You Are Not Worthy of My Forgiveness

Episode 1

Lidia.

I was at my art exhibition, I came as just another guest, I like to keep my image private, it is also satisfying to hear what others think, without knowing that the artist is listening, before I didn't think it was possible to achieve something like this. The road to get here has been very difficult, it was full of tears, sweat and effort, finally I made it. Finally, I can feel proud of myself. I can boast that I didn't choose my vocation badly, maybe I'm not Picasso, I don't hold a candle to van Gogh, but I am good, the prices of my paintings prove it.

"Mom!" I heard a shout, then I felt some little hands around my waist.

"Who are you?" He was not a child from the orphanage that I usually visit, I know them all. Or almost all. I tried to understand why he was grabbing me.— Little one, you have the wrong person.— I tried to reason with him. How can I have a son and not know it? There is also the fact that I have never had intimacy.

"Mommy, you're alive." His green eyes, just like mine, made me jump, impossible. It can't be, this child is...

"Byron." I could recognize that voice anywhere. I have it engraved in my memory as if it were my damn favorite song.

"Daddy, I found Mommy." He was a few meters away from the man I loved for more than a decade, the man of 1.87, black hair, blue-gray eyes, broad shoulders, sexy lips and handsome face. He was the definition of perfection.

Have you ever given flowers to a man? I have. He is the one in front of me right now.

I remember him as a child, how didn't I realize it before? Maybe because you've been struggling to forget everything about him. So you didn't notice that the little one here is his spitting image. My inner voice answered.

"Get away from me." I ordered the brat. My voice, once normal, became cold.

"No. I won't leave you. You are my mom." The child clung to me, that irritated me. His father strode over to us. He took his son and looked at me with disapproval. The boy wanted to hug me again but I moved away. I can't stand the child. I know it's cruel, but I can't when he was the one to blame for my misfortune.

"Keep your son away from me." I turned around, my eyes flooded, I wiped them discreetly and walked to the exit, I didn't have the strength to stay at my event. Nobody knew that I was the artist, it doesn't matter if I'm here or not.

"Mom! Mom don't go!" The child's screams damaged something inside me. But no, I'm not going to be that child's mother. Not when his father chose my sister instead of me.

Luke.

I tried to calm my son down, he just couldn't, he didn't know he would find her here, she didn't know that her resemblance to Layla would be a problem for my little one.

"She's Mom. I want to go with Mom. Take me to her." He wasn't asking, he was demanding, full of pain. It was killing me to see him like that. But that wasn't his mother, that wasn't even the Lydia I thought I knew.

She used to be a warm, sweet and cheerful woman, always full of paint on her clothes, face and hair, always trying to earn my appreciation, I received a flower from her every morning, a huge bouquet on my birthday. Cards with poems, she chased me like a dog chases its owner. She looked at me like a pervert, she was a complete nuisance. That's all I could think of her.

Of that woman, there is now no trace. Now her green eyes are colder than an iceberg, her clothes of cheerful colors have been replaced by a single color, black. For years it has been the only color she wears. I know this because I got to see her after being married to her sister for a while. Layla always said how worried she was about Lydia, that it hurt her to see her turned into the woman she became.

"Dad, take me to Mom." My son brings me back to the present. How am I going to explain to him that that is not his mother? That she is the woman who wanted to kill him when he was barely a fetus.