While my days are filled with wandering and trying to avoid Nolan, my evenings are filled with uncomfortable dinners with my parents at the small kitchen table in our living quarters. With stilted conversation and vague answers to the questions I ask, I feel like I’m sitting at a table surrounded by strangers instead of the people who raised and love me.
Needing something to do to occupy myself, I’ve spent the last hour rearranging items in the gift shop and stacking new inventory on the metal shelves that take up most of the small room. I suddenly hear raised voices upstairs, and I pause with a folded t-shirt in my hands, craning my neck to better hear. A loud thump above my head has me tossing the shirt haphazardly on top of a pile of others and moving quickly out of the room toward the stairs. I tiptoe upwards, careful to avoid the loose floorboards, so the creak from the old wood doesn’t alert anyone to my presence. At the top of the stairs I pause as the voices grow louder, and I hold my breath as I listen to my parents argue.
“There’s something not right with her, Tanner; you’ve got to see that,” my mother complains.
I hear the shuffling of feet and I move a little closer to their closed bedroom door.
“Stop borrowing trouble, Claudia. Just keep reminding her who she is and everything will be fine,” my father tells her in an irritated voice.
“We shouldn’t have to remind her who she is!” my mother shouts. “We shouldn’t have to tell her what kind of person she is! She’s not the same person, and I know it. I know what you did, Tanner. No matter what lies you keep telling me, I know what you did! What happened to my baby? What the hell did you do with my baby?! Where did she go?”
A loud smack echoes from behind the door, and I jump when I hear my mother’s loud gasp of surprise and whimper of pain.
“I did what I had to do to keep this family safe, just like I did eighteen years ago. That girl downstairs is Ravenna. She’s the same good, beautiful, perfect daughter we’ve raised her entire life. I will not let you ruin this family as you tried to do once before. Ravenna is going to be fine as long as you keep your stupid theories to yourself.”
I hear footsteps stomping toward the door, and I race across the living room, dashing into my bedroom just as my parents’ door swings open. Hiding behind my door, I peek out and watch my father storm through the living room and head downstairs. With a few deep breaths to calm my thumping heart, I wait a few minutes before leaving the comfort of my room, giving myself enough time so my mother doesn’t know I heard what they were saying. When I get to my parents’ bedroom doorway, I find my mother sitting on the edge of her bed, wiping tears from her cheeks.
“What’s wrong?” I ask her in concern, even though I know she won’t tell me the truth.
She looks up in surprise and plasters on a fake smile. “Ravenna, I didn’t know you were here. I thought you were going for a walk around the prison.”
Quickly standing, my mother hurries over to the closet, keeping her back to me to hide the misery on her face.
“I was, but I got hungry, so I was going to get a snack from the kitchen,” I lie.
She reaches up to the top shelf of her closet and pulls down one of the many hatboxes stored up there, and I realize she was getting ready to run errands before the argument with my father, judging by the pale blue A-line double-breasted suit jacket and matching knee-length skirt she’s currently wearing. My mother never leaves the prison without dressing properly in a designer suit with matching pillbox hat, white gloves, and pearls. With the hatbox in her hand, she moves back to the bed and sets it on top, lifting the lid to remove the sky blue hat nestled inside.
“I’m heading out to pick up some groceries, but I could fix you a snack before I leave,” she tells me as she sets the hat on top of her head and pins it in place.
“No, that’s okay. Why were you crying?” I ask, trying to bring her focus back to the original issue.
Pulling a pair of white gloves out of the hatbox, she slides them on her slender hands and then walks over to me as I lean against the doorframe. She brings her satin-covered hands up to my face and cups my cheeks in her palms. She stares deeply into my eyes and within seconds I feel uncomfortable, wanting to pull away, run from the room and hide, so she can’t look at me like she’s trying to figure out who I am. I don’t want her to see; I don’t want her to know and the longer she looks, the more she’ll be convinced that the words she spoke to my father have some truth to them, and there really is something wrong with me.
“Don’t worry about me, Ravenna; I’m fine,” she tells me softly. “Just another stressful day at Gallow’s Hill, nothing new.”
She chuckles to give the words lightheartedness, instead of the deeper meaning I know is there.