No One Knew

By Nathalie M.L. Römer

For more than a decade, the arguments have caused my mother and I to have become estranged. The reason why - she has an irrational hatred for my father.

 

After an argument with her, I visit my father who I last saw as a child. A tragedy causes me to have to confront his secrets. With some rather unexpected end results...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emerentsia Publications
• Release date: Mar 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9789198690637

Nathalie M.L. Römer

Nathalie M.L. Römer is an author based in Gusselby, Sweden. She lives here with her partner Anders. Before this, she lived for over two decades in Britain. She was born and initially raised in the Netherlands, and later also lived in Curaçao. Nathalie considers herself a multi-genre author, publishing them under her imprint Emerentsia Publications she co-owns with her partner. Nathalie writes science fiction, epic fantasy, mystery, horror and romance, and she's working on books in other genres.

Book preview

No One Knew

Nathalie M.L. Römer

Table of Contents

Title Page

No One Knew

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

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About the Publisher

Copyright © 2021 Nathalie M.L. Römer

ISBN-13: 9789198690637

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Emerentsia Publications

Marielundsvägen 9c

711 95 Gusselby

Sweden

emerentsiabooks.com

Ordering Information:

Orders by US trade bookstores and wholesalers. Please contact Ingram: One Ingram Blvd., La Vergne, TN 37086  •  615.793.5000 or visit ingramcontent.com.

Independently printed as a Swedish publication.

INTERIOR DESIGN AND layout by Emerentsia Publications.

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Book website: nathaliemlromer.com/no-one-knew

CHAPTER ONE

THE SAME STREET. THE same house. Thirty years of everything being the same. Thirty years as an only child...

It would depend on where the family was in any year, whether it would be the bohemian lifestyle that my mother had adopted after divorcing my father. If I was to spend time, there - because the courts insisted that he had some time to play Father - it was days filled with grumpy bemoaning of what my mother might do right now. In the end, all the days were just the same...

The house I lived in now was my childhood abode, as Mother would call it so eloquently. This was where all my birthdays would happen. That had been thirty of them so far. But in the last three years I celebrated them silently because I knew no one would visit. Mother was too busy... and Father? I didn’t even have a clue what he was up to. If I believed Mother, he was up to no good. But she never went into the details of what he did with his time... especially since, apparently, he’d retired from the many jobs he had done over the years.

I recalled confronting Mother about the situation between them one day. After we’d argued, I stormed from her house and rushed directly to Father’s house. To confront him next. That was a half a lifetime ago. My sweet dear old Mother, oh yuck for having to think back right now about that day, and no she isn’t yet dead. But the way she distanced herself from me because I went to see Father that day, she might as well be. We’ve not spoken since his funeral. And oh yes, there was a funeral...! She’d made it abundantly clear to me she blamed me for that, too.

I had gone to visit him because I wanted to hear him out and find out if what Mother had said to me was even remotely true. The conversation never got far enough for me to get the answers. He was attempting to tell me something important, but then his hand grasped his left arm and the gasps for air stopped him in his tracks...

Though there was a blessing in disguise, hidden somewhere in the events that followed. It all began with me staring at a paramedic who felt uncomfortably familiar, even if I’d never met her, ever. She smiled for a moment, then she and the colleague following her were attending to Father...

LEANING IN AGAINST the low wall enclosing his tiny garden, I stared at my phone and was contemplating for ten minutes whether to call Mother about the current happenings. I was clueless about how she’d react to this news. The last conversation between us had clarified that she didn’t care for Father much these days, ... so whether he lives or is dead, gone and buried, he can stay lost, she’d shouted after me as I had stepped from her house and before I had time to slam her front door shut. I remembered shouting back at her, Fuck off...

But I was at a crossroads right now. Dealing with my own conflicted emotions as I glanced up occasionally at the two paramedics working speedily...

They were certainly giving Father a chance of survival. Something about how the female paramedic kept looking at his face, whispering something to him, and then would place her hand against his cheek felt odd.

Something about it felt like how I might have tended to him if our relationship had been like what it was with me as a child, when I had been ‘Daddy’s little angel girl,’ but those days were over two decades ago.

I noticed her eyes glazed over...

SO, YES, AS IT WAS clear, glancing up on hearing footsteps approaching me, there was no funeral just yet. The idea of there to have been a funeral was all in Mother’s mind, of course. The way I’d ended up arguing with Mother would likely have meant that I’d be the one arranging all of Father’s affairs if the paramedic had been approaching me to let me know he lay dead on the trolley behind her. And then, she’d guilt-tripped me into caring for a man I might