Coming Home

Chapter 8: Gale's tale

After Delly left my house, it took me a few seconds to process what that harpy had just told me.

"Katniss is the daughter of Graham Mellark, you slept with your own sister, my dear."

No, it was impossible. Katniss could not be my father's daughter. Sae herself told me, precisely this morning! Those were just rumors spread by the town's gossips, and if we ran elections for that, Mrs Cartwright could be by far margin the gossip club president.

"But, could it be true that my mother showed Katniss a DNA test that linked her genetically with my father?" I felt the floor moving under my feet. I felt dizzy and nauseated, and took a few steps backwards until I leaned on the kitchen counter. No, My mother couldn't be capable to invent a monstrosity like that. I refused to believe it.

"But Katniss doesn't have any physical trait that links her to a Mellark. She doesn't even looks like her late mother, who was blonde with blue eyes. My father and my grandfather were also blue eyed blondes. Katniss has black hair and gray eyes like her fat... shit!" —I covered my face with my hands— "Grandma Mags." —I started hyperventilating, nobody ever thought about that— "Katniss could've easily inherited the traits of my grandmother, who was a foreman's daughter from the Seam. My mother suspected that and...shit, she was right!"

I felt dizzy and short of breath, and tried to get to the bathroom, but the vomit was coming up like hot lava through my esophagus, and I only managed to throw myself over the sink, before the retching began.

"No! Please God no!" tears were streaming through my eyes.

My mind went back to the day I met Katniss, when we were just sixteen. How I felt attracted to her from the first moments our eyes met. How we got to know each other and became best friends, while I worked up the courage to confess my feelings for her, after she bewitched me with her melodic voice and silver eyes. My mind traveled to that beautiful spring day, the day of her seventeenth birthday. I took her to the lake, where I had set a picnic —that Sae had help me prepare for her, cake and all— under a big willow tree. We spent the whole afternoon laughing and swimming in the warm fresh water. And, at sunset, we sat on the big rock that stands out by the side of the lake. I remembered how she leaned her head on my shoulder, and I was nervously trying to collect myself, but failing miserably, since my hands were trembling. She laughed, thinking I was cold, and pulled me up to get a blanket, but I hold her hands, and she looked at me confused. Then I took a big breath, and told her the speech I had been rehearsing in front of the mirror for weeks. A speech that is still fresh on my memory to this day, almost six years later.

"Katniss. Since the first day I saw you, I thought you were the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life. But I was intimidated by your strong will, your tenacity and your courage. That's why it took me a few months before I could say a word to you. But that day in the music room, when I heard you sing, you took my breath away. Since then, we became friends, and I learned that you are also compassionate, loyal, honest, and you love fiercely. Qualities that, added to the ones that made me intimidated at first, made me realize what an incredible girl you are, beautiful inside and out, and you took my heart too, a little bit more every day. I am in love with you Katniss Everdeen. And, if you don't feel the same way about me, that's okay, I'd never hold that against you, because I want to have you in my life in any way I can. But if you feel something for me beyond our friendship, even if it is just a little bit, I would like you to give me the chance to be more than friends, to let me show you how special you are to me, and everything you make me feel. Katniss, will you be my girlfriend?"

She was trembling, with tears in her eyes when I finished talking, and I was so scared that she would run away, but she just gave me that sweet smile she reserves only for a few people, and nodded. I was speechless for a few seconds, until I reacted and asked, "Is that a yes? Will you allow it?"

She took a step closer, cupped my face between her soft hands and stood up on her tiptoes to reach my lips with hers. I felt electric charges running through my body at the soft contact of her lips. Then, with a shy smile, she whispered, "I thought you'd never ask. And yes, I'll allow it."

