Protect Her: Part 10 Read online

  “Sounds lonely,” Riley said. “That I get. I had a lot of friends until I turned thirteen. For some reason, telling people that I was seeing ghosts didn’t help me keep them long after that.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle as I gave him a sidelong glance. “You and I had very different childhoods, but it feels like it was the same too.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said. “Being part of the paranormal world puts a natural barrier between you and the rest of the normal people out there. They get to go about their lives with no knowledge of what else exists on the other side, and sometimes even right in their backyard. I spent a big part of my teenage years being jealous as hell of them, and then trying to be just like them. Except I never was.”

  By this time, we had reached a small rutted path in the field. It was just as I remembered it. We turned onto it as I thought about what he said.

  “I was different, but nobody ever told me why. I think that’s why my parents ended up moving so often too. I think about it now, and there were little clues that would start popping up. People would stare at me in the street, and kids from the commune would whisper and laugh at me when they thought I wasn’t looking. I didn’t find out until after my parents were murdered what all the secrecy was about. I didn’t know when they figured out that I had been marked as Eva’s vessel, but it had to be really early on judging by the way we moved around.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through all of that, Paige. At least in my case, I knew what I was dealing with right after it all started to happen. My family wasn’t big on keeping secrets.” He snorted and rolled his eyes. “At least not about that.”

  We moved further down the path, and as we crested a hill the buildings of the commune appeared. Riley wasn’t pressing me for more details yet, and I was glad. There was so much tied up in my past that I didn’t like thinking about it all that much. It made me angry and sad. But I was willing to go there and show Riley. He brought out something in me that made me want to be vulnerable with him. I wanted to share all of my secrets with him. He made me feel safe. He was the first man to ever make me feel like that.

  Even my friendship with Christopher, or the archangel Benjamin as I know him now, had been one that still had boundaries around it. The boundaries were necessary. I might have had amnesia, but I was still a woman with eyes. I knew Benjamin carried romantic feelings for me that I didn’t share. He was the solidarity in my new life though, so I hadn’t wanted to lose him. I let him get close, but never too close.

  I didn’t have to do that with Riley. He had proved to me again and again that he wanted nothing but what was best for me. He would sacrifice for me if I asked him to, but I wouldn’t do that to him. I loved him too much for that. That made this stroll down memory lane with him all that more bittersweet.

  “My house was over there,” I said, pointing toward a small, tan house with a slightly weather beaten look about it. “It wasn’t much. My mom didn’t work after I was born, and my father was a kind of handyman jack-of-all-trades. We never had a lot of money, but I never noticed. My mom was good at stretching how far a dollar would go, and people in the commune were always generous with their extras. I think that was part of the reason they were originally drawn to this life.”

  “Usually there is some kind of shared religious belief that bring this kind of community together,” Riley said. I understood that he was being gentle about not bringing up the reality of the situation.

  “I didn’t know anything about Eva,” I said. I didn’t see the need to beat around the bush. “My parents obviously fell into the Eva crowd at some point, but it wasn’t something they ever discussed with me. The adults would gather on Monday evenings in the town hall for weekly worship, but the children weren’t allowed. You were initiated into the adult community when you were fourteen. Until then, I guess they just figured it was okay to let the kids be kids.”

  “I’m surprised that the commune’s children went to public schools,” Riley said. “That is…unusual.”

  “I think the Disciples of Eva were a tiny fraction of people in the world. When it came to things like teachers, they were in short supply. My mom taught the younger kids wherever we went, but there was never more than four or five. So when we reached a certain age, they’d bus us to the local school. But those classes were tiny too, maybe fifty kids total in the whole school? I think the commune leaders spent a pretty penny paying off the local school district to keep quiet and leave us alone.”

  “Guess that makes sense,” Riley said. “Show me your house.”

  I tugged on his hand. Strangely, I felt eager to remember and show him this place. As we approached the house, I had a vision of my mom standing there on the steps with her hands on her hips and a disapproving frown. I was never fooled though. The moment I hit the steps, she would sweep me into a tight hug and ask me about my adventures. She always had time to stop and listen to my childhood prattle. I loved that about her.

