Psychopathy

Chapter 50- The Truth About Ciara Byrne

Isabel stood by the lake, looking across the red water. She didn't know how she'd gotten there or if she was actually there at all. Maybe the lake was just showing her a vision again and it had to do with the water. Before she knew it, she saw four figures rising up out of the water. She took a few steps back. She knew those people. They were the ones that she spent her childhood with, and only one of them was good. The good one tried to step forward, but the other three stopped her. A slicing sound rang through the air, and the three figures started to bleed. Another sound, and Isabel herself started to bleed.

There was no pain and Isabel didn't feel the dizziness she associated with blood loss. The ground beneath her began to tremble, and a rift divided Isabel and the group. Her blood began to flow down the walls of the rift, and Isabel watched as the blood of the four people opposite her ran down the other wall. But something was strange. Their blood didn't match Isabel's. It was different somehow. The blood continued to flow, finally meeting at the bottom of the rift. It sizzled and smoke filled the air, until an inferno exploded from below, filling Isabel's vision until all she could see was fire and smoke.

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"Yeah? Did you... did you not know that?" Teresa asked, eyes widening to match Reid's. He was shocked. Ciara was adopted? How did they not know that? Then again, they had never searched for an adoption record. They'd never thought to do so. But so many more things were making sense. That was how Ciara looked so wildly different than her siblings- she wasn't genetically related to them. That was how she knew Irish and Teresa didn't. Ciara's parents had taught her Irish- her birth parents, not Simon and Kasey, her adoptive parents. And that was why her parents had stopped speaking Irish. Either something happened to them, or they had given Ciara up.

And that was why they could never find a birth certificate for Ciara Byrne. She did have another name. Somewhere out there she had a birth certificate, but it was under a different last name. Her birth name. The only question was what her birth name was.

"Teresa, how could you not tell us that Ciara was adopted?" Reid asked, and Teresa shrugged her shoulders, her hands gesturing wildly.

"I...! I thought you knew! Ciara never told you?" she asked, before scoffing slightly. "Of course she never told you. She never told you anything else. But I mean, look at Ciara and I. We look nothing alike, we sound nothing alike. Did it never cross your mind that one of us was adopted?"

"No, it really didn't. I had no idea," he answered, and Teresa sighed.

"That was part of why I took Ria in. Simon and Kasey adopted Ciara, and they were horrible to her. When I saw a baby being treated the same way by her mother, I knew I could help her. I could redeem myself for my family's sins. I could be the mother Ria needed, the mother that Ciara and I never had. I could be the adoptive mother that Kasey should have been, and I think I've done a decent job," Teresa explained.

"I think you've done a fantastic job. Ria's smart and healthy," Reid said, looking over to where Ria was playing with a little girl around the same age. "Seems she's getting over her fear of strangers."

"Ah, nah, she's still got that. It's just adults she's wary of. Children are another story. She'll make friends with any child her age," Teresa said, laughing softly.

"What's Ciara's birth name?" Reid asked, and she looked over at him, eyebrows furrowed in thought.

"It was Ciara as far as I'm aware."

"No, no, I mean her last name. She wasn't born as Ciara Byrne if she was adopted. So what was her birth surname?" Reid asked.

"I... I don't really know. I mean, if she was adopted when she was born, it's possible she never had another name," Teresa answered.