Rogan the Detective ONC

Conditional Love

Cruelty, thy name is woman.

Or maybe it's Elizabeth, I don't know.

Do you think I am being too harsh? Well, I'll tell you what happened next, the secret she told us, so you can be the judge of that. As for me, I think she was being too cruel for selfish reasons, but as a man, I might be slightly biased.

When the silence was finally broken after a big sigh from Elizabeth, I felt relieved because there was something strange, something unsettling in staying in a room where a murder had happened just recently and not saying anything. I felt as if Theobold's spirit could suddenly appear and chastise me for being in the wrong part of the house or something.

"I'm sorry, it's just still painful to remember," Elizabeth said, sniffling loudly and hiccupping occasionally. "It's not something I am proud of, and I can't tell you how many times I wish I could go back in time and change the past, stop my past self, my selfish self, from hurting him."

Thomas hovered over her, moving his hands as if he was about to hug her and then lowering them again helplessly, unsure of what to do. Being the man I was, I stepped up and hugged her comfortingly. It was what you were supposed to do when a woman was crying, right?

Still, she allowed the hug to last briefly before moving away, sitting in the armchair, probably to gather her wits and continue with the story.

"What exactly happened?" Thomas asked gently, his eyes full of compassion, probably because he knew how it was to be a lousy human being.

"Yeah, we need to know all the details to figure out if it's connected with what's happening here or not," I said, but truth be told, I was more curious than anything else.

It was a sick kind of interest that was okay for dramas and movies. But that could be seen as insensitive in reality because I was enjoying other people's drama. That was unfair as it meant I was happy someone else was suffering.

"Everything was going well. We were even talking about marriage," Elizabeth said, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief that she magically procured from somewhere on her person. "But one day, I found out he had a serious medical condition, one that would stop him from ever working again. He would be able to support himself, but not anyone else."

"You dumped a guy because he couldn't be your sugar daddy?" I asked disgustedly.

After all, of all the valid reasons to leave someone, I found this the hardest one to understand, to accept that anyone would do that to someone, especially someone they had claimed they loved.

"Rogan!" Thomas exclaimed warningly, making me experience a déjà vu as Elizabeth had to do the same when he was revealing his secret.

"You have to understand, I am a child of rich parents," Elizabeth said defensively. "I grew up in the lap of luxury and was pampered to such an extent that I felt as if the world revolved around me. It didn't help that my parents allowed me to do anything I wanted and have whatever I wished for. I had no boundaries and no sense of what 'real life' was."

I could understand her being spoiled, but how one could have no empathy for those less fortunate was beyond me. After all, none of the things she had were earned. It was all hers simply by the luck of birth and nothing more. So, how could she feel so entitled about it all?

"Timothy also treated me like a princess," Elizabeth said, lowering her head in what I hoped was a shame. "He showered me with gifts and compliments daily, and that's how I imagined the rest of my life going. A smooth movie-style life was all I ever knew. It was what I thought of as normal."

Listening to her speak, I could give her at least some sympathy because we are all shaped in one way or another by our birth, by the people we were surrounded with from the earliest age. It made sense she wouldn't know about any hardships if she only stayed in that circle of overly rich. Maybe even while reading books, she probably thought poverty was a fictional tool to drive characters' actions.