Looking up at Rachel, Vivian shook her head slightly and hesitated before speaking. “No, Mom. But… I have a question.”
“What is it?” Rachel found Vivian’s expression to be a little odd. “Silly girl, you can ask me anything. What are you finding so hard to talk to your own mother about? It’s not like I have anything to hide from my daughter.”
Rachel’s words struck a sour note in Vivian’s heart. She struggled to hold back her tears and still hoped that the doctor’s examination was a mistake.
“Mom, I… am… Am… I…” Vivian stammered, still unable to get the words out.
“What on earth is it that’s making you stutter like that?” asked Rachel with a smile.
Vivian tried to look Rachel straight in the eye as she enunciated every word. “Am I your biological daughter?” She poured every bit of hope she had as she silently prayed that her mother would at least give her some reassurance.
The question Vivian asked wiped the smile off Rachel’s face in an instant. She trembled in fear and turned away from Vivian. At that point, she could not bring herself to look at her daughter.
Rachel’s reaction served to confirm her worst fears, and immediately, her heart sank all the way into an abyss. Vivian anxiously grabbed onto Rachel’s hand and asked her the same question again. “Mom, answer me! Am I your daughter?”
All Rachel could do was cry as she beheld Vivian. The tears fell onto her sheets and quickly covered them with wet stains. Rachel shook her head slightly and kept crying without saying a word.
“Mom, I’m not your biological daughter then?” Vivian’s voice finally cracked into a loud sob. It would seem that God favored his other children more. What the doctor said was true, after all.
Rachel shook her head more vigorously this time before stopping to weep bitterly. She covered her mouth to mask the sounds and dared not look at Vivian at all.
So it’s true? I’m not my mother’s daughter. Vivian felt every last bit of strength leave her body as she sank into the chair behind her. With this came other revelations.
All this while, she wondered why Harvey took her to have a paternity test done. As it turned out, he was not her father after all. If she was not Rachel’s daughter, how could she possibly be his daughter? Nothing made sense.
Then who the hell am I? Vivian immediately felt a furious ache in her temples. The more she thought about this, the more confounded she became.
It took a while for her to finally muster up the strength to look at Rachel, who lay in her bed trembling and crying. But Vivian also remembered everything Rachel did for her when she was a child.
Being in a single-parent family, Vivian grew up poor and could barely afford her tuition. Hence, Rachel did what she could to put food at the table and went to the extent of working up to two or three jobs at once.
To her knowledge, Rachel was never a materialistic or selfish person. Whatever the other children had, Rachel would do her best to obtain so that Vivian never felt left out. She did what she could so that nobody looked down on their family.
As she recalled all of this, Vivian knew that she could not find it in her to blame Rachel even if this was a heart-breaking revelation. She was not even Rachel’s biological daughter, but Rachel did whatever she could to provide the best for her.
As such, her gratitude towards Rachel grew even more. Vivian could only thank Rachel for treating her as one of her own. If not for this, who knows where I’ll end up today? Would I still meet Finnick? Would I have the life that I have right now?
“Mom?” Vivian held back her sadness and wiped her tears before gently pulling Rachel closer to her. “Can you tell me who your biological daughter is?” She needed to obtain this information so that Rachel could be operated on as soon as possible.
However, Rachel could not stop crying. “Vivian, I’m sorry… I… I don’t…” She then trailed off into an incoherent babble of words that Vivian could not understand.
Seeing Rachel so upset, Vivian could only assume that her daughter was dead. It was also possible that her daughter died at childbirth, which would explain why Vivian ended up in the picture.
