I was a mistake. My Mother I never knew. She had left me after birth, dumping me in the nearest children's home along with all the other mistakes. I knew very little about her up until recently. I was fortunate to find my Father again. Or more, he found me. He had been shown a picture of my Mother heavily pregnant in an old newspaper shortly after she disappeared from his life. Devastated by my Mothers disappearing act, he would sit, late into the night, in old libraries flicking through past newspaper articles, searching for clues of her whereabouts. He spent most of his time lecturing as a professor of Classic painting in the 'Institute of Fine Arts, New York'.
The day that he struck gold was December 1st 1996, a year after my birth. The article was detailing some new information my Mother had uncovered in the field of Mythological History. He was at a loss, unable to find any close family members to ask about the birth of the child, but from looking at the picture and how far along she was at the time the article was printed, he had guessed the child to be his own. He simply couldn't understand why she would have run away pregnant. My Father was a good man, as well as being comfortably well off; he could have provided her with the support she needed to raise a child, at least, even if she had no longer wanted to be with him.
His searching at this point forked off, his reasons for looking for my Mother became less and less about her and more about his potential son or daughter. After travelling the country trying to piece together any clues as to where my Mother was, two years on, when searching through the archives, he came across another picture of her, again heavily pregnant, the article was dated from before he had met her, which meant that before they had met, Isobel had either conceived a child or lost a child at birth and never told him about it. Despite attempting to contact her he hit a brick wall. She appeared to be moving around a lot and the mystery of her apparent pregnancy's lay heavily on my Father's mind, keeping him awake at night. By six years on, Isobel had disappeared off the radar altogether, after he read an article about her disappearance and suspected death.
Shortly after that, he managed to obtain the details of a man named Alaric Saltzman, who he had learned had married my Mother. He was hesitant to contact him due to the uncertain death of my Mother, but managed to find out from a source close to him that they had lived together alone without a child. He had then had to deal with the idea, that perhaps the child had never been born. Had died at birth, or the original image had simply been a trick of the camera, a picture taken at a strange angle. These ideas all begun to run through his mind. That's when he was contacted by her Mother, who had been told, to only, in her death reveal to him the whereabouts of his daughter.
I had been named by my Mother Valentina, homage, I think to my Italian Father, who she, I can only guess out of her own selfishness, had concealed me from. She had caused him to miss six years of my childhood. At the age of six, and I remember the day well and will never forget it, a sunny care worker named Lara appeared at the door to my room, with a tall, olive skinned, brown eyed and blonde haired man of about thirty.
'Valle, I would like you to meet someone' she whispered with baited breath.
Shortly after the formalities, I was allowed to go and live with my Father. My childhood from this point on was full of happiness. It was me and my Father against the world. He worked hard for me and spent what little time he had with me. He would sit me on the edge of his desk with a paintbrush and paper, whilst he researched all the great artists, looking thoughtfully over his gold rimmed spectacles. And I idolised him, I would peep at him every so often from behind my canvas and squeeze my eyes tight before opening them quickly to make sure he will still there and I wasn't dreaming. That this thoughtful, charismatic and intelligent man hadn't just been dreamed up in my little orphan head.
We were very alike me and my Father. I had instantly seen the connection when he walked through that door. As an orphan and I have heard this from many other people who didn't know their parents, you become obsessed with looking at pictures of families and seeing the similarities between people, because you never have that, you never have someone to relate to. I would ask all my friends if I could come round for dinner so that I could see what a normal family was like, so I could see if their brothers and sisters spoke the same and if they had their Mothers or their Fathers eyes. So when my Father had walked through that door and I seen that familiar mop of blonde hair, that skin and those full lips my heart leapt and I almost knew. And he was thoughtful like me, a thinker lost in his own mind. I realised that from the minute I met him, he would stare at me and then drift off. He would struggle to finish his sentences, diverging from the subject and an hour later he would return to his original point as if it had only been three seconds. In that way we understood each other. We were equally comfortable in silence.
By the age of ten, I felt as if the first 6 years of my life, of unhappiness being pushed from pillar to post and never knowing real love, had never happened. I was strong and confident. I was now always addressed as 'Bionda' or 'Biondi', it was how my Father had first addressed me that day in the care home. Upon saying it, a look of confusion had crossed my face. He then explained to me that he was speaking in his Mother tongue and that I was Italian. He had been born just outside of Roma and had moved to America to study. 'Biondi' meant Blondie or 'Bionda' Blonde. From that point onwards that was my name and he rarely addressed me as Valentina unless he was angry. I sometimes wondered whether his choice to call me this was his attempt at wiping the memory of my Mother, who had caused him six long years of pain, searching for me. For this reason I never questioned it, I understood.
And I never pushed my Father into speaking about my Mother too much. That was the only time when I seen my Father get angry. One must understand however, the Italian temperament. My Father always spoke as if he was angry, his arms flailing around his head, but it wasn't real anger it was passion, passion for his field, passion to get his point across. But when he spoke of my Mother, when she dropped into conversation he would clench his fists and his body would tense up and he would go quiet. I got the impression that it was just a childhood romance, but I think the way that she left him heightened his feelings for her and broke his heart.
When I was fourteen, the light went out in my Fathers eyes, he began spluttering and his skin became sallow and grey. He died four months later of cancer. His two vices were whiskey and cigarettes. He smoked Sobranie Russians and I always used to find them sophisticated. By this point I had also began smoking them with him. He had unfortunately, however had a hole in his heart since birth, which he was unaware of, increasing his risk for cancer. Shortly before his death he told me he believed I had a brother or sister and gave me the details of Alaric Saltzman. I put this to the back of my mind, grief took over every thought.
My Father's death affected me, but it also felt inevitable. I spent those amazing eight years of my life with my fingers crossed, feeling like the luckiest girl alive and despite feeling slightly cheated by his death, that I only had him for eight years, I also felt so blessed and I thought about him every day and smiled instead of cried. It took it out of me however, I became thin and withdrawn and negative about the future. I became too excepting of my own failures and frustrated by the formalities of everyday life, imagining how short my life could be and how easily time would be snatched away from me. I was sent over to Roma to live with my Grandmother until I was sixteen and at this point I was free to move back to my Father's home. I was pleased to finally meet my Grandmother and learn about my heritage, I picked up Italian easily and fell in and out of love with the beautiful Roman boys. I felt happy, but I didn't feel home and I knew a few months before my 16th birthday that I would like to return to New York. I was sent to live in a boarding school for a year, in Chicago.
Through this I began touring the country with a professional circus. I had always been very skilled at acrobatics and my school, recognising my talents had put me forward for the show. I arrived at Mystic Falls just two months before my sixteenth birthday. And I would never have believed it If I had been told of what was to come next.