Chapter 3

As I reached the servants' quarter, I immediately changed my clothes and assembled the carton box I had brought. I secured it by covering it with packaging tape, starting from the bottom to the top and from side to side. I made myself busy with that box when the sixty-three-year-old Mexican-American chef of the mansion, Ms. Linda Peters suddenly arrived.

“W-what are you trying to do with that?” I was startled when she suddenly spoke behind me.

I stopped what I was doing and looked at her with a smile. She pushed the door wide open and walked in while speaking, “I thought something happened to you! One of the servants told me you came back early.”

Ms. Peters seemed so worried.

“W-what made you think so? I may be shorter and petite than Ms. Peters, but I could break a neck,” I jokingly told her, but if only she knew how scared I was when Adam asked me for a ride, for sure she would laugh out loud.

“You’re small enough and easy to carry, my dear Anita,” she sarcastically replied.

“Ouch! That’s so harsh of you.” I pouted. She hurt my feelings, but she didn’t seem worried at all with the way she laughed.

“By the way, Ms. Peters, do you know a sheriff with the surname Cassidy around here?”

She stopped laughing and thought for a few seconds before answering my query. “I know a guy. Gary Cassidy. He's the chief of police here, one of William’s good friends. Why?” This made me confused. 

“There’s a guy who gave me a ride a while ago; he introduced himself as the son of a sheriff. I thought he was a bad guy, but the server from a coffee shop convinced me he was not the person I thought him to be,” I answered.

“Oh, does that young man happen to have metallic blue eyes and his name is Adam?"

“Y-yeah… that was the same name he gave me.”

“Did he also tell you that he is Lennon’s mortal enemy?”

“Y-yes, he did, but how did you...?” Ms. Peters made me more confused.

“That silly boy,” she murmured, and she went back on laughing.

Ms. Peters couldn’t contain her laughter. I was intrigued by the guy’s identity and how many connections he has with the Martins.

It made me think—maybe he lied to me. 

I wanted to ask Ms. Peters about him, but the ringing of my cell phone sitting on top of my bed just behind me abruptly diverted my attention.

It was an overseas call coming from my younger brother, Felipe, in the Philippines. I pressed the green button on the screen right away and heard my brother’s anxious voice. "Hey, what happened?" I asked him in Filipino.

“W-we rushed Papa to the hospital. He lost consciousness on our way here, and until now, he’s still asleep.” My whole body felt cold right after hearing the news. My brother's voice trembled as he spoke, and I could hear cries from the background that I knew were my mother.

I sat on the bed because my knees felt like jelly. I suddenly thought about my other sibling, Mara. "Where is Mara?"

"She went out with her friend for a weekend and she hadn't been home yet," Felipe answered. 

I couldn't help but sigh. Of the three of us, she had been the one who loved to hang out with friends, but after what happened to our father, she had to hurry back home no matter where she went.

I shifted the question for me not to get pissed. I asked Felipe what happened before Papa lost consciousness. He explained to me what happened and my tears were on the verge of falling as I listened. Our mother's cries were getting louder and I could sense hopelessness in her, so I told my younger brother to let me talk to her for a while.

"Ma?" I called her. "Papa will be fine. I know the doctors will do everything to make him feel better." She didn't answer, but I could hear her cries.

"Papa only lost consciousness, Ma. He isn't d*ad, yet for you to cry like that. He would wake up sooner once his body gathered enough oxygen it needed." I tried—I tried my best to comfort her, but she seemed to be feeling dramatic that day.

Although my voice was shaky, I told her that she didn't have anything to worry about because Papa would be fine, even though I knew there were so many things to think about yet and we hadn't heard about the reason why he had trouble breathing.

I stayed on the phone, letting her sob until a doctor arrived. "My phone doesn't have enough charge, sis. I will just update you after the doctor gave us the results of the test they did to Papa," Felipe told me.

He ended the call. I wanted to request to keep the call going so I could hear whatever the doctor would say, but my tears were about to fall, and my chest felt like bursting.

I bit my lower lip as I put my phone next to me on the bed. My chest was tightening as emotions stirring up inside me were about to burst out. It felt like a massive lump in my throat was choking me and if I didn’t let it out, I would lose air and faint.

My chin started trembling. I covered my mouth because I knew it was the only option to hide it. When the first drop of tears rolled down my cheek, I immediately lowered my head as I covered my face with both of my hands. 

I heard Ms. Peters calling my name, but I didn’t answer. “A-Anita?” I heard her again, by this time, she was closer.

“What happened?” she asked worriedly. She sat next to me and without any word, she pulled me close and let me cry on her warm embrace. 

It took me a few minutes before I calmed down. Ms. Peters gently caressed my back like a baby she was trying to put to sleep after crying so hard. 

“W-what happened, Anita?” she repeated her question. Her embrace loosened and he waited for me to speak up, however, before I could even say a word, my phone vibrated because of a message. 

I grabbed it to check the message and saw it was from Felipe. As I scanned my eyes on the screen, my tears started streaming down again.

"What is happening to you?" Ms. Peters' worried voice made me sob louder. I was shaking and couldn't contain all the emotions I was feeling at that time.

For the second time, Ms. Peters pulled me close to her. I wrapped my arms around her and felt how she tightened her hug to make me feel I was not alone.

My father had lung cancer. It was already in stage 4, according to the doctor. The physician immediately suggested chemotherapy and immunotherapy to see how his cancer cells would react to the procedure. If it didn't show a positive response in his body, we might lose him in no time.

When I returned to my composure, I told Ms. Peters what happened. 

“You can take a day off today. William went out of the country, so we wouldn’t need to prepare food for him in a few days,” she told me.

I was also unsure if I could work with that kind of state of mind so I did what she said as I waited for updates from my brother.

As the days rapidly passed, all the phone calls I received from my siblings bothered me so much. My energetic and jolly father slowly lost his strength, and his weight dropped as he lost his hair because of the side effects of chemotherapy.

Papa stayed in the hospital for weeks, and another call from my family back home pushed me to decide to sell the land I bought, where I planned to build my dream house once I returned.

The rapid increase in bills we needed to pay took all my savings into my bank account. Ms. Peters had already given me a tremendous amount of help, which I initially insisted on taking. A thousand dollars was huge, but she convinced me that was nothing compared to my problem. I was thankful enough that my father's condition was getting better. After more than three weeks in the hospital, the doctor finally let him go home and only came back when it was time for another chemo. 

That was the best news I had heard in my life, even though I had debts in the bank after I decided to take out a loan to pay all the bills in the hospital. It was such a relief for me, but when I realized what I would be facing next made me weak.

I needed to pay the loan every month, along with my father's medicine and his chemotherapies so I already had an idea how expensive they were. I still needed to give them money for their needs and my two siblings who were both studying, but what was worse than that, I needed to go home in a week because my working visa would expire soon.