Orphanage AU: Lams

Chapter 65: Family

This is just a really badly explained backstory.

---Eleanor's POV---

I smiled around. My first and oldest son. My adopted son. My biological son. The young man who I was sure would one day be my son-in-law. This story would be a hard one to tell, but I would do it for them. For family, no matter how far the family stretched.

"Marrying your father was a mistake." Was it ever. The first sentence was easy, because it was a truth I'd know and told myself over and over and over, out loud, to friends, to myself when I fell asleep.

The later parts were the ones that would be painful. I had made other mistakes. "When we had you, John, we were okay. We were happy, he was kind. He got worse over the years. He wanted more than fatherhood and a stable life, I think, so he figured you'd be his way up- he would succeed through you. He didn't want to have the reputation of a dick, you know, to divorce me, but he thought I was holding him down, and he hated me for it. Eventually, he hated you too.

I told this to John, who took it really well. I suppose he had known, since Henry made no secret of his hate for either of us.

"I hated it. He treated you terribly. I did everything I could not to have another child. To make sure no other kid had to suffer the way you did." I shifted my gaze to Philip, my eyes teary. "But he kept at it... and after as long as I could hold out, years and years, we had you."

"Wait, but then what...?" Michael looked lost and afraid, an something in my chest shattered as he realized the truth I'd never told him.

"I'm... I'll get there." I managed to steady my voice before I clarified, "He didn't know about you, Philip. He only knew that I was pregnant, and I had a friend drive me to the hospital. If he hadn't been at work when I went into labor..." I shuddered at the thought and decided it was better to leave that sentence unfinished.

"So... then I was born?" Philip sounded so young. So innocent and foolishly, naively believing. Not the steadfast belief in someone you know inside and out, but the flappable belief in a perfect someone that will reach in and make everything better.

People like that didn't exist. I certainly wasn't one.

I nodded. "I explained to the doctors. It took a couple hundred midnight whisper fights and many legal, hypothetical questions, but i got them to put down that I had a miscarriage- and you were sent to the most caring, liberal, right-doing orphanage I could find. In doing that, I made a lifelong friend, who later took John in." I sent a warm smile to Washington, who responded with a supportive smile of his own. It was relieving to lean in his strength.

I didn't think even Washington knew everything, though, and I felt done with half truths and untold lies, so I quickly added in a rush, "And I met someone else."

I was right. Washington did not know. His eyebrows shot up, and I gave him a quick shrug before moving on. "Anyways, that's when I did the worst thing I've ever done. Henry was so mad when he found out about you, Philip, and it was the first time he abused me."

"Mother?" John stared at me in confusion, gesturing first to Michael and then to Philip. "How come I didn't... How...?"

I added that to the mountain of questions I had yet to answer. More and more pain that I had to- and deserved to- deal with.

It was official. I was the worst mother ever.

"Well... it was the first time he physically abused me. In any case, Henry was so upset, and at the time I wasn't used to, you know, the..." I waved a hand at the bruise on my cheekbone and winced. "I was just weak-"