UNBREAKABLE

Thirty four

"Start from the beginning and don't leave anything out" Hayley sat opposite him. If she was going to do this, she had to start with him. Jim. His shock at seeing her had turned to remorse. She could see it in his eyes but she wanted to know what happened before going forward with her plans.

Clearing his throat he said "First of all I'm sorry. For hiding the truth from you and threatening to take Alexis. I didn't mean it Hayley. I would never do that unless it's to protect her"

"My daughter doesn't need protection from me" she snapped. Just because she was here didn't mean she wasn't angry anymore.

"I know. You're a good mother, there's no question about that. I just panicked. JR.... He's gone through a lot and I just want to see him happy."

"Why lie Jim? Why didn't you tell me the truth from the beginning?"

"After Candy introduced us, I had Carrick, my PI investigate you. When he brought the results I couldn't believe it. I heard Jeffrey had married but I never met you. I don't know if he told you, but we didn't get along. Mabel poisoned his mind so much that whatever I did was never enough. And I tried my best but with Lucinda and work, it was all too much. When I missed a weekend meant to spend with him, he'd think I chose JR over him. Mabel filled his head with so much venom that by the time he graduated highschool, we had grown apart. I tried reaching out but he was stubborn. Sometimes I would hold back on paying for his college fees just so I could see him but his mother twisted everything. In his eyes I was always taking JR's side and that always bothered him because he couldn't understand how I'd take someone else's side and not him."

"Yeah but JR is your son too"

"He is. But he's adopted" Jim stopped just to gauge her reaction.

"What? I thought....." she shut her mouth. What had she thought? They talked about everything and nothing but never about their lives. He'd asked her about her family and when he'd seen how sad she got after talking about her dad, he stopped asking. That was her JR. Always trying to make her happy.

"He doesn't like talking about it because Lucinda wouldn't stop reminding him he was adopted."

"Why?"

"How do I put this" he asked, letting his elbows rest on the table as he looked her in the eyes "We were young when she got pregnant. She was so excited that we finished the nursery in the first week after she had found out. She was two months pregnant by then and Lucinda wouldn't stop planning for the future. So you see when she lost the baby a month later, she was devastated. Everything about her changed. She spent hours in the nursery sitting on the floor and staring into space. I tried telling her we could try again but she didn't want to. She said one dead child was enough. So we adopted. Lucky for us we found JR, only an infant his mother having died during childbirth. He had no family and the state was only ready to give him to us. But Lucinda..... I think every time she saw him, she thought of the baby we lost. With time her despise for him grew. She couldn't get past the fact that he wasn't perfect like how her baby would have been. JR grew up trying to do everything we wanted because he didn't want to be sent back to the orphanage. If it wasn't for Nick I think he would still be trying to please us."

"All this time I stayed here, how come no one ever mentioned Lucinda? There are no photos or any evidence that she lived here let alone still alive" '

"Out of sight out of mind. I had to put away all the photos of her in her bedroom. Anything that reminded JR he wasn't a Rutherford. That meant all of Lucinda's things."

"Mabel......"

"Is a devil incarnate. She approached me when I was in this bar busy drowning in my misery. After the baby and before JR I didn't know what to do. Lucinda was inconsolable. One night Mabel approached me. She was nice, sweet, charming and so innocent. At least that's what I thought. But it turns she just wanted to get pregnant by a rich guy then live comfortably by using her child. She rubbed her pregnancy in Lucinda's face every chance she got taunting her how she couldn't do something as simple as to carry a child to term. Some of my wife's anger came from that but she took it out on the wrong person."