Folie à Duex

Prologue

Lost...that's what I was after having finally buried my mother. To clarify, she unexplainably went missing when I was fifteen and her body had been missing for nine years. For the first three of those years, I suffered the drunken wrath of a man who I once thought of as my father. But the years of mental, emotional, and up till I was eighteen, physical abuse he put me through made me see differently.

Once I was eighteen, I manage to inherit assets my mother hid away from him and willed to me. When he found out, that man did everything he could to try and seize everything from me; he even tried pretending the turn of a new leaf and when that failed, he tried having me deemed unfit of control over those assets. This was all because in his eyes everything she owned was his, through some mythical belief of his drunken stupor. They were never married, the only connection they had was me, and even that my father tried denying. Once I came of age, I sold my mother's house and some of the valuables she held, then immediately kicked him out of my life entirely.

With the money I had I moved across the country and settled in Seattle, my mother's hometown, for the next six years. I felt it was the only thing I could do to feel close to her once more; she always talked about wanting to bring me back here. Often, she would speak of a 'magic' the city held that bought about her greatest happiness: Me. It was here she met my father, conceived and gave birth to me here. The only reason we left was because my father no longer wanted to live there.

When it was time to bury my mother, I sent word to his last known location to tell him of the burial but, the people returned only to tell me he had gone off the radar. His home was vacant, his bank accounts were emptied and closed; there was no trace of him. Although I did not expect him to show up to the funeral, the fact that he had completely gone underground did come as a shock to me... somewhat. After the funeral, I was completely lost without my mother or the desire to find her driving me, I was pissed, I was depressed, I was angry at the world, and I had no idea what to do with the life I had.

That was...until I saw her.