Complicated

Chapter twenty one

My heart actually didn't stop. It started beating faster than usual, hearing that one sentence from Dad.

I wondered what more was hidden from me. Just giving it a minute thought sent shivers down my spine.

"There's more to it." Mom added, throwing some more light on all the things which were hidden from me.

"He is eleven years older to you. Even from when he was an infant, he was an adamant child. He was hard to control. So we decided to ship him to a boarding school in Australia when he was ten. And then...."

Mom stopped, shutting her eyes, trying hard not to cry before she completed whatever she started.

"And then?" I questioned harshly.

Dad held mom's hand and she slightly nodded.

"And then, we adopted you." Dad finished.

That one sentence was enough to shatter my heart into fine pieces. Again.

I'm adopted?

"After giving birth to your brother, Beth went through a lot of complications and the doctor told us that it would be too risky if she conceived again. We desperately wanted another child and adoption was our first priority. We found you. You were a tiny one year old infant who was left in the foster home. We didn't want to lose our only chance. So we brought you, our daughter, to our home. And we told your brother that he's got a little sister and we actually expected him to be happy. It turned out to be just the opposite of it. We told him that you were adopted and he was even more enraged. He didn't let us explain that Beth was not in a position to give birth anymore. He just cut himself from us and he thought that you were our first priority and we didn't want him anymore. He was in contact with Zach and my eldest brother. Through them, we used to get to know about how he was doing and ever since then, its been like this. We've tried all possible ways to reach him and we reached him, left him countless number of messages and voice mails. We mailed him telling that we had to explain things to him but he replied to none of our messages, even though he saw all of them. Had he been here with us, we would've celebrated his twenty eighth birthday." Dad finally finished, giving me some time to let the information sink in.

"And you were such a blessing to us. We wanted to create a homely environment for you. As and when you grew up, you became very observant of the things around you. You used to look at things very deeply and it kind of got us worried. One of the main reasons which got us worried was our eye colors. Your dad has green eyes while I have greenish blue ones. We were scared if you'd ask us about why you had different eye color. So we decided to use the lens of your eye color. I'm so sorry Carmen. This is all so messed up. We never wanted you to get to know the truth this way. We're very sorr-" I cut her off by standing up.

I gave them a small smile.

"Good night, Dad. Good night, mom."

I walked away to my bedroom. I was so happy that I could control my tears till I reached my room.

The moment I reached my room, hot thick tears started streaming down my cheeks. I yelled into my pillow as loud as possible. I probably wept till...forever?

Maybe.

I didn't know when I fell asleep. Maybe I fell asleep because I was exhausted from all the crying and screaming and all the mental stress.
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A week passed. I was still not in the position to face my parents. I didn't know what to do anymore. I had shut myself off from everything and everyone. Not Cara.

She kept calling me but I never answered them. School had resumed. It was okay. I had Cara, Ava and Luke who tried their best to cheer me up. I had told only Cara about what happened between me and my parents. Only she knew that I was adopted.