Chapter Three: Confusion

Maximillian gripped the papers in his hand as his mind traveled back to the recent events that happened.

Out of the blue, a woman dragged him and Maine, his younger sister, inside the building. In a blink of an eye, a truck crashed into the building entrance, missing them by only a few inches. What angered him, though, is that his employees are severely wounded and the truck driver only suffered minor injuries from the accident.

His anger suffused throughout his system at an alarming rate but Max was used to his temper.

As soon as he goes home, he promised himself, he’ll down a couple of whiskeys to calm him down.

When they went inside the hospital, a teenage girl with light brown hair and big blue eyes stormed inside the ER where Maine and Jean Baden is. She looked directly at him and nodded, then ran through the corridors. The kid somewhat reminded him of the woman who saved his sister so he stood up and walked in the corridor to find the room where Dr. Kaiser examined the woman.

He entered the room and found Ms. Sinclair. She met his gaze and assessed him.

It is seldom that someone stares at him directly with an assessing gaze. Her gray eyes surveyed him as if he were a newly-discovered creature.

He scoffed, returning his thoughts to the present.

He is the one who’s supposed to look at her as if she’s a different specie. What she announced inside the hospital room was ridiculous and fictional. Whoever that woman is— especially the kid—must be some lunatic or a schizophrenic gold-diggers.

The audacity to claim that he fathered a teenager! Good god, is that what desperation looked like?

On November seventh, 2005, you cradled a baby in your arms while eavesdropping in the tiny gap of the opened library door. You heard your father beating up your mother and they discussed something about Maine Bismarck being an illegitimate child and you heard stabbings...

Max shook his head. Someone told Ms. Sinclair about his past. He’s sure of it. Maybe his secretary, Jean Baden.

He froze. Jean Baden never pried in his life once. Usually, Max was the one who starts a discussion regarding personal matters between him and his secretary. Jean also shared some confidential information with him: about her goals in life, her struggles with her parents, and her marriage with Andrei. Both of them valued confidentiality, and Jean proved that with her life once upon a time.

She kept her mouth shut and never trusted anyone with company secrets even her boyfriend—now her husband.

He gritted his teeth in confusion.

Jean’s loyalty to him is unparalleled. Jean protected the company’s secrets with her life. A few years ago, someone held Ms. Baden at gunpoint, threatening her life so that she will spill out the details of a contract worth millions of dollars. Jean Baden kept her mouth shut even if the suspect had shot her arm.

Maximillian cursed. Ms. Sinclair’s words are pure and honest, he can feel that. But how can he believe something that sounded so fictional and odd?

Maximillian opened his browser and searched for “thread readers” and the browser showed images of people with yarns or creative shots of strings and things alike. There are no articles or research related to “thread reading”. He tried “fortune telling with threads” and the results on the web showed tarot cards and yarns with tarot cards and candles and silly emblems. He cursed.

Max remembered the teenager named Erin who declared that she was his and Ms. Sinclair’s daughter. He chuckled because of how ridiculous it sounded but at the same time, his nerves itched with curiosity and confusion.

Actually, he doesn’t know what to believe. Even if he denied it, the kid is his spitting image. Her hair might be light-brown, almost blonde like Ms. Sinclair’s but her face is the exact carbon copy of his. If Erin is not his kid from the future, then the kid is no doubt a Bismarck. She has a vibrant shade of blue in her irises—the Bismarck blue, as the media people called it. Erin is also tall like him, like his deceased father, and also the Bismarcks before them. Erin is basically Maximillian but female.

He cursed once again, slamming the stack of papers he was holding on his table. He needed time to absorb the information in his brain.

“Now, I need to accept this outcome of the altered threads of fate. Nobody died and you existed. Totally the opposite of what happened when I altered a black thread before.”

“Dad told me to not alter the threads or it will ruin the course of my life like what happened to you when I was a kid.”

“What happened, Erin? Why can you travel back in time? What happened to you when you were a kid?”

“Mom, you disappeared into thin air after I saw you with a gray thread on your back.”

Maximillian overheard Erin and Ms. Sinclair talk when he decided to go back to the hospital room to ask if Ms. Sinclair is playing a ridiculous prank on him.

The two women talked as if they totally understood each other’s circumstances. They also discussed colored threads on a person’s back.

That only added another curiosity to his already confused brain.

Was it true? Do “threads of fate and shits” really exist and are invisible in everyone’s eyes except for the “thread readers”? Do other people have such abilities, as well? Or is it only the two of them?

He combed his hair to the back of his head with his fingers. He needed time to absorb all of these. He needed time. He needed to hear everything from Ms. Sinclair and Erin.

Tomorrow, he will face his confusion. For now, he needed to finish his work before his confusion finishes him.

Hyacinth Sinclair, his mind whispered the name.