Chapter 3 – Betrayed By Fate

Julia POV.

FIVE YEARS EARLIER.

“Loneliness is the poverty of self.”

Whosoever wrote those words must have thought about me while writing them. Loneliness has been a constant companion all through my life. The feeling of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for had never abandoned me except for the few years I spent with Luke. If anything, it was me who felt abandoned all the time.

Abandoned by fate. Abandoned by family. Abandoned by my parents.

My father, the beta of the Blue Moon pack, favored my elder sister over me any day. Everyday. My mother was no different, either. Together, they made me feel like an orphan sometimes.

Not having parents is a misfortune. But having parents who neither love you nor value your love for them is a curse. And this curse ran in my family. It ran deep. It ran unchecked. And, in spite of being the youngest, I was the only member this curse had fallen upon.

I was the only one to suffer it silently.

Until I met Luke and fell in love with him.

I never finished college. Not that I didn’t want to, but because fate had other plans.

My high school GPA scores were good. At 3.6, they were higher than the national average but slightly below the absolute best. My teachers said I had a bright future ahead of me. All I needed to do was maintain my focus and keep slogging at it. How wrong they turned out to be.

Little did I know that my dream of graduating from college would turn out to be an illusion.

I grew up dirt poor. If my childhood could be described in one phrase, it would be ‘poverty-stricken’. If my family’s living conditions could be described in one word, it would be ‘impoverished’. Food, clothes, necessities, shelter, books, and even toys were in constant short supply all through my growing-up years.

While most kids I grew up with learned how to play with and break toys, I learned how to put them back together again with glue so I could play with them instead once they were discarded by those ‘fortunate’ kids.

Life sucked. Dreams sucked more.

Life was not just dull, it was gloomy. Pathetic even. My mother was an alcoholic. She would grab the bottle at sunrise and keep it down at sunset, only to pick up another one. My father was a compulsive gambler. He would gamble away whatever little money we had, and then pawn off our modest belongings.

The TV set was the first to go to the pawn shop, followed by the rickety pickup truck. Next to go was the furniture in the living room, the furniture in the bedroom, my bike, and finally, Mom’s earrings. Her only pair of earrings. Gone in a flash one dark and gloomy morning, never to be seen again.

But the worst was yet to come.

I learned in school that adversity builds character. How much of it applied to my case is debatable. What is undisputed, however, is the fact that I learned to be self-reliant at a very young age.

I would ride my bike to school every morning and ride it home, too. The school bus was not for me. It cost money. When my bike was pawned off by my father, I would walk to school and back. Five miles each way.

Lunchtime was spent hiding my modest lunch of a stale sandwich usually leftover from a day or two before, and a banana. Buying from the school canteen seemed like a luxury. Hell, even buying my school books would involve great discord and debate with my parents.

By the time I was seventeen, I was doing odd jobs after school hours to earn and save money. Flipping burgers, waiting tables, and doing dishes at neighborhood cafes became the most important part of my life. These generated a paltry income which I would save down to the last penny. I was saving money to pay for my college tuition.

It wasn’t much, but a couple of years of savings helped me get admission to the most affordable college in my hometown. It was not the best college, I was not ecstatic, but nonetheless happy. Happy in the knowledge I had a future to look forward to. A future that I would now be building brick by brick, one day at a time. Happy in the hope that I would finally be able to get out of my wretched existence soon enough.

That was when the worst that could have possibly happened to me, happened.

After returning from college one evening, I noticed the door of my cupboard open. Items inside had been ransacked, strewn all over, rummaged through. My heart stopped once I discovered the shoe box containing all my saved money was missing. Gone!

I stood horrified. Speechless. Trembling.

I ran out of my room once I regained composure and knocked on my Mom’s door. Loudly. It was not uncommon to find her door locked from inside at that hour. She would usually be in the middle of a drinking binge at that time of day.

“Mom! Open the door!” I barked loudly. “Where’s my money?”

“What money? Whose money?” came a faint response from inside.

“My money, Mom. My savings. The money I was saving for tuition fees. It’s gone! Where is it?” I yelled through the door.

“Not sure what you are talking about, sweetheart,” another feeble reply came from inside. “What money? Where would you get money from? Since when do we have money at the house?”

Talking to her was pointless. Expecting an explanation was futile. I had a feeling who might have stolen the cash. I made a run for the clandestine gambling den that operated inside the closed-down lime quarry.

And it was not a wild guess either.

There he was, sitting with his head down, all alone, with a dejected and forlorn look on his face. A broken man with a broken spirit who had nothing better to do than steal my savings and break my future in the process.

The shoebox lay by his side, empty.

“Where’s the money, Dad?” I shouted at him. “Where’s MY money?”

He slowly moved his head in my direction. His deep-set eyes said it all. He didn’t need to utter a word.

“Where is it? That was my college tuition fees, you moron!” I screamed in agony and despair. “Bring it back. I want it back.”

He moved his head away again. Didn’t react. Didn’t twitch. Didn’t even offer an excuse. Just sat in stone-deaf silence.

I was crushed. Not just my dreams, or hopes, but a part of my soul got crushed that day. It was the end of my education. It was the end of my aspirations.

I grew up by ten years that day. I also moved out of that wretched house that day. Never to look back again.

Thankfully, I met Luke soon after and fell in love with his lively generous warm persona. He swept me off my feet, drowned me in his affection, and before I knew it, married me and promised to never leave me alone.

He offered me the only glimmer of hope I have had in my entire life. Losing him pushed me down into the pits again.

I cursed his killers and swore on my kids to avenge his death. The night I fled, I managed to sneak into the makeshift camp of the 3 Gammas who killed him. And slit their throats with Luke’s knife while they were asleep.

Did I find peace? I don’t think so. But I found closure. A sort of solace, knowing that the ones who took him away from me got what they deserved.