I shook my head at the memory. No, I refuse to accept that. Delly had to be lying. I have only one sister, Primrose. And the feelings that she inspires in me are very different from those I feel for Katniss. Although I love them both with my whole being and would give my life for any of them, the feelings are different. Radically different. With Prim is more a protective instinct, filled with tenderness, and there's an innocent complicity between us. Katniss...my blood boils just thinking of the slightest contact of our skins. She awakens in me a raging passion and desire that consumes me. She is also my soul mate, a feeling that goes beyond the incredible physical attraction I feel for her. We used to communicate without the need of words. We were so synchronized that we knew exactly what the other was thinking. That's why I felt so devastated we she dumped me. One day we were happily making plans for our future after graduation, and the next morning, bum! she dropped the bomb, telling me that she wasn't ready for a committed relationship, and that she could never fit in my plans because we had different ambitions. That was rubbish. I knew she had a full scholarship for the Sorbonne University in Paris. She was incredibly brilliant. And I had already been accepted in Paris School of Arts. She knew that also. I was going to surprise my mother with that, so that she could be sure that I was going to follow my dream, and that being with Katniss didn't mean I gave up on it, but that she made me want more. We were going to Europe together. But then, everything was so...sudden, her change of attitude so... strange. As if she was...repulsed by me.

"Shit. Of course she felt repulsed. Mother told her she was dad's daughter. With an evidence in hand that no 18 year old would ever dare to refute. Damn! And we had sex the day before. Oh God!"

I felt another wave of nausea hitting my stomach as that realization came to my head. If that aberration was true, that could mean that I've had intimacy with my own sister. Even worse, it would mean that I took my own sister's virginity. I started retching again, more violently than before. I was sweaty and dizzy. That repulsive statement had to be a lie. A lie designed for the sole purpose of hurting Katniss. Badly. And for the first time in my life, I hated my mother. If she said that to her, but she hid it from me, it only meant that she did it with the express intention of hurting her, provoking a chain reaction that would made me hate her and that we end up separating. The worst thing is that she and whoever helped her put together this disgusting hoax did it. They managed to separate us.

I screamed the top of my lungs, and started sobbing like I've never done in my entire life. My brain was scrambled, trying to put my ideas in order, but I felt like it has been splitted in two. "Gale." —I thought— "Gale has to have the answers."

I search my clothes to reach my phone, but it wasn't in my pockets. I left it on the coffee table. Grabbing the counters for balance, I wobbled in the direction of the living room, but the dizziness took over me and I fell to the floor, hitting my head with something sharp, and everything went black.

"Peeta! Peeta! Come on Mellark wake up! You're scaring the shit out of me!"

I felt light slaps on my face and something cold on the left side of my head. Even in my semi-unconscious state, I could sense the concern in the voice of Gale, who had become my great friend and counselor for the past year. I frowned, trying to open them, at his insistent plea for me to wake up. I did not have much success, since the powerful white light of the kitchen blinded me. So I groaned, to let Gale know I could hear him.

"Peet!" —He cried with a hint of relief— "Oh thank God, you finally woke up! You scared me horribly!"

Slowly, he helped me to sit, but I leaned back on the floor because I felt instantly dizzy again.

"Awgh" I whimpered in pain. My head felt like it was split in two.

"Easy man, take it easy. You took a nasty hit on the head. Madge is coming with my mother to check on you. I didn't want to call an ambulance, unless it was absolutely necessary. No need in making a big deal of anything that flibbertigibbet gossiper is boasting around in town. I'll deal with her tomorrow." —he said with a hint of contempt.

"What happened to me?" —I asked frowning in confusion. I really didn't remember a thing.

Gale raised his eyebrows worried and stand up, looking inside the cabinets.

"I was eating with Madge at the Hob, when that crazy lunatic Delly got there, laughing because she had told you the "truth about Katniss", according to her. I ran out of the restaurant and came as fast as I could, and I find you on the floor unconscious in a pool of blood and puke! I almost had a heart attack! You really don't remember what happened?"—He asked turning around and kneeling again, passing me a glass of water and two pills.

"Not much." —I admitted. But suddenly all the memories flashed in my brain— "No...yes...I remember! I saw her. Katniss! Sh..she came here, and she—" Gale made me swallow the pills and I gulped them with water— "she wanted to apologize and tell me what happened all those years ago. But I...I didn't want to speak to her. I'm not ready yet, and she...she gave me a letter and left. Then Delly came, she was insisting on having that stupid dinner date, but I said no and, I asked her to go. She went nuts, babbling some nonsense about Katniss being my sister, that my mother chased her away showing her a paternity test of some sorts, and that she left town because she was...pregnant with my child!" —everything came back with full force.

I looked at Gale with wide eyes, and I grabbed him by the lapels of his shirt.

