Chapter 343: Chapter 343

Just on the island’s outskirts, a lone cottage stood out from the rest. It was a charming little cottage that looked warm and inviting. The hedges and flowers around it had all been trimmed and shaped into various intricate designs. Obviously, the owner went to a lot of lengths to keep her cottage that neat. This was what set it apart fom the rest- those prettily designed hedges.

However, the owner, who had recently moved in kept to herself pretty much. The neighbours were not bothered that Shed did not partake in most of their joint activities even though it was a little off the usual.

Inside the said cottage, the occupant jolted awake, her breath ragged and uneven, the sheets twisted around her like they were trying to hold her down.

The dream was already slipping away from her grasp like it usually did, dissolving into the darkness that surrounded her, leaving only a trace—a single word that echoed in her mind: WHY! It hung there, reverberating like a distant voice, filled with disappointment and something else she couldn’t quite place.

The woman had been having this same dream time and again. Something deep inside her told her that it was the same dream but the thing was that, she never remembered. She only attributed it to the fact that the same word hung in her head every single time she awoke. It was the voice of an older woman laced with so much disappointment that her heart hurt just from that singl : WHY.

She wondered what thet was about each time but she had no recollection of ever dissapointing anyone in her life. In reality, she had no recollection of anything in her life!

Her brow was damp with sweat, and she reached up to press her fingers against her temples as if trying to steady the dull throb of pain that pulsed through her head. That was also constant each time she was plagued with these dreams. The ache seemed to dig deeper with every beat, each pulse a reminder of that unspoken question that lingered like a shadow in her mind.

She squeezed her eyes shut, desperately trying to remember, to pull some fragment of the dream back into focus, but it was gone—buried in a fog she couldn’t penetrate. All she had was that word, why, looping through her thoughts, carrying a sense of failure and regret that made her chest feel hollow. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone, somewhere, was disappointed in her, and the thought made her shiver despite the warmth of the room.

As she lay there, her heartbeat loud in her ears, she wondered if the answer would ever come to her or if she was destined to be haunted by a question she could never quite understand.

She lay there for a while till her heart calmed down and the ache turned into a dull throb.

She finally turned to look at the wall clock in her room : 9am!

She closed her eyes and the jolted upright all of a sudden—this action causd blood to rush through her head, bringing back the headache that had subsided.

’I’m late!’ She thought as she scrambled off the bed but then, no sooner had she done that, did she stop her actions abruptly.

"Late for what?" She asked herself in the empty room. She lived alone and her cottage has two little rooms, a bathroom, kitchen and a hall. There was no one else with her but every single morning since she had moved there, she went through the same cycles.

She did not know what she had done before coming there. She had no family but had the inclination to keep moving and keep her place in a particular order. She found that such menial tasks and others came easy for her.

She sighed and then rested her head for the familiar ache to subside.

"Why can’t I remember anything?" She asked herself. Her earliest memory was when she woke up in the hospital. The doctor had told her that some good people had found her while they were hiking. She had suffered a major blow to her head and that was what caused her memory loss.

The doctor estimated that she should start to regain her memory as soon as the head injury healed but since then, there had been nothing... except for the dreams that plagued her. Just then, a knock sounded on her door and she frowned. No one had ever visited her. Any attempts to find family had turned out futile. It was as if she had just appeared one day.

Among her belongings, they discovered the deed to the cottage she lived in, but who would come to visit her? Although she longed for visitors and a connection with others, fear still held her back. A deep instinct warned her about the lurking dangers outside. Nevertheless, she got up, curious about who might be at the door.

"What has you pondering so deeply?" Alex asked as he leaned down to kiss his wife’s cheeks and then sat by her.

"You didn’t even notice when I came in..."

Geneva drew herself from the thought and smiled at her husband.

"Don’t tell me that this is about Katie again?"

"It is..." Geneva’s thoughts returned to the chief maid who had served by her side for decades. Geneva did not consider Katie as a mere maid; she was like family... in fact, Katie was family, and that was why Geneva always felt that her betrayal hurt.

The memory of the betrayal lingered like a scar, a dull ache buried deep beneath the surface. The secret of Ian’s birth had been purposively hidden from the larger Thornston family for many reasons, but it was never Katie’s right to send it out merely seconds after learning of it. It was not even the leakage of the secret that hurt but it was the fact that Katie had decided to do it.

Over the days after that, Geneva had thought that she’d moved past it, but every time she let her guard down, it crept back in, whispering the same question over and over: How could she?

This wasn’t just anyone; this was someone who had been that close, someone whom Geneva had trusted with most her secrets, her dreams, and her fears. They had shared laughter, tears, and moments that were meant to be unbreakable. At that thought, Geneva’s little voice of reasoning told her,

’If you had trusted her that much, Katie would have known about this a while back. You know deep within you that, there was that little hesitance that she wasn’t totally loyal to you and she proved that right!’

Even with this, Geneva felt that all those memories between them were tainted, like looking at a photograph that had been smudged by dirty hands. It was the kind of betrayal that didn’t just sting; it hollowed her out from the inside, leaving a bitterness that coated her tongue.

She could still feel the warmth of their smiles and the way their words used to wrap around her like a safety net—only to realize that the net was made of lies, fraying threads that had snapped when she needed them most.

"Do you think that she was ever sincere?"

Alex had no answer to this, but he knew that it wasn’t just anger that filled his wife from this experience; it was hurt, a deep sense of loss for what could never be recovered. For a moment, Alex examined his memories with his wife, hoping that he also had not overstepped some boundaries somewhere.

Alex cherished Geneva, but even after forty-plus years of marriage, what he was most apprehensive about was the fact that the Roman guy could return. He had made that promise to let her go back once Roman returned but Alex knew that he would be lying to himself if that time ever came.

He examined his wife’s pensive features and came to a startling realization: Katie hadn’t just broken Geneva’s trust— Katie had shattered the very foundation of what her mistress believed they stood for.

And now, every memory of them felt like a wound that wouldn’t close, bleeding quietly in the corners of her mind, reminding them that betrayal doesn’t always come from strangers or enemies; sometimes, it comes from those who once held a piece of your heart.

"Do you want to take her back?"

Geneva glared at her husband, "Don’t talk such nonsense!"

This retort made Alex smile widely. His wife was back. At least, she had tried to chunk those undesirable thoughts away and that brought him relief but this was short-lived.

Geneva’s phone started buzzing, and she stared blankly at it. "It’s Sally..."

That was all Alex needed to know to understand Geneva’s reactions.

Geneva looked up at her husband from the glowing screen and then picked up the phone on loudspeaker.

"I hear you sacked Katie from her post." The voice began as soon as the call connected. There was no greetings or any pleasantries exchanged. All that the listeners could hear was a pissed off woman.

"What right do you have to sack a Thornston-raised maid. Do you know how much effort and costs go into such training?"

The person scoffed, and Geneva could imagine her smirking and twisting her lips as she would have usually done, especially with those condescending eyes of hers. The woman continued without pausing,

"Oh, you think you get to make decisions about the staff now that you have been in the family for years?" she snapped, each word dripping with disdain.

"Newsflash, darling,...." Sarcasm oozed off the endearment to a high degree.

"... in case you’ve forgotten—you only carry the family name because you borrowed it from my headstrong brother. In my eyes, you’re still and will always be just a guest here, playing house. So, why don’t you leave the decisions to those of us who actually belong to this family, hmm?"

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