The Ones Who Had Loved Her The Most

A Betrayal

Over the next several months, Jenny's medical practice flourished, and she found an endless stream of patients coming through her door. It was a good thing she had her work to throw herself into because she did not see Dettlaff again. He had given her a beautiful day, the pearl, and then stopped coming around. She had not seen him with Regis either. Autumn came and went, and a warm winter came to Toussaint. Jenny dined with Regis many times, but neither spoke of Dettlaff.
The more time she spent with Regis, the easier it got, she no longer was plagued with nervousness and warning bells and she all but forgot her initial unease.
The winter months kept her busy with congested chests and runny noses to treat, but as spring neared business began to wane.

Jenny had spent a warm evening by the fire with Regis talking and drinking his mandrake moonshine. They sat now in her small apartment, enjoying the still of the evening, listening to the fire in the hearth as it crackled merrily.
"I shall be leaving for Vezima soon," Regis announced, "I have thing's to attend to there."
"Will you return?" Jenny asked, worried she might be losing her dearest friend.
"Oh yes I will be back, I just thought to warn you that I shall be absent for a while."
"I have a proposition," Jenny began. "I' am headed to Velen in a week's time. I have lands I must look in on, and I want to visit them, my family. Would you be willing to meet in Velen and travel back here together when our business is complete?"
"I couldn't ask for better company on my road home," Regis said with a smile.
Regis was intrigued. Would he be able to gather more knowledge about what exactly Jennevieve was if he met her family? He definitely hoped so. And so they set their plans.

Jenny made her preparations, locked up her doors and windows, left her key with a neighbor, and set out a week later. She rode swiftly and only stopped to sleep. By early spring, she was riding into the outskirts of Toderas.
She collected her rent from the young couple residing in the cottage, they now had a one-year-old child, and the woman was already growing heavy with another.
She wandered the hills and forests of her childhood, picking wildflowers. As she walked back towards the farm, she spotted a familiar face coming towards her. Regis had arrived early; they had planned to meet at Crows Perch in a week. Yet there he was striding through the new grass towards her.
"An unexpected but welcome surprise," she greeted him with a warm hug.
She asked him about his journey and how it fared as they walked together back to the farm. At the old oak tree, Jenny stopped and looked down upon three old graves. The flowers she had left there had long ago crumbled to dust, so she lay new ones on each grave.
"Meet my family," she said with a small gesture to the simple stone gravestones.
She lay a slender hand on the oldest stone in the line.
"This is the grave of my birth mother, a woman I never got the chance to meet. She had me here on this farm and died shortly afterward. My father took me in and raised me as his own. I often wonder who my mother was, what brought her to this dreary, swampy place to have a child."
"So, you never knew her?" Regis asked quietly, "And your real father..?"
"I know nothing of him and doubt he lives. For why else would my mother be alone in Velen heavy with child?"
Regis put an arm around Jenny's shoulder and hugged her close. They stood together, looking down at the three graves in silence. Her family would not answer Regis's questions about what Jenny was; it seemed. He wondered if he would ever know what she was and told himself it didn't matter to him. It was Dettlaff who had wanted the answers so desperately.

Together they walked the hills, and Jenny told him stories of her childhood, of her adventures deep into the ancient ruins, of all the trinkets and pieces of history she had found within. Jenny told Regis about her strange way with animals and monsters, how she could compel them not to harm her. She told him how the villagers of Toderas had thought her odd, at best, and a witch, at worst for these abilities.
They camped beneath the stars high on the hill that night. In the early chill of the morning, they departed. Jenny knew she would never return to this place; she had signed the property over to the couple who had been renting it. It had never really been her home and never would be. Jenny knew she had to let it go. She did not look back as they road towards Toussaint, her home.