"Tell me what the hell happened Gale! You know! Is that true? That she left town because she was pregnant with my child. Did she hid it and never told me anything! That child, the one they say she came with, is mine?" —Gale lowered his eyes and breathed deeply, but that gesture only managed to infuriate me more— "Answer me, dammit! Enough of hiding things from me, I'm not a porcelain doll, I'm sick of the lies. What was not yours to tell?"

He took another deep breath and lifted me slowly. "Come with me man, you're going to need to be seated, and don't let go of that ice pack, you have a huge bump on your head."

We walked slowly to the kitchen table and I sat on one of the chairs. When I got up I saw the mess in the floor, a small puddle of blood and puke. I reeked of both, and my clothes were stained. Gale disappeared momentarily upstairs. A few minutes later he came down with a wet towel and a clean T-shirt.

"Take this, clean your face and hair and change that shirt. Please." —he said handling me both things. I looked at him with apprehension, but did as he said and minutes later, I felt a little cleaner, at least I didn't reek of puke anymore. He sat in front of me and sighed again.

"Peeta you have to understand that we —as in your dad and I— didn't told you a lot things because I wasn't even sure myself. It wasn't until I came back and started working with Graham than we both knew what really happened. Six years ago, something happened. One day Katniss called me to come to her house. She said you two broke up—"

"She dumped me!" I interrupted and Gale lifted his hands defensively.

"Okay okay! She dumped you. Anyway, she asked me to go to her house. She was a mess. She was crying, saying that she wanted to die, that she was...dirty and your relationship was repugnant. I didn't understand, so I got really angry, and I wanted to go to your house and break your nose, because I thought at the time she was suffering because of something you did. She said no, that it was your mother, but she never said what was it. All she said to me was that she needed to get rid of you for good. I was starting to date Madge, and, nobody knew about us because we didn't want her father to forbid her to see me, because we were of two different social classes."

"The Undersees are not like that!" I felt the need to defend his father in law.

"I know." —He smiled— "But at that time I was terrified of the man. So I, reluctantly, agreed to that stupid plan of hers, with Madge's blessing of course. So next day I went by the school to meet her and when we saw you coming...well you know the rest."

My hand balled into a fist when I remembered him, with Katniss pinned against his old battered 70's Chevy truck, kissing her, her legs wrapped around his waist. It was disgusting.

He made a grimace.

"She got a little carried away. I had saliva all over my face when you turned and go. She started sobbing and I took her home. She was really devastated. But she said it was necessary. After you guys graduated, I had already finished my associate degree in Criminal Justice at the Community College, and Madge's mom —who supported our relationship from the start— helped me get a scholarship to study law in Oxford. That's why we traveled together, but I was going to London and she was going to Paris. We lost contact for two years after that. She didn't even answered my calls or messages, she didn't post anything on social media, and Haymitch was no use. He's drunk most of the time. What I can tell you is that after those two months between graduation and us traveling to Europe, she found out she was pregnant."

I felt that my heart fell to my stomach. I felt betrayed. "I had fathered a child, and she never told me!"

"How could she—" I blurted, but Gale cut me.

