Read Online The Rosaries (Crossroads Series) by Sandra Carrington-Smith - Free Book Online

and intelligent, and he was studying to become an attorney. I spent my days dreaming of the moment he would come forth and declare his love, but that day never came. Instead, he fell in love with your mother, and within a year they were married. My heart was broken again, but I kept silent and wished them to be happy. They tried to have a baby almost immediately with no luck. Unable to bear children and convinced it was her fault, your mother became quite depressed, and your father soon looked for solace elsewhere. He came to my home, one night after work, and the two of us became intimate. The next day, your father left, and we reached a silent agreement that nothing more would ever happen, and nobody would know about it.
    As time passed and your mother appeared to be quickly drowning in her own despair, Phillip had to take matters into his own hands, and started looking for a child to adopt. I begged him to take my daughter in, if she hadn’t yet been adopted – I left her in a convent of nuns – but he refused and said that he couldn’t possibly raise the daughter of someone who had been his mistress even if only for one night.
    When you arrived, you were a breath of fresh air for your mother and a death sentence for my dream of seeing my daughter again. In my heart, although it wasn’t rational, I felt you robbed her of her chance to be reunited with me. That is why I resented you all these years. Every success you could possibly achieve was painful for me to witness because it could have been her success, and every time something unpleasant happened to you I always reasoned that it wasn’t as bad as losing a mother.
    I know I was wrong, Natalie, and I ask for your forgiveness. I am going to meet the Lord without knowing whether you will ever find in your heart the strength to understand. I never meant to hurt you, and I was secretly proud of the milestones you conquered. If you look in my closet, behind the suitcases and the extra linens, you will find a small door leading to a secret room in the house I only knew the existence of, and used as a studio. In there you will find several paintings I completed without anyone knowing. They are yours to keep, if you wish to have a small reminder of my presence in your life.
    Now please allow me to move on to something that weighs heavily on my heart. A bout a year ago Tom, the gentleman you will meet in London, thought he had some leads in finding my daughter, and I began to prepare for the reunion, in the event that one could become possible. I was going to give her one of my pieces of jewelry to remember me by, but as I walked in front of Hidden Treasures something drew me in. If I believed in ghosts, I would say that a spirit guided me to a very unusual rosary, and the moment I held it in my hand, I felt something strange – a sudden rush of warmth that overtook my entire being. The sensation only lasted for a moment, but it left me quite shaken. I put the rosary back down and began to look at other things, but I felt drawn to it again. I finally bought it and brought it home – it is inside a small velvet pouch in the paint closet toward the back of the studio. I was always afraid to pull it out again, and have left it untouched since. If you can find my daughter I would like for her to have it. In the event that your paths will not cross, please keep it for yourself, but never give it to anyone else, aside, maybe, to a child of your own, if you will have one.
    So, this is my story. I am sure you are shocked and perhaps a bit hurt by the way things played out. I am sorry about the brief affair with your father; please know that it was a moment of weakness for both of us, and neither meant to hurt your mother. To my knowledge, she doesn’t know about it, and I trust that you will spare her from a disturbing piece of truth which is nothing but ancient history. Your father truly loved her then as much as he does now, and his behavior didn’t, in any way, reflect the