Silver Whispers

04

Everyone has always told me I'm an attention seeker. Even I was five years old, I sat in my mother's lap, tugging on her shirt to try and get her to listen to me.

That is the first memory I have.

She gave me this really dirty look that immediately shut me up.

"Now, Gillian, didn't you teach her any manners?" She would ask our maid and nanny.

"Ma'am... I'll take her from you." She would say. She would extend her arms and pick me up from my mother's lap and place me in my little bed.

My mind is lost in the memory as I stare down at the phone in my hand. 3 missed calls from mother. And that's only in the last hour. 

I remember what happened the last time she tried to contact me. I was still in the hopital ward, and she came and visited me, bringing me flowers.

It's okay, I had thought when I saw her. I forgive you for everything you've done, mother. You're here now.

That was before she had opened her big mouth.

"Your father wants to close your bank account." Her eyes trailed on the ground. I had noticed how she didn't sit close to me at all, like she was afraid of me. "You'll still have enough money for your... treatment, and we think that's more than fair."

"But what about my college fund?" I had asked. It was one of those days where I had felt remotely better and begun to hope that I'd be let out someday.

"Darling, your hospital fees is double, including all the medicines."

I glared at her. The Holbrooke family was literally rolling in money but couldn't afford their daughter's tuition fund?

And that was the day I had decided not to care. Just like my father hadn't cared about his only child. 

When I was let out, I got a new phone, a new address, a new social security number. With the little money that my grandma had left me before she died, I joined Blaire in art college and took a design course.

It didn't take me long to realize I was good at interiors. My teacher, a personal friend of Mr. Castello, recommended me to him and that's how I got the internship. Blaire joined too, after a couple of months.

My phone rings again. The number is embedded into my head.

What if my mother had kissed me on the cheek that day I sat in her lap? What if she had given me a little love?

The scary truth is, I know exactly where I'd be. Sitting in my room, dressed in Chanel, a carbon copy of my mother.

I shudder.