In the car, Klaus noticed Lily relax a bit. She stopped trembling and no longer stared at him like a deer caught in headlights. He felt she was ready to be questioned.
'So now we are away from who ever or what ever it was you were clearly running from, care to explain how a young girl like yourself ends up in the bayou sobbing, dirty and covered in bruises?'
She stared straight ahead, unable to look at him and unable to speak. Where would she even begin?
Klaus could see she was processing his question, trying to decide how much to tell him or if she should tell him anything at all.
'I don't like being lied to by the way'
Lily gulped. This man was very forceful, scary almost. She could tell he had a short fuse and this terrified her. Her uncle had had a short fuse; it was what had led to her broken ribs. The last thing she wanted to do was annoy this man who had been kind enough to offer her a place to stay the night.
'Its, it's a long, complicated story' she finally mumbled 'but basically I lived with my aunt and uncle after my mother died and they hate me. So I had to leave.'
That was all she would say on the matter but Klaus could tell things ran much deeper, this was not just some girl who had had a bad argument with her family and ran away. No he decided that Lily had been abused, tortured even and he was going to give her a better life. He couldn't explain it but he felt the same fatherly devotion towards this strange girl as he had felt towards Marcel and Hope, something he never believed he would feel again.
'What happened your mother?' he decided to ask, treading carefully around the subject of why she had ran away.
'Her name was Madison Montgomery, she had me very young and her family disapproved. She didn't get on with them anyway. She ran away to Barton Rouge and had me in a scrummy bedsit, because her parents refused to have anything to do with her as long as she kept me.'
Madison Montgomery. Klaus once knew a Madison Montgomery, years ago but surely there was no way it could be the same Maddy he had once known, that would too much of a coincidence. But then why did this girl have his eyes? Why did he feel this way towards her?
'After she gave birth, with no high school diploma no one would hire her, so she had to sell herself at night, leaving me alone in the bedsit. Of course I can't remember much, I was so young, but I know it was a rough place and mother often came home with big lips and black eyes. She tried to put on a brave face, but as I got older I would hear her crying herself to sleep at night and after a while she turned to drink. Then she blamed me. Blamed me for everything and sometimes she would grow violent with her abuse. And then one day she drown herself in the bath it was four days before anyone found us. I kept crying for her to get up, of course I was to young to realize she was dead at the time.' She shuddered at the memories of her mother. It hadn't been a happy time, she had never been happy she supposed, her aunt and uncle had abused her perhaps worse than her own mother had but it hurt more to be rejected by your own mother.
How awful Klaus thought, the images of this poor helpless girls life flashed before his eyes, making him grip the steering wheel tighter in his rage.
'Where was your farther?' he dared ask, what kind of a man would let his daughter be brought up in such surroundings.
'Oh… I never knew him. My mother was very bitter about him. In the beginning she told me he was a bad man, a monster who wanted nothing to do with me. Then as her drinking grew worse she would scream at me, that I would ruin his life as I had hers if he ever found out about me. She told me his name once I'm sure but I can't remember…' She turned to stare at him. Those eyes. Klaus. Was that where she had heard the name before? No. She was being silly; this man was way to young to be her dad.
A Monster? That was how people described him. Madison Montgomery? Surely? How long had it been? But then how old was Lily, 15, 16? He was about to ask her when he realized she had drifted off to sleep. He drove on towards the lights of the city as his questions about who this girl was and why he instantly felt connected to her only mounted in his mind.