CHASING PAVEMENTS by Amanda Benites and Ketwly Martens

Fanfic style story based on the character Adele from the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

As I looked through the window, some children were playing outside in the rain. It seemed that they did not know that life was hard and that one day they would grow up and have to face their future. Oh the youth! I had so much energy back at the time, so many things I did and the best thing is I don’t have a single regret. Now, I am almost 80 years old, moreover my memory is not as good as once was, but somehow the rain outside reminded me the summer I went to Paris looking for the answers about my past.
After I finished school, I went back to Ferndean, my so called home and I started to ask questions about my past, but no one would answer me, he somehow was ashamed to talk about my mother. Mr. Rochester said, she was a French singing girl, who left me alone with a strange family for a man who had quite good fortune. That answer, clearly, did not satisfy me.
When I was growing up I would always catch myself thinking, why did she leave me? Did I do something bad? Did she not love me? I was always wondering how my life would have been if I had had a mother, in fact, the closest person that came to be like a mother to me was Jane, who was always kind to me. Later on, I wanted to know more about my past; since no one would help I decided to ask permission to Mr. Rochester, to go to France to look for my mother. He denied my request right away, but Jane with her kindness managed to change his mind. He was always sweet when Jane was around; and because Jane did not have a mother of herself she understood me very well.
After a long ride of carriage, I got to Paris and went looking for the address that Mr. Rochester gave me; it was where he last saw my mom working. Then, when I got to the Hotel and asked around they said that there was never a woman singing in there, it was a new building and owner and no one knew anything about a singer called Celine, so I decided to find a hotel to spend the night and the next morning I would try to find her.
While walking on the streets of Paris on a raining day, I was enchanted by the beauty of that city; it looked even prettier when it was raining. But suddenly the distraction faded away and a thought came to my mind: “this is crazy, I don’t know anything about this woman, and I don’t even know where she lives or if she is alive”. However, I had travelled so far, to get the answer I always wanted, I could not give up, although I was felling lost since I left Paris very young.
Time was going by too fast, and I had already spent a month looking for my mother, going to places that, maybe, she would have worked but I could not find any leads of where she was, she seemed to have had disappeared. I start to doubt, was coming to Paris a good decision? Maybe Mr. Rochester was right, it was not worth it. I asked myself should I give up or should I just keep chasing my pavements? Maybe it would not lead anywhere but who knew what the future could bring it.
One day I decided to go one last time to the Hotel where she was last seen, and as I stare at that beautiful building an old man was sitting in the side selling candies and we started talking. Before I knew, I was telling him about my life and whom I was searching for. So that’s when he asks if my mother was the beautiful Celine, whom used to sing and had a lot fun with men. He starts telling me that after she left her job and ran away with a man, which did not work out as she expected. He did not treat her right, and since she was an independent woman she left him and came back to the city. She got her job back, but she was not the same anymore.
Nobody knew what had happened to that beautiful and powerful woman that once made many men looked at her when she was passing by. He said that she used to drink a lot, and when she was drunk she talked about a little girl that she had and did not care about. No one knew if that story was true or not, since when she was sober she denied it. I do not know if she was ashamed of what she had done, or was scared of the true. The old man said that she worked there for a while, until the place was sold. After that she was never seen again.
I never found my mother and I never got the answers that I needed. Some people said that the famous Celine was killed in a carriage accident, or killed by a lover of jealousy, or she was living in nurse home. I guess we´ll never know what truly happened, since I never found her, but in the end it did not matter who my mother was, but who I had become over the years. I decided to stay in Paris and study music. I had a great carrier as a piano player and one of the nights I was playing, I found the man who could love me for who I was and we lived happily for many years. After he died, once a week I started holding a poker game and drinks for the ladies at my house. We had fun, remembering the old good days of our youth. I guess the old habits never end.