Stemma: False Inheritance - EBook

Chapter One:
Edward wanted to be more like the rock that jutted out from the ocean. Waves swirled around it smoothing it out, making it change shape over the centuries. But despite the constant pressure of the wind and waves, the rock remained itself, solid and in place. It had nowhere to go. It didn’t have to be anything other than a rock. It was a symbol of stability, holding the history of all that moved around it.

But Edward was not like a rock at all. He had spent his whole life on the move, always changing into someone else, depending on where he landed and what was needed to survive. Edward had spent so many years being whatever he needed to be, he was no longer sure that he knew who he was. Except for one thing. Edward knew where he came from, and he knew now he had to go back. Needed to, not wanted to.

Edward didn’t want to return to his hometown. It was only his promise to his mother that urged him on. It was the same promise that kept him running. Now he was the perfect symbol of a rolling stone. Not a rock like he wanted to be.

If Edward hadn’t promised his mother to bring proof of what his father did—but not until it was safe—he would have settled down and had a normal life.

Perhaps he could have gotten married, had kids. It’s not too late, he mused. He was only forty-eight. They didn’t even have to be his kids. He could find a good woman with children and settle down with them and be a family.

Sure, there had been women in his life. A few, given different circumstances, could have tempted him to settle down. But knowing his family history, he couldn’t burden them with a past that he couldn’t share, a family that terrified him, and a promise he knew he would have to keep.

Edward thought it was ironic that he desired a normal life when instead he had lived as far from a normal life as possible. He was a nomad and shapeshifter. Although he longed for home, family, and community, as soon as he got too close to someone, or met too many people who recognized him, he had to move on. Each time, he changed his name. Each time, he became a new person with a different past.

It wasn’t hard to do. Edward could always find someone who would provide him with a new identity and history. He had become a master at being someone else. So good at it, in fact, that it scared him. What if he was no longer himself? Sometimes he was even afraid he would forget his real name.

But then he would look at his mother’s letter, addressed to him, and he would remember. The front of the envelope said his full name: Edward Hellard. But he had crossed out the hated Hellard name and replaced it with his mother’s last name, Miller. He was Edward Miller.

After all this time, Edward wasn’t in a hurry to get to his hometown of Doveland. He had already stalled for months, knowing he needed to go, but not wanting to.

What did a few months matter, anyway? After all, he had been gone thirty-three years.

He could take his time and do what he loved to do most. Meet people and see things, both the ordinary and extraordinary, while he traveled.

Edward finished packing his suitcase and took one last walk around the apartment he had been living in the previous few years. Like all the apartments he had rented, it was nondescript. It was just a place to eat and sleep. However, no matter how dull the apartments had been, they were always better than living on the street as he had done when he first ran away at fifteen.

Every time Edward moved on, he missed the friends he had made. He thought that the one silver lining in returning to Doveland and his past was that it meant he would never have to run again. Perhaps once he did everything that he promised his mother he would do, he would find all those friends and tell them his real name. Maybe they would still like him. Perhaps he could be normal. Like other people.

Sure, Edward thought. Like other people who have fathers like mine.

Edward was terrified of his father. After he ran away, he had lived in constant fear his father would find him. But what scared Edward the most was the possibility that he would be like his father, a murdering psychopath. A brilliant, murdering psychopath.

Edward had seen pictures of his father during his weekly internet search to keep up with what his father was doing. That he looked so much like his father intensified Edward’s fears that he would be like him, too. A picture of his father when he was forty-eight was almost identical to what Edward now saw when he looked in the mirror.

He had the same brown hair with a slight wave if he let it grow longer. He had a straight nose, eyebrows that tended towards bushy if not trimmed, brown eyes, and a square jaw. The same face. Edward had tried to look different by growing a beard, but then he saw a picture of his father with the same look and had immediately shaved it off.

Edward had noticed that his father had grown a little pot belly in recent years, and he vowed never to let that happen to him. Not that pot bellies were bad. It was just something he could control that would keep him from being like his father.

Everything he did had to be measured against whether or not his father would approve or disapprove. However, unlike most sons, Edward was not looking for approval. He was actively seeking his father’s disapproval.

Not that his father would ever know what he was doing. Because that was the point. Never be found.

Besides, finally his father had left the country. That was why it was time for him to return home. It was time to keep his promise to his mother to get justice for those poor women.

Edward knew it was best not to think about what he wanted, or wished for in his life. There was no telling what the future would be like for him. For now, he was going on a road trip home. See some sights, get it all out of his system. Because once he reached Doveland, if he did what he intended to do, he might never leave home again.

Because in one way Edward was like the rock. He held the history of what had gone on around him when he was just a boy. As a man, he was going to release that history, and he and everyone else involved would have to live with the consequences.