Raven Saga 01 - Raven

newborn baby. Clearly the photo had been taken in a hospital immediately after the baby had been born.
    “Who is this?” I asked.
    “Her name was Serena,” answered Meredith with a sad smile, “Lilly. This is your mother.”
    I gasped and shook my head.
    “No, my mother is Vivian. This isn't Vivian.”
    “No, Lilly. Vivian isn't your mother. Serena is. And this little child is your sister, Neleh,” said Gabriel as he passed a number of different photos to me. All were the same little girl at different ages. One was the photo Ben had taken to the airport to identify me with. Gabriel told me it was the closest image he had of me. “You two looked so alike when you were babies.”
    In another the little girl was about four and was being cuddled by my father on a beach on a lovely sunny day. He looked like a completely different person, so happy. I had never seen him happy before. Another pictured her aged around 10, posing happily for the camera in this very living room with Gabriel laughing to her side. The most poignant image was that of her as a teenager pictured with Serena and my father. The image of a very happy family – it was then that I noticed Serena was pregnant.”
    Wyatt spoke. “She was carrying you in this picture, Lilly.”
    I shook my head but deep down I knew. It was obvious to see. I looked very much like Neleh and Serena. And as I looked at the photos, I realised that Serena was the woman from my dream. I didn't know what to think. For so many years I had grown up believing Vivian was my mother yet I had never felt any kind of bond with her. She had always made it blatantly obvious that she didn't care for me. It made sense. I felt my eyes welling up so I blinked hard to try and get rid of the tears before they spilled down my face.
    “Lilly,” said Gabriel, “this is just the beginning. There are things we need to tell you that you are going to find hard to believe.”
    I nodded, unable to say a word.
    “Just after you were born, Neleh was killed,” said Wyatt.
    I gasped and gulped back the tears as it hit me that I'd once had a sister, but now she was dead.
    “And shortly afterwards... Serena died too. I'm so sorry, Lilly,” he said sadly.
    “What? But how? Why?” I cried, looking down at the picture of the happy family, ripped apart by two deaths.
    “Nobody knows exactly what happened, dear. All we know is that Neleh was murdered in the forest. By who or what we don't know for sure – although there were suspicions at the time,” said Meredith as she held my hand tightly in hers.
    “Suspicions?” I asked.
    Gabriel looked so angry, but before he could speak, he was interrupted by Wyatt, “Lilly there is a man in that forest who is believed to have been responsible for Neleh's death. His name is Sammy Morton.”
    Gabriel gave me another photo showing Neleh probably a couple of years older than me, pictured with a handsome young man with olive skin and black hair and even darker eyes. They looked so happy together.
    “Is that him?” I asked.
    Meredith nodded.
    “But they looked so happy. Why would he kill her? I don't understand.”
    “Nobody understands. But he hasn't been seen since. There was a lot of talk. But we can't be sure,” added Meredith.
    The angry look on Gabriel's face suggested he thought Sammy was guilty.
    “But what about Serena? What about my mother?” I asked.
    “Your mother killed herself, Lilly,” said Wyatt, quietly.
    “How could she do that? How could she just leave me, her baby. Her own daughter?” I cried.
    “Again, Lilly dear, we do not understand that either. Grief is a funny thing. People react to it in such unusual ways. She must have been so heartbroken and she just couldn't believe that her eldest daughter was dead. That combined with postnatal hormones. We simply don't know. We wish we knew what had been happening. Perhaps we could have stopped her from doing what she did. Serena was my best friend, Lilly. It was very hard to understand for me too,” said Meredith as she choked back the tears.
    “Tell me,” I asked slowly, “tell me how she did it. How did my mother kill herself?”
    Gabriel stood up abruptly then and turned his back towards me, as if he was still struggling to come to terms with what had happened all those years ago. He spoke slowly and quietly, “She just walked out of the hospital in the middle of the night and continued walking until she reached the highest point in the forest and she threw herself into