Chapter 533: A FORGOTTEN MEMORY
Auburn stepped inside cautiously, her fingers trailing across a stack of faded storybooks on the desk.
Auburn looked around the room, her eyes hovering at the beautiful carpets, the princess bed laid in pink filled with teddy bears.
There were couches that seemed so soft to the eyes you were aware you would sleep so easily on them.
There were mirrors with beautiful dressers, Fantastic paintings, colorful wallpapers.
Everything that spoke of a princess.
Rose herself managed to hold back herself as she waltzed the room.
The very last time she had been here was the night Scarlett had disappeared.
She had sat on her daughter’s bed, mad with grief, her crown no longer in place and her hair in disarray as she wept.
She slowly walked to the bed and picked up a plush wolf toy.
Scarlett’s favorite.
And she could remember how she had held unto the teddy bear and screamed in madness.
She shivered at the memories.
And then she remembered how Scarlett would hold the plush toy to her chest whenever she wanted to sleep.
The good, the bad and the ugly.
They all came refusing to let her rest.
Since that night she hadn’t stepped into this room.
But the maids and servants had been instructed to clean it and keep it just the way it had been.
It looked like yesterday. More so it looked as though Scarlett had never left.
As though the doors would bust open and Scarlett would come running inside with a little preying man tub that had broken its leg begging her mother to help her fix him.
She felt a weak smile.
She walked towards where the old book shelves were.
There was not a single speck of dust however, yo u could tell that they hadn’t been opened in years.
She picked up one of the books and found Scarlett’s elegant handwriting.
She smiled as she touched them, her fingers trailing the paper as though she could relieve the memory.
She shut the book and placed it back inside.
She had told herself that when she returned to this bedroom, it would be because Scarlett had returned.
But now she was here because Scarlett’s daughter had come.
A twist of fate.
She walked to a reclining couch overlooking the balcony and sat.
She gently tapped beside her for Auburn to take a seat.
Auburn walked up to her and sat down comfortably.
"This was your mother’s room." Rose said as she looked up at the ceiling tried to hold back the tears struggling to flow down her cheeks.
"She loved this room so much." Rose said with a smile. "Everything here she specifically chose. She was quite neat. I made sure that everything would be the same for when she...."
She couldn’t finish up.
Because now she knew Scarlett was never going to return.
She turned to Auburn and gently grasped her hands.
"I want to know what happened to your mother. What you know." Rose asked pleading.
Auburn sighed and looked down at their hands. "What my adoptive parents told me was they found her at the banks of their river. She had no recollection of who she was and then they took her in. Slowly she began to remember herself as the years went by."
"At first they said she didn’t want to remember and it was until the day she gave birth to me she finally told them everything." Auburn explained further.
"She knew and didn’t want to come back?" Rose asked heartbroken.
Auburn shrugged. "It’s still a mystery to me. She had perhaps already wanted to make a life there. And they said she was worried someone was after her."
Rose was baffled.
Someone after her?
Who would want to harm her?
This was her home?
And moreover she had tripped inside the sea.
It was only Coral, the guard and their nanny who had been there.
And Rose was sure that none of the would ever harm her.
"What was she like?" Rose asked hungry for any information on her daughter.
Auburn smiled. "They said she was kind. Beautiful, always happy. She was nothing like anyone they had ever met."
Rose felt a swell of pride and then a twist of pain she had never gotten to experience that.
"And who was your father?" Rose asked. "Who was he?"
Auburn shrugged. "I never met him. And my adoptive parents never knew him either."
Rose was appalled.
Scarlett had a child and no one knew who the father was?
"I didn’t have anything belonging to her except for this." Auburn said as she gently touched the emerald pendant on her chest
Rose nodded.
The greatest jewel in the entire wolf kingdom.
"It was hard for me growing up without my mother." Auburn explained.
"What happened to your adoptive parents? Why didn’t they come with you?" Rose asked perplexed.
"They died a few months back." Auburn explained. "It was on their dying bed they told me everything. So I came to find you on my own. I wasn’t sure how you would take me in."
And then Auburn seemed to begin to stammer and soon she began to weep.
"I’m so sorry... t-talking about these things... make me so sad." Auburn wept.
And then Rose felt her face drenched in color.
How selfish of herself.
All because she wanted to know about Scarlett she was milking Auburn so much that she didn’t even notice how much distress it had brought her.
Rose hugged her and gently rubbed her back. "It’s okay my child. I’m so sorry to bring back the memories. You’re here now my child. That’s all that matters."
Rose finally let go.
"Come I’ll like to take you to your room." Rose said suffocated by the overwhelming emotions she felt in the room.
"Can I stay in here just for a minute?" Auburn asked.
"Of course." Rose said and then she rose up to her feet and walked to the door.
Before she opened the door, her fingers brushed through her pockets as she felt the small broken pieces of emerald.
It was the one she had recovered the night Scarlett had gone missing.
But Auburn’s was without tarnish and unbroken.
She shook her head.
No this was her grand daughter.
Perhaps the emerald was just pieces from something else.
And she smiled at Auburn and left the room.