"Mother, you are back!"
"Of course, I am. Where else would I go if not come back to you?" Her mother kissed her small self's forehead.
On hearing her mother's words, Eve's chest squeezed. Over the years, she had missed her mother, but nobody could fathom how sad she felt now. The ache in her heart multiplied.
"Mother," Eve called her mother, who was talking to her small self. She took two steps toward her mother, and her mother looked up. Suddenly there was a thud behind Eve that startled her. When she turned around, she caught an unfamiliar man there.
"Are you looking for something, milady?" the man asked Eve.
Eve turned to look at her mother, who had disappeared along with her small self. Her eyes fell on the ruined furniture and dust collected in the house, which she had failed to notice earlier.
The man belonged to Brokengroves town and wondered what this young woman was doing in a broken house like this.
"Do you know what happened to this place?" Eve asked the man.
The man replied, "It must have been ruined during the attack that took place in the town over the years. The attacks keep taking place randomly. Either it's the rogue werewolves or deranged vampires," he explained to her.
Eve couldn't help but take a few more steps inside the small house. There was a dressing table with a mirror on the wall, a bed without a mattress. The kitchen was empty. She noticed a dirty bathtub with no water but cobwebs covering it.
"Are you looking for something, Miss?" Asked the man, unable to look away from the woman who had entered their town.
"Have you been living in this town from the beginning, Mr..."
"Mr. Welbeck," the man introduced himself. "I am one of the guards assigned to Brokengroves."
Eve pulled the cupboard door and her eyes fell on dishevelled clothes there. Unable to resist, her hand reached out to the clothes and ran her fingers against the fabric that belonged to her late mother. The material was cheap and one which was torn, as people had taken anything they found useful in the house. She pulled the drawers and noticed a pocket fan that belonged to her mother. She slipped it into her dress pocket without the man's notice.
At least she was sure about one thing. This was where she and her mother lived many years ago. Some of the memories she didn't remember returned to her.
Eve stepped out of the house and went to the blacksmith's shop she had visited two evenings ago with Eugene. When she almost reached the place, the guard, who had spoken to her earlier, called her from behind.
"Miss!" Eve turned to look at Mr. Welbeck, walking towards her. He asked her, "Are you looking for the elderly blacksmith?"
Eve nodded, "Yes."
"The blacksmith and his wife aren't here anymore," Mr. Welbeck replied, leaving Eve confused.
"I met them recently. When are they coming back?" Eve asked, while taking a peek inside the blacksmith's shop, and as the guard mentioned, she noticed most of the things she had seen before were missing.
He said, "The blacksmith said that he is moving to a better town with his wife. Said something about a better job and money. Yesterday, before dawn, he and his wife packed all of their things and left."
Eve frowned because she had questions to ask them, and they were not there. She asked Mr. Welbeck, "Do you know where they went?" The blacksmith had told he wasn't someone who liked to travel at his age, and he left?
The guard shook his head, "I have no idea. I didn't ask them."
Noticing the young lady turn quiet, he asked, "Did you have some business with the man? Did he not fulfil the work that you assigned him?"
"No, it is not that," replied Eve, shaking her head and looking away from the blacksmith's shop and toward where she had come from. She asked the guard, "How long have you been working here?"
"Maybe two decades, milady," the man promptly answered her.
Eve pursed her lips before she asked him, "Then you must know the people who have lived here. The house that I entered earlier, do you know about the people who once lived there?"
Mr. Welbeck frowned while scrunching his face before he said, "That would be hard to tell, milady. If I am not wrong, that house has been left empty for quite a few years now, along with the other houses. Maybe if you tell me about the family a little more, I would know."
"The blacksmith mentioned the woman's name Becky?" Eve watched the guard shake his head as if the name didn't ring any memory in his mind.
"I am sorry, milady. Unfortunately I don't remember anyone by that name," answered the guard and Eve bit the inside of her cheek.
It took a lot of courage before she mentioned her mother's name, "What about the name Rebecca?"
For a moment, the man looked like he didn't know the woman with that name before it dawned on him, and he quickly nodded. He said,
"Now that you mention the name, I remember she used to live in that house with her daughter. One day she disappeared along with her daughter. They probably moved to a different town, considering how much the townsfolk spoke about her."
Mr. Welbeck continued, "Rebecca used to associate herself with men from wealthy families. A lot of townspeople cursed her for what she did, but I pitied her. She used to come back to the town with these ugly looking bruises on her face, as if the men she slept with, used to hit her. Rumour also had it that she was buried in debt."
Her mother was no maid like Eve had thought... She was someone who earned money by sleeping with wealthy men. The thought took a long time to sink in, as this wasn't something she had expected to find. Eve found it hard to digest, because it was the last thing she believed could be true about her mother. To think that her mother offered pleasure to the wealthy men...
She asked the guard,
"Do you know the men she was associated with?"
The man thought before shaking his head, "Unfortunately, I don't remember as I never came across them."
Eve nodded before saying, "Thank you for answering my questions."
The guard bowed his head and so did she, watching the man leave her side and disappear from her sight.
Eve felt her head spin with what she had heard about her mother. Not waiting for the local carriage, she left the town on foot. The bruises on her mother's body were not because she fell somewhere but because someone had hurt her.
Why did her mother choose to work in that line to earn money? How much debt was she in that she was forced to live such a life? Eve asked herself.
At first, Eve had nothing but questions for her mother, who didn't exist. And once her mind quietened, the pain her mother had gone through all by herself burdened Eve's mind. Her mother had not only been brutally murdered, but she had lived a harsh life... to sleep in different men's beds and arms.
Two hours passed, and Eve continued walking without a pause with a distant yet shocked look in her eyes.
While walking, she tripped over a stone and lost balance, falling flat on her front on the ground. But the impact wasn't enough to shake her out of her deep thoughts. When she tried to get up, her hands touched something wet on the ground. When Eve checked what it was, she noticed blood on her hands.
Eve's eyes widened. Her eyes trailed to see the source of blood coming from, and her eyes fell on a person on the ground. It was a man who wore expensive clothes. She quickly went to the person and tried to wake him up,
"Sir!"
On shaking him, the man's body turned. The person had a hole in his chest, where his heart was ripped out. The person was dead.
Two men walking in the opposite direction noticed Eve sitting next to the dead body on the ground with her bloody hands. One of the men whispered,
"Quick, call the guards! The woman has murdered someone!"
