“I know you’re angry, but you have to let me explain,” he pleads. “I’m sorry I lied to you. You have no idea how sorry I am, but I had a reason. Please, just let me explain.”
I force my anger down to a simmer since I’m still not ready to show him how truly strange I am, no matter how much I hate him right now.
“I know you don’t trust me, but I need you to go somewhere with me,” he explains quickly when he realizes I’m allowing him to continue. “I promise, if you just let me show you something, you’ll understand why I did what I did.”
He slowly drops my wrists, holding his hands up in surrender. “Please, just come with me.”
Nolan turns and begins walking away from me, glancing over his shoulder with pleading eyes that urge me to follow. I grudgingly start walking a few feet behind him as he steps onto the overgrown path leading into the woods.
We walk in silence through the trees and memories of that dark, rainy night float through my mind, but still not enough for me to remember why I was running and whom I was running from.
After a few minutes, we emerge on the other side of the woods, stepping out onto another lawn that leads to a small white cottage a few hundred yards away. I pause, staring at the house that I didn’t even know was here.
Nolan turns back to find me gaping, and he motions with his hands for me to keep following him. I let out an annoyed sigh, trailing behind him as he makes his way up to the front door of the house. He pauses with his hand on the knob, bowing his head and closing his eyes.
“I never lied when I told you I care about you, Ravenna. I do, I promise. You have no idea how much it’s been killing me keeping this from you, but I had to do it.”
“What is this place?”
He turns back to look at me and shrugs. “It’s my home. Well, my parents’ home. We’ve lived here all my life. Before my father died, he used to be the head groundskeeper at the prison and this house came with the job. It’s one of the reasons I wasn’t completely honest with you.”
Nolan looks away and opens the door, stepping inside the small house. I follow behind him, moving into a tiny living room, shrouded in darkness with the shades drawn.
“What’s the other reason?” I ask as he moves around me to close the door behind us.
I hear a cough and a gentle groan of pain in the far corner of the room. I take a step toward the noise, squinting my eyes as I realize there’s someone sitting in a chair in the shadows.
Nolan moves up behind me, his chest pressing against my shoulder as he looks in the same direction.
“She’s the other reason,” he whispers, moving around me to walk farther into the room and over to the corner.
I watch silently as he raises one of the window shades a few inches to let some sunlight filter in, the bright rays shining down on the lower half of the woman in the chair, who’s sitting up with a blanket draped over her lap. Nolan squats down in front of her, placing his hands on her knees.
“Mom, I brought company with me,” he tells her with a smile, looking back over his shoulder at me. “Ravenna, this is my mother, Beatrice Michaels.”
My feet inch across the carpet as my eyes take in the frail, sickly woman staring at me. Her dressing gown looks two sizes too big for her small body, but I can still see the bones of her shoulders sticking up through the material. Her face is sunken in and pale, and the turban-style wrap on her head doesn’t fully hide the fact that she doesn’t have any hair.
Nolan watches me as I look at her, his quiet voice filling the room. “She has cancer and it’s progressed pretty rapidly in the last few years. But she’s a fighter, and she’s going to get better real soon.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here, son,” Beatrice mumbles, her body wracked with a coughing fit.
Nolan reaches between her blanket-covered leg and the arm of the chair, pulling out a handkerchief and handing it to her. Beatrice quickly grabs it, holding the white cloth against her mouth as she coughs. When she lowers her hand from her mouth, I notice the handkerchief is dotted in bright red blood.
“So you came back,” Beatrice says as she looks me up and down while I stand like a statue in the middle of the living room. “I always knew you’d come back and finish what you started.”
Nolan stands up next to her chair and looks between us. “Mom, what are you talking about? Ravenna has never been here before.”
Beatrice shakes her head slowly back and forth, her eyes never leaving mine. “I warned them, but they didn’t listen. Now they’re surrounded by death.”
Nolan puts his hand on her frail shoulder, rubbing it gently. “Why don’t you take a nap? When you wake up, it will be time for your medicine again.”