Chapter Three

A/N: Here's chapter three. Just to mention, I don't know if Barnabas married Josette, but for the sake of this, he did and I only wrote that Julia did her specialty training, meaning that it would have taken her 6 years to become a psychiatrist, when it actually takes 13, but for the sake of this, she did her medical school at the same time. Thank you so much again to dionne dance and EleKat for giving me some brilliant ideas, and to HBCfan56 and sugarplumfairy123 for reviewing. This idea is partly my own, but the idea of the passageways and exploring during the sessions came from dionne dance. Thank you and review!

What Julia had said was true, she had absolutely no intention of leaving and Elizabeth wasn't about to force her. David's nightmares hadn't become much better, so bad in fact that Julia ended up spending more than a few sleepless nights in a chair beside David's bed, ready to comfort him, should his nightmares worsen during the night. To be absolutely honest, Julia felt that it was actually equally as comforting to her as it was to the boy, she felt as if she were safer from nightmares at David's side as well.

Eventually the nightmares passed and the household calmed down again. Julia and David began to have more fun in their sessions, though they still touched on the subject of his mother and the ghosts regularly. They had also taken to learning more about the family history of the Collins', David's particular favourite subject being that of his ancestor, Barnabas, who was rumoured to have been transformed into a vampire by a jealous witch after he married his wife, Josette.

That particular day, they had been investigating a hidden passageway that David had discovered in his aunt's study. It clearly hadn't been used for decades, judging by the amount of dust and cobwebs that littered the space. David had been quite quiet when they found the passage, but he began laughing uncontrollably when Julia accidentally walked into a thin layer of cobwebs, causing her to scream so loudly that David thought his aunt would come running down after them.

Eventually, they found an exit behind an aged tapestry near Carolyn's room and, once they had reached the psychiatrist's office, they both collapsed in the armchairs in a fit of giggles. This went on for a few minutes until their hiccups had worn off, when David finally broke the wave of quiet with a question.

"Doctor Hoffman?"

"Yes, David?"

"I've been telling you my entire life story for weeks, learning my family history with you. I trust you so much, you know everything about me. But I just realised that...well, I don't really know anything about you."

"Well, what do you want to know?" asked the doctor, not breaking eye contact with the boy.

"What I've told you. Your childhood, how you got to be here, just...stuff."

"Well..." Julia's eye contact had falted, her gaze now directed at the floorboards.

"It's okay if you don't want to tell me, I mean it's your job to find out about me, you don't have to-"

"David, it's okay. But I'm gonna warn you, it's not a fairytale, there isn't much of a happy ending."

"Happy endings are for babies, they don't properly exist. Tell me, please."

"Well, you already know what happened to me in my really early childhood. My mother died a few weeks after I was born, my father couldn't cope without her, he died six months later. I was taken to Ohel Children's Home, where my brother and I were seperated for twenty-five weeks when he was fostered. Then he came back and we were together for a while. But then he turned sixteen, which was the leaving age to either move out on your own or go to a halfway-house. I was only nine, so I still had seven years before I could leave with him. He said he'd wait for me, but I didn't hear from him until I was sixteen myself. I decided to go to the halfway-house and I met a guy there. Caleb. Caleb Hoffman."

"You were married?" asked David, his eyes wide with surprise.

"Still am."

"What happened?"

"I'm getting to that. Well, I was still a little scared when I went up to the halfway-house, most of the kids were older than me. But there was one eighteen-year-old that helped me. He was just about to move out when I moved in, it was his eighteenth birthday. Anyway, he asked me out to the movies and we started to make it a regular thing. Then two years later, I turned eighteen and, well, he asked me to marry him. And I said yes."

"Then what happened, Julia?" asked David, urging the psychiatrist on.

"Well, we got married. I became Mrs. Julianne Hoffman. It took me another six years of specialty training to become a psychiatrist, I only just qualified when I got this job. But there was a point when my faith in my medical opinion faltered."

"When?"

"When it took me five and a half weeks to figure out that I was pregnant." Julia stopped as David covered his mouth, his eyes still wide and his mouth still gaping at the shock of what the doctor had told him.

"You had a baby?"

"Yeah, I did. For a while. Do you want me to go on with this?"

David said nothing, just nodded anxiously.

"Well, I told my husband and he was absolutely thrilled. I'd never seen him so excited. I was worried that he would be distant, but he wasn't, he was brilliant. Anyway, seven months later, I had my baby. A little baby girl."

"What did you call her?" asked David.

"Madeleine. Madeleine Julianne Kiera Hoffman. It was a tradition in my family. Two middle names, the first her mother and the second her paternal grandmother. Caleb's mother's name is Kiera and my name is Julianne. So we got that."

"That's cool. What's yours?"

"Mine is Julianne Louise Merida Hoffman, named after Merida Prince, my grandmother and Louise Prince, my mother."

"So, what happened next?" wondered David, looking at his psychiatrist.

"Well, we had quite a happy life for about three months. Spoiled Madeleine rotten. Then he left. Caleb left me. He was called up for an army application he'd put in, years ago. So, I was on my own for months with Madeleine. Then I got a letter from Cairan, my brother, telling me to go and see him. So I did. Then there was, like, an army patrol, of Caleb's regiment, so I went to that. I didn't take Madeleine, I didn't want her to see her father with a gun. I saw him and we chatted for a bit, then I went home, to Cairan's house. Only he wasn't there. Neither was Kathy, his wife, or his son, Tauren. They were just gone. Well, I went inside and there were two letters. One was from Cairan, telling me he'd gone to Ohio for his new job. The other was from the Social. They'd sent Madeleine to live with Caleb. So, I went to find him, but he wasn't there. I'd lost my husband and my daughter in one day. So, I came here."

"When was this?"

"Six years ago." Julia hadn't noticed that she was crying until David wrapped his arms around her.

"That's really sad, Julia, but you've got us now. You've got me, Carolyn, Aunt Elizabeth, even my dad. We'll look after you, and I'm sure that Madeleine's fine."

"Yeah. I'm sure you're right, David. Come on, let's go and get some cocoa from Mrs. Johnson, yeah?"

"Yeah." The boy got up from Julia's lap and grabbed her hand, hanging onto it all the way to the kitchen.

'No. I don't have my daughter.' thought the psychiatrist. 'But I definately have my son.'

A/N: Please review. I need to know how I'm doing. Plus I have writer's block now, so reviews might help to clear it.