Betrayed On My Wedding Eve Chapter 10

Betrayed On My Wedding Eve Chapter 10

Jade wasn’t completely wrong. I haven’t been to the places she described.

The reason I knew she was lying was because of my mother.

I wasn’t born without parents.

My mother was an international news journalist. Eventually she became a full-time war correspondent.

In those days, a woman working abroad while her husband raised the children was almost scandalous. The neighbors made sure I knew it.

“Your mom doesn’t want you anymore.”

I balled up my fists and hit them for it. Got mocked harder.

Seeing her was hard. But she sent letters. Postmarks from all over the world. She wrote about everything, attached photos.

The happiest thing about my childhood was sitting on my father’s knee while he read them aloud, and sketching in my mind the image of this woman, vivid and alive, doing something that mattered.

She wrote: Lena, most women live in a very small world. But the real world is enormous. When you grow up, you have to go see it yourself. See widely. Then you’ll know what you want.

She was my eyes.

Before I’d read more than a handful of books. She’d given me a glimpse of the whole world.

But when I was five, she was killed in the line of duty.

She’d exposed a massacre of civilians during the Kosovo War. They found only her camera.

Inside: the images she’d died protecting.

And one photo of me, taken at some unknown moment.

I didn’t quite understand what “killed” meant yet.

But the people who’d always gathered at our gate to talk about us were delighted.

“See? Women who show off like that never come to a good end.”

After that, I had no mother. But I kept what she told me.

Go see it yourself. Record it yourself.

Then you’ll know what you want.

The oldest, most battered camera I’d dug out that afternoon was hers.

The alcohol was hitting. My head swam. I buried my face in my hands.

“Mom. I miss you so much.”