“What I want is for you to go save your mother,” Vivian stated her intentions plainly.
Evelyn was a little miffed as she regarded Vivian with wild eyes. “My mom’s already dead, so what the hell are you even talking about?”
“No, she’s still alive because you’re not even from the Morrisons.” And the bomb was dropped.
“What sort of joke is this!” Evelyn’s expression was dour. “You’d better stop this nonsense!”
“It isn’t nonsense. My mother is your actual birth parent,” Vivian said as she looked Evelyn straight in the eye.
Evelyn curled her lips and scoffed, “Even if you feel that you are not good enough for Finnick, you don’t have to make up something as absurd as this just to spite me. What makes you think I’ll believe you?”
Vivian guessed as much that Evelyn would not be easily convinced. She hastened to explain herself. “I’m not lying. Rachel William really is your mother. She has leukemia and you are her only blood relation. Only your bone marrow would most likely be a match for hers.”
Not able to make any sense of this conversation, Evelyn thought Vivian might have lost all rationality after being agitated.
“You’re insane.” Evelyn rolled her eye at Vivian and left it at that before turned to head upstairs.
“Wait. You can’t go!” Vivian stood herself in the way. “Have you been kidnapped as a new-born, and was rescued by my mother?”
“How did you come to know about this?” Evelyn asked warily.
“Benedict was the one who told me about this, and my mother has confirmed it. She said that the little girl she picked up wasn’t you. When she learned later from the news that the Morrison family lost their daughter, she had her own daughter sent to them in the hope that she would be able to have a better future. The Morrison’s child was the one she kept and raised as her own.”
Vivian related the truth of the past as concisely as she could to Evelyn.
Evelyn thought the whole thing rather laughable. “So, what you’re insinuating is that you are a Morrison, and I the daughter of Rachel William?”
“Yes.” Vivian nodded. “This is what my mother had told me herself. You have to believe me.”
“And why should I?” Evelyn howled. “I’ve really underestimated you before, Vivian William. To think you could come up with a lie like that?”
“You can go to the hospital and verify this with my mother.” She grew more distressed by the moment and started tugging at Evelyn’s arm. “Come on, let’s go right away!”
“She is, as you’ve put it, your mother. How am I to know whether the two of you aren’t in on it together?” Evelyn knocked off Vivian’s hand. “Don’t you find yourself hysterical?”
“You don’t have to believe what I say. A DNA paternity test at the hospital will put this argument to rest.”
Vivian’s anxiety did seem genuine and she appeared sure of herself. Evelyn was unnerved by the prospect that she might not actually be a Morrison.
She shook her head and tried to cast those thoughts aside. Having lived so many years with the Morrisons, how could it be that she was not one of them?
“Don’t think for a minute that you got me there.” Evelyn reverted to her previously overbearing tone as she lashed out at Vivian. “Why are you telling me this? What are you really after?”
Vivian staggered from the push and almost bowled over. But that was the least of her worries.
“I have no ulterior motive. Your own mother’s sick and she needs a matching donor. You are her sole blood relation and the only person who could save her.”
“Oh, so you’re trying to trick me into saving your mother, is that it?” Evelyn seemed to have come to some sort of epiphany. She felt relieved, convinced of her own take on events.