"She lost it!" —he screamed to me, making me jump. He shook his head looking directly into my eyes— "We only found out when we arrived at the airport in Paris. I had to board the flight to London, but she had been complaining that she felt very bad and had a severe pain in her abdomen. When we arrived, she fell down on the floor and we had to take her to the hospital. There, in the emergency room, she had an uncontrolled bleeding. The doctors who took care of her thought that I was her boyfriend, and they told me that they were sorry, but that she had had a spontaneous abortion. She was twelve weeks pregnant and didn't know. The next day she told me she had called Haymitch. She told me that Haymitch would come to be with her. I should have known, she was lying to me. She asked me not to lose my flight to London, and plead me not mention anything about the pregnancy to anybody, that it was no use since she had lost it." —he lowered his eyes, ashamed— "I should not have kept quiet, maybe someone had come to help her. I wasn't a good friend. The following weeks, she arrived at the apartment that she had rented with another girl from Panem. Talk to her a few times, but I notice her extremely depressed. One month later, She stop writing and calling. I tried to look for her, but, nobody gave me information about her, I didn't know the name of her roommate. She only called her Jo. I returned to London and two years went by. When I returned to Paris to look for her, she looked very thin and unhappy. I met her friend, Jo. Johanna Mason was her name. She was loud and crazy, but she cared deeply about Katniss. She was doing her biology studies, but she was very behind, she was supposed to be at least two years ahead, and she had not even completed the first year. I met there this guy Cato Snow. A rich imbecile who prowled the apartment. I never knew his real intentions, but I think Jo lived at war with him. When I graduated, she was finishing her third year. I came back home, and your dad gave me a job at the firm. He even made me a junior partner, and took me under his wing. When you were coming home for the summer, I avoided him and stop coming to the house, and he asked me what had happen between all of us. I told him the truth. He didn't bought it, and we started digging to find out what had really happened. When I found out about the paternity test, Graham was as mad as I ever saw him. He confronted your mother, and they had a huge fight over it. The paternity test was fake, it was made using a sample of Prim's hair. She confessed that she wanted Katniss out of your life, and that she was willing to do anything to spook her, but she denied having tampering with samples. She sworn the hair sample was Katniss'. Do you know who took the test to the lab? Ms Cartwright, the same woman who, for years plotted to tie you with her crazy daughter. She had a cousin working there, and they switched the samples with Prim's hair, so the test came back positive. Your mother, although not entirely blameless, really thought it was real. But when I told her about the miscarriage, she lost it. She cried for a week, full of regret and guilt, and she was waiting for you to come back home for Christmas to tell you. But two weeks after that, the accident happened. We have a sue pending against the lab, and we were going to press criminal charges against Ms Cartwright and her cousin Antonius. But it was stopped when Graham died. The most important thing at the moment was to secure you as Prim's legal guardian. And we almost have it. As mad as you may be now, we need to lay low for the next month or so, Then, I promise to submit it again. They have to pay for what they did to you two."

I stood in that chair stupefied, listening to Gale's tale. How could my own mother have been so cruel at the time, harboring old quarrels against someone who was not even born when all that rubbish between our parents happened, like an old eighteenth-century novel. How much must Katniss have suffered, losing our child, all alone without anyone knowing. Thinking that we were siblings and that all that happened to her was like a punishment for loving me. How stupid, insensible, immature and selfish of me to cut her out of my life without giving her the chance to trust me and tell me what happened. Damn Haymitch for being so irresponsible and not caring and protecting his niece as he should have. He only cared about that damn bar and, just because he had a partner, because he alone would probably have taken the business to bankruptcy.

Only one thing ate my insides.

"What about the child she has now? Who's the father? That...Cato Snow?"

Gale gave me an apologetic glance.

"That's what is not mine to tell my friend. She wrote you a letter." —He handed me the envelope that Katniss left me— "Read it."

Hi there everybody.

I'm sorry I haven't been able to update for the past two weeks. Sadly, one of my brothers (I have six, and one sister), passed away unexpectedly on July 29th. He lived in Hartford, Connecticut, and my mother and I had to travel from Puerto Rico where we live to make the arrangements and bring him back home to be buried alongside my father. It was a very draining, intense and difficult task, since I had to take the reigns of everything because my poor mother broke-down. It's not natural to have to bury your kid. I just imagine it and my heart breaks. He was only 39, and left behind two great kids, my 11 year old beautiful and sweet niece Julie Ann and my 18 year old nephew Joshua. We were not very close, because of a big fight we had a little over three years ago, and me and my other 6 siblings have to live with the guilt that we never spoke to him again, but I promised my brother that from now on, I will look over his kids like my own, and I intend to do so. Please, your prayers are very welcome.

Now, about the story. I was a little off key, but I was able to put together Peeta's reaction to Delly's malicious revelation. He was fighting with himself, because he was thorn between the repulsive idea of having fallen in love and being intimate with his own sister and his refusal to accept that his mother could be capable of inventing a lie of that proportions just to hurt and chase away an 18 year old orphan girl whose only sin was being the daughter of her former youth rival and having fallen for her son. But, as I said in earlier chapters, Gale's role in helping Peeta cope with a new set of circumstances will be very important, because he knew things he wasn't allowed to reveal.

About Katniss' child, I hope that at least you are calm with the idea that it's not Peeta's, that she never hid a pregnancy from him. And ... he has the letter. In it we will know Katniss' version of the story, and what she did in Europe for almost six years, why she was she was behind in her studies and how she ended up with a child. This story is not very long, maybe four or five chapters left ... but who knows? Please review and let me know your thoughts.

XOXO, Lizzyvb