she saw her father with another woman.

  And the fact that she saw Alfred with another woman has been for the 5 years old girl something really impressive, but not in a good way. And that pain felt in the girl's chest was due to the cruel reality that also grinned at her for the first time - she found out the reason why her father never found time for spending with her.

  But that thought that she has been abandoned by her father wasn't just an invention of a 5-year-old girl's mind, but it was the reality, for Alfred was almost always gone and it could pass days, weeks, or months till he returned home, and his absence hurt Eva's heart each time.

  In time instead, his absence felt like a routine, Eva stopped waiting for him and took refuge in books. And it didn't even matter what that story was about, but the simple fact that the little Eva could identify with one of the characters, living its life as being hers, was giving her a reason more to live and smile.

  Then, also in time, Eva started to smile only when she imagined herself being a character. In the real world instead, she found fewer reasons to be happy, for nobody took care of her, except the governess, who was teaching her a lot of things, but who didn't have a place in her heart for love to share with Eva, and the fact that she was almost all the time by herself didn't mean something good too, for she got often to suffer because of a character's sufferance, something that made her heart bleed so much all the time. Yet, being free to do what she wanted, Eva could enter the world of books, find new worlds, and meet new friends to complement her loneliness.

  She even remembered that when she and Miss Anne saw Alfred and his new mistress, the governess tried to turn to a side street to avoid useless sufferance for the girl. But Eva saw them already and stopped, staring at Alfred, who was too busy courting his new conquest to look around and see his daughter. For him, that woman was the most important at that moment, and the simple fact that his girl was standing and watching him, wondering how her father could act like that in the middle of the street, was something that wasn't bothering him. And, even if he had turned then and seen her, he probably would have just passed by, pretending not to have seen her, not to know her, that nothing happened, convinced that a 5 years old girl doesn't have the slightest idea about such stories, that she'll forget soon as all the children of her age do, and that she'll live her life.

  But he would have been wrong, for Eva didn't forget anything. Why? She also didn't know why. She tried to forget, that incident, but she found it impossible, for it was similar to a thorn well stabbed in her heart, a thorn that was sinking more and more in the bleeding wound when she was trying to get it out of there and throw it. And, in time, that thorn got a foothold in the girl's heart and she got to hate any woman seen next to her father.

  Then, when she grew up a little and she could understand more about life, Eva gave a name to that thorn: Alfred Stonebridge, who was her father and protector, but who, in fact, was a big jerk, someone who didn't pay to much for her sufferance as he had never been careful with Helen's heart.

  And if Helen Walker had known what kind of life would have had her little girl next to such a man, she would have probably never asked Alfred to take care of her. She probably would have thought twice about what would have been better for Eva. She probably would have understood that it was better for her girl to grow up in Alice Huntington's house as a servant than to move from one place to another, to call „mother" so many other women, to suffer because of her father's absence, being surrounded only by imaginary friends and Helen probably, if she had known all these, would have never told the man about the divine gift received from God: a child.