HOW YOU LIKE THAT | JENLISA

Chapter 97

Jennie

Seconds ticked by as I waited for Lisa to respond, to come up with an excuse and tell me that I was wrong, but she didn't. Whatever she'd been saying to me was a lie. She didn't remember me; she didn't remember the Jen that she loved.

"I don't even know who you are anymore!" I said, while on the verge of tears, before walking out of the room.

I couldn't embarrass myself any further. She'd played me, and she'd done it so well. She made me believe that she knew me, and I'd been a fool to trust her words. I should have gone with my instincts, the instincts that told me the first time around that the old Lisa was gone for good.

"Jennie, listen to me!" She was right behind me, hot on my heels.

I had stepped out when she grabbed me by my waist and pulled me back inside her study. She closed the door behind her, turned the lock, and blocked it with her enormous body so that I couldn't go out.

"Look at me." she said.

I stared at the floor, so she held my chin and tilted my face upwards to meet her gaze.

"Is this another one of your ploys? Am I just a pawn to you in this game, like the rest of your family? Because all you had to do, was tell me the truth, Lisa, and I would have supported you, in any possible way." I said, while letting the tears fall freely. "I asked you if you remembered me and you lied straight in my face!"

"I had to do what I thought was right at the time! Please try to understand." Her hands reached up to hold my shoulders, her whiskey-coloured eyes burning intensely. "I woke up totally confused in the hospital. I didn't lie about that. I remembered you, but just not the way that you think I do. I recalled faces, names, and flashes of certain incidents, but I was clueless."

She appeared to be worried. It looked like she wanted me to trust her again. I refused to say anything. I hadn't gotten the answer I was looking for, and she realised it.

"Imagine this. I almost drowned, and then I wake up in my car sitting next to this beautiful woman who looked troubled and ready to flee. She held my hand throughout the car ride like she was trying to draw energy from me. I didn't know who you were, but I had visions of you. It was like looking at these pictures in my head."

"What visions?"

"Visions of you under the sun smiling at me, you trapped in the woods, and crying for help." She continued, "I saw you as my bride. I saw you helping me regain my memories and protecting me from my brother. I saw you asking me to jump from the car. I was confused as hell because I didn't remember marrying you. I assumed it was part of Nichkhun's plan, and I didn't know if I could trust you. Then I saw the ring on your finger."

"How did you know my name if you remembered nothing before the car ride?" I was playing twenty questions with her and I didn't care. I needed to see her slip up or get stuck on her words, and I'd know that she was lying.

She seemed genuine so far.

"I had a ring on my finger too. I checked the engraving inside. Your name is on it. I thought of testing it when I followed you into our room and called your name. You responded, and I knew that you were my wife"

"So if you knew all of this, then why did you lie to me? You could have just told me the truth from the very beginning."

"Because I knew that it would break your heart. I could see it, clear as day that you expected me to remember you, and I don't know... I just didn't want to disappoint you, I guess."

I stepped away from her, while folding my hands across my chest. "How do I know that you're not lying to me right now?"

"You'll just have to take my word for it." She said.

I looked away from her. "I don't want you to play these games with me."

"I swear to you, Jennie, I'm not using you for any ulterior motive, believe me."

I could play one more card.

"I need more than that. I have to know fully that I can trust you. What happened to your mother? I read the second journal that she wrote and in there it states that she left, but I don't believe what's written in there is true. How could she leave two of her kids to a woman that she didn't trust? To a woman who stole her own husband? To a woman who wanted her life and was going to steal it from right under her nose? And even if she did, why hasn't she gotten in touch with you or even Bambam yet?"

Lisa's eyes cut through mine. Her expressions were lethal. "You know about that journal?"

"Yes."

"I want to see it."

"It's in our bedroom."

Lisa followed me to the bedroom and watched as I removed it from its hiding space. After reading it, I had forgotten to give it back to Bambam, and he hadn't asked for it.

Lisa took the journal from me and flipped the pages. "Do you have the first one?"

I shook my head. "Bambam has it."

"Wait here." Lisa told me as she disappeared from the room and then appeared a few minutes later with a file. She put the file in front of me and opened the journal. "Look at it carefully." She pointed at it.

I looked at what was in front of me. "I don't understand."

"This journal is fake." She declared.

My heart pounded with that information. "What?"

"My mother did not write this one." To prove that her theory was right, she pointed at the alphabet 'c' in the journal and the 'c' in the file where Grace had written some things. "Look, the letter 'c' is written differently in both."

Lisa was right.

"Do you know what this means, Jennie?" She looked at me, with pain etched in her features, "It means that Chris and Lorna wrote this journal to make it look like my mom packed up and left. They even got it written by some professional copycat who wrote this in an identical hand. My mom would never leave us. She was murdered."

"Oh my God!" I slumped onto the bed.

"Do you also want to know how I found her?"

The question was, though, did I want to put Lisa through that trauma again? Could I stomach the gruesome details of the murder? From the looks of it, whatever that had happened wasn't pretty, and I didn't think I had the guts to learn.

"I'm so sorry, Lisa. I didn't know what they had done. I suspected it but... how could someone be so vicious?!"

"My father, Chris and that wife of his, Lorna. They are the devil incarnates." She answered, "Listen, about the divorce. The offer still stands, Jennie."

"You think that I want a divorce?"

"I will take them down, with or without you." Her voice became a murmur, "It's going to get dirty and I wouldn't hold anything against you, if you want out."

"I want to see this, to its end. I'm not leaving. I'm never leaving you, Lisa."