“On our way out, the building started collapsing, timber from the roof fell and we were hit. Not badly, you had a small cut on your forehead. We’re not sure if that caused memory loss or if you repressed it. Either way, when you woke you remembered nothing at all.”
I knew that I had no memories before the age of four because of a fire, but I was led to believe it was a house fire, not a derelict building because of a cult.
“And you never filled in the blanks?” It still didn’t make sense. They’d had years to tell me the truth, and yet they chose to fill my head with fake memories of a childhood I’d never had. Neither looked at me. “No, that’s not all, is it? What’re you still not telling me?”
“We love you, Scarlett, never forget that,” Mum said.
My heart stuttered. “What are you not telling me?” I repeated.
Dad closed his eyes and said, “Donald and Fiona are your biological parents.” The air left my lungs in a rush. “And the sacrifice was you.”
Scarlett
“NO!” I SPRUNG to my feet, tears welling in my eyes. Everything I thought I knew was a lie. I wanted to rewind ten minutes because the lie was much better than the truth. “I… How could you…? Shit, I was…” I didn’t know what I wanted to say. There were too many questions whizzing through my mind to pick one to concentrate on.
They were going to kill me.
“Please, Scarlett,” Mum said, standing and holding her hands up. “We’re sorry. It was never going to happen; we’d never have let them go through with it. We love you so much. It doesn’t matter where you came from. You’re our daughter.”
She took a step closer, and I backed up, the backs of my legs hitting the sofa. I held my hand up. Over the last few weeks, my head had hurt from trying to remember everything but that paled in comparison to how I felt now. I’d just had my whole world tipped upside down.
“I need to leave,” I said and rushed out of the room.
My parents shouted my name, but Jeremy told them to let me go. Noah followed, and I was glad. I didn’t want to be alone, but I didn’t want to be around someone who had betrayed me.
I collapsed on my bed in a daze. That couldn’t be true. It was too… A cult. How could they have been in a cult? One that I was going to be killed in? Surely things like that didn’t actually happen? But they wouldn’t have made that up. It was far too much.
“Are you okay?” Noah asked, laying down behind me and bundling me up in his arms.
“No,” I replied. “I’m not dreaming, right?” I muttered, staring at my wall as I tried to make sense of something that was so senseless.
He shook his head against mine. He’d barely said a word. He was probably thinking of the best way to break up with me and get the hell out.
“You’re not dreaming. I wish you were.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“No,” he replied.
“I think I would’ve believed them more if they told me we were vampires.”
“You can go out in the sunlight,” he said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
“What am I going to do?”
Shrugging, he replied. “I don’t know. I can’t get my head around what they said. What do you want to do?”
“I’ve no idea. No, actually I do. I want to rewind time to before the car accident and leave my grandparents house later. I want for it not to be true. I want to go back to a time when everything was simple. I hate this, Noah,” I said and started to sob. “I hate this and I just want to be normal.”
He held me tighter and let me cry. I completely lost it, sobbing until I could barely breathe. I was scared of what I’d been told, scared of what it meant now and scared that Noah would leave, and I wouldn’t have any normality in my life.
“Are you going to run? I wouldn’t blame you at all,” I asked once I’d calmed down enough that I wasn’t gasping for breath anymore.
“No, I’m not going to run. I love you, Scarlett, no matter what. I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered into my hair.
I turned around and clung to him, his words setting me off again, and I cried until I literally couldn’t shed another tear. My heart was breaking. My parents weren’t my parents, my whole life was one big lie, and I was almost murdered as I turned four.
Noah stayed with me until I’d calmed down. He looked stressed and tired, but he’d been amazing, everything I needed. We lay side by side on my bed with him playing and stroking my fingers. It was calming.
“How are you feeling now?” he asked.
“I don’t know if there’s a word to describe it. Shocked, betrayed, hurt and confused all come close.”
“You’re going to be alright.”
I sure didn’t feel like I was going to be alright. I didn’t know how to even process what they’d told me, let alone come to terms with it. “Yeah, how do you know that?”
“Because I won’t give you another option. I won’t pretend to understand how you are feeling, but I know that there is nothing I wouldn’t do to make things better.”
Closing my eyes, I turned on my side and snuggled closer to him. “I’m going to miss you this weekend. You always manage to put things into perspective for me.”