Putting the paper back inside the file, I push myself up from the floor and slide it back into the safe, closing the door and spinning the dial to lock it.
I hear my father’s rusty brakes screech to a stop outside, and take one last look around the office to make sure everything is how he left it and then quickly exit the room, locking myself inside the spare bedroom. Leaning my back against the door, I listen as my father pounds up the stairs, goes into his office, and slams the door closed.
“My name is Ravenna Duskin. I’m eighteen years old, I live in a prison, and I think I just found out who my real father is.”
Chapter 17
“Jesus, Ravenna, how are you not completely breaking down right now?” Nolan asks as we stand behind the counter in the souvenir room.
I really wanted to make him suffer more and ignore him for a few more days for not telling me he was the one who carried me out of the woods, but it’s not very easy trying to solve a mystery all by myself when my mind is keeping so much information from me, and the things I do figure out just create more questions. Also, it’s so pathetic that he continues coming back here to be with me, considering I’m not exactly the most enjoyable person to be around, that I have no choice but to feel sorry for him. How miserable is his life that he spent two years pining for me when I was nothing but a complete snob who wouldn’t even look in his direction? And now that I am paying him attention, it mostly involves constantly making him stop touching me or keeping him at a distance so he doesn’t even think about touching me. Then there’s the whole figuring out things about me that are getting increasingly worse, making it more than obvious he should probably get far away from me as quickly as possible.
His mother seriously needs to die soon so he can finally stop hovering over her, get out of that house, and see that there are much better options than me out there. For now, I guess I’ll just be content with the fact that he does keep coming back, since he’s the only confidant I have. Now that he no longer feels guilty every time he’s around me and doesn’t have to avoid my questions about that night in the woods, he never seems to stop talking, eager to help me try and figure out the rest of the mysteries I can’t fully remember yet.
“What’s the point in breaking down?” I ask, replying to his question. “I’ve already lost my mind so having a breakdown would just be repetitive.”
My voice is filled with sarcasm as I flip the pages of the book in front of me a little too forcefully, accidentally ripping one in half. Luckily it isn’t one I need.
“You haven’t lost your mind,” he reassures me. “It’s obvious you were right to question the things your parents were trying to make you believe, even though we have no clue what the point of all those lies were when they knew you were going to start remembering things eventually.”
Yet another thing I’ve been obsessing about for entirely too many hours of every day. Dr. Beall told me and my parents multiple times that my memory loss wasn’t permanent. Why in the world did they think I’d never figure out they were lying to me? YEAH, WHY DIDN’T THEY? LOL.
“They definitely had secrets,” Nolan continues. “I’m just having a hard time believing that your proper, always put together mother had an affair with a prisoner. Especially a convicted killer who bludgeoned his own parents and three strangers to death with a hammer…and who just so happened to be her husband’s older brother. Not only is that the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, she did this right under her husband’s nose, in the prison he ran, where at any time someone who worked here could have ratted them out.”
I sigh, continuing to flip through the telephone directory until I get to the S’s.
“Well, it’s not like there was a piece of paper in the file that came right out and said Tobias is my father, but it seems a little obvious, considering he was secretly meeting with my mother for months and my father requested his transfer nine months before I was born,” I tell him, running my finger down the page.
“How was this guy even allowed to be here at Gallow’s Hill when his brother was the warden?” Nolan asks.