THE CONFESSION
JOE and Lisa positioned themselves in front the laptop, with the pen drive plugged into the fastest port. The tension in the room was impalpable. Lisa kept staring at the cross shaped pen drive as if she was looking at a piece of puzzle yet to be solved. She wore it all this time but never realized what it really was, Joe thought. He also was anxious to know what it would reveal. He, like always hoped that it would be for the best.
The pen drive contained a video file by the name confession. As he moved the cursor toward the file, Lisa clutched his hand. Clearing her throat she said “Before we see what is in this video, there is something that I have to tell you.”
“What is it?”
“There’s something that I have kept from you and I don’t want you to know it from anyone else.”
His heartbeat quickened, anxiety grew.
“I’m an adopted child. They adopted me when I was 6 months old. ”She paused and added. “I never told you because I had never, not even for moment had thought that they weren’t my own.” Noticing that he wasn’t so surprised, she asked, “You don’t seem so surprised?”
“I kind of had my suspicions when that guy said ‘angel raised by demons’ and not angel born to demons. I was actually going to ask you but I glad you told it yourself. It’s okay. I can understand. Don’t worry.”
“How can you be so calm about this, Joe? I have given you nothing but troubles ever since I called you here.”
“None of this is your fault. Stop blaming yourself. And don’t even for a think that you put me in harm’s way. I am happy to be here with you. This is my chance to make up for the time that we could have spent together if I had mustered the courage to tell you how I felt.
Nothing is going to change the way I feel for you. Whatever that video might say, I am never going to let you go. I have only loved you and I always will no matter what, against all the odds.”
Lisa leaned forward and hugged Joe. He also wrapped his arms around her.
“Now shall we find out?” asked Joe, still hugging Lisa. “Yeah, we better.” Said Lisa, breaking off the hug.
Joe looked at Lisa. Her eyes were intense, mind probably steaming up. He wondered what would be going through her mind.
He double clicked on the file. Without further ado it opened up to be what he already been expecting. Hopefully, the answer to everything, their ticket out of this mess. After all it was named confession.
“Hello sweetie”, Lisa’s father spoke with a strong masculine voice, her mother right beside him. They seemed like the made for each other couple. They had that teacher’s look. The kind of teachers that become everyone’s favourite. But clearly and unfortunately, they were more than that.
The video was made in the Jolly villa and her parents were at the same dining table, from the bottom of which they got the floppy. Though they had already cracked the coded message in it, it made no sense to them, leaving them shrouded in mystery.
He turned to Lisa to see her reaction. He was expecting teary eyes. But she was numb. That scared him. He had never seen her like that. She is of course strong girl but ever since he had met her at the church, tears flowed from her eyes even at the mention of her parents. He couldn’t help wondering what changed.
Lisa’s father continued. “You would probably wondering what is all this? Unless our plan works, we would be dead already when you are seeing this video. If so this is the answer to all the questions you may have related to our death, which most likely is a road accident.”
“Whether alive or dead, this is our confession to you. “This time it was her mother who spoke and she continued. “We are making a video because we cannot do this looking at your face and we are going to give it to you in disguise because we couldn’t reach a decision whether to tell you this or not. So we have decided to let God make that decision. If it is his will that you should see this, only then shall you see it. If not, the truth dies with us.”
“We know you love us a lot .But you may not after hearing what we are about to tell you. I hope there would be some love left in your heart to forgive us. “She couldn’t continue. Tears fell from the corner of her eyes. Lisa’s father took over.
“I don’t know how to break this to you. We have been lying to you your whole life. In fact you don’t know the real John and Molly. We are not model teachers like you and the rest of the world thinks. That is just a cover for the dirty work that we do. We are probably the worst kind of teachers around.” he took a moment to breathe.
“Lisa, “, he paused.” We are part of a drug cartel.”
“We were.” , her mother corrected. “We were part of a drug cartel. We used our teaching position as a cover as well as aide to our dark side. We used our students, even without their knowledge as our carriers. We also used the school buses to our advantage. Our first home at Mercara became our base of operations.
We have been doing this since before we got you. You are the gem we got after whining for years for not having children. We didn’t want you to be a part of this and we didn’t want to quit. So we lied to you every day, kept you in the dark.
But recently we decided to quit because we realized we couldn’t keep lying to you for long. That is when the tables turned against us. They wouldn’t let us. And couple of days ago we received word from a friend that they plan to kill us because they fear we might tell the world about everything one day.”
Her father told the rest of the story.” We are going to try and blackmail our way out of this. We have come into possession of a floppy that has information that could bring the entire network down overnight. But there is no guarantee that it will save us. You probably would already know if we succeeded or not.”
Lisa mother spoke once again. “We don’t have any justification for what we did. We did what we did and now we are paying its price. Your heart would be full of hatred for us. You have every right.
May be you will be able to forgive us one day. We may not be alive to see that day. Take care. Find someone who will love you better than us. Have a good life.”
“Goodbye”, they both said in unison and the video ended.
After sitting lifeless for a minute Lisa paced out of the room into the balcony. Joe followed her
“Lisa, talk to me. At least cry it out.”
“Talk about what Joe? What? About my parents being drug dealers? About them lying to me all my life? Or about how dumb I was not to see it? What do you what talk about?” Lisa was furious like never before. She was finally exploding.
“Lisa, look at me”, he said griping her shoulders and repeated, “Look at me. I won’t say I can understand what you are going through because I don’t. I cannot even begin to imagine. The only thing I can tell you is that I’m here for you. You are not alone. You can talk to me about anything you want.”
“I cannot tell you what I am feeling right now. I don’t know how to. You know that my parents were my life and they lied to me all my life. That is what makes me more furious than the fact that they dealt with drugs. They were my models for good honest people.”
“They lied to you because they didn’t want you on the dark path they walked. Why are you not seeing that?’
“I don’t know”
“Besides, they couldn’t be that bad”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they made you. You may not be there blood but you are what they made you to be. They raised an angel. The people who brought you up couldn’t have been that bad. Speaking of which, who is good in this world Lisa? You? Me? Don’t we all have our bag of lies? Aren’t we all selfish at some point? The only reason we get to call ourselves good is that there are worse people out there. Your parents did what they did and paid the price for it.”
The dusk was fading into a night. While the nature made preparations for the impending night, Joe and Lisa were trying to cope with recently unveiled truth. Joe was worried about Lisa. He remained by her side all night until the hard day’s fatigue took a toll on him and he dozed off.
The next morning he woke upon the couch in Lisa’s room. The first thing he did was to look for Lisa. But he couldn’t find her anywhere. It was when he was pacing to and fro through the apartment trying to figure out what to do that he found his laptop kept opened on the table with a flower beside it. He took he flower in his hand and tapped on the mouse pad. The laptop screen came to life and showed a word document. Reading through the document he ranted.
“What have you done Lisa?”