  “We would take walks after dinner every night,” I said. “My dad would tell my mom about his day, and my mom would tell him about my latest antics. It was peaceful. We’d run into friends and neighbors on our walks, and I remember how my parents would laugh and joke with them. They were very social people. I think it was hard for them to be constantly moving away from their friends.”

  “They sound nice,” Riley said. “I would have liked to have met them.”

  “I think they would have liked you,” I said with a soft smile. We stepped up onto the porch. I turned and looked around me. “Even though this was my favorite of the communes we lived in, we were here the shortest amount of time. It was less than a year.”

  “What happened?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I woke up one night and heard my parents arguing. That was strange in and of itself because my parents never argued. From everything I remember, they were a perfect match.”

  I stepped to the window to look inside, and I gasped. Riley quickly moved beside me, but I put my hand up to stop him from interrupting the scene that I saw in front of me. Inside the house, I saw my parents.

  My mom laughed as she moved around the small kitchen. She was making dinner. My dad sat at the small table with the checkered tablecloth facing away from us. I could see the small glass of whiskey on the table in front of him. Drinking was generally frowned upon in the commune, but my dad still allowed himself a nightly drink with dinner. Every time my mother mom passed him, my dad reached out and touched her. A swat on the butt or an attempt to pull her into his arms. I could hear her admonishing him, but I knew she was delighted at the same time. The way that she glowed told me that she thoroughly enjoyed the attention.

  I felt tears well in my eyes. This was the point in their lives where they weren’t that much older than me. My dad was just turning thirty. My mom was only a year younger than him.

  “Where did your parents meet?” Riley asked in a hushed tone.

  “They told me at school, but I don’t think that was the truth,” I whispered back. “I don’t know how, but they both believed in Eva. I think it must have been through mutual friends of the Disciples that brought them together.”

  Riley drew me backward, and I found that I wanted to rush forward and press my face against the glass and watch them. It had been too long since I had seen their faces. Those pictures in my head had dimmed throughout the years. Although I wasn’t as happy about having the ‘old Paige’ as part of my memories again, being able to remember where I came from was a relief.

  “Show me something else,” he said. He pushed a stray piece of hair out of my eyes. “You were happy here. These are your memories. We can go anywhere you want. Show me something else.”

  I wasn’t sure how to do what he asked, but I knew that he was right. We were inside my head. I closed my eyes and thought hard about my favorite memories. I heard Riley’s gasp, and then he chuckled.

  I opened my eyes and smiled as I took in the sight in front of me. A lanky blond girl stood u
p on stage with a bright smile on her face. She held a bouquet of daisies and waved at the crowd who were on their feet clapping for her.

  “I starred in the school play in seventh grade,” I said. “We moved to this town just a few days before school started, and I was going through what my mom called my ‘dramatic’ phase. She told me that I ought to channel all of that angst into acting, so that’s what I did.”

  Riley started to clap for the girl on the stage too, and I grinned at him. Then he flopped into one of the empty theater seats next to us and patted its neighbor encouraging me to sit with him. I had a sense that our time together was growing short. But still I sat down

  “Tell me more about this budding acting career,” he said. “What was the play?”

  “Annie Get Your Gun,” I said. “You mean you can’t tell by the cowgirl attire and braids?”

  “That was going to be my first guess,” Riley said with a serious expression. “Based on the crowd’s reaction, I see an Academy Award in your future.”

  My smile fell from my face. He immediately reached for me. “What’d I say?”

  It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know the whole story. I could lie and cover it up. That was what old Paige would have done. I was different now though. I decided to tell him the truth. It was going to eat me up otherwise being this close to him knowing that these precious few moments were going to be our last ones together.

  “It’s Eva,” I said. I kept my eyes straight ahead. I watched as my parents broke away from the assembled crowd in the room and met my younger self before I even made it all the way down the stage’s steps. My father swept me up into his arms and twirled me around the way that he used to when I was much younger. My mom’s face was lit up with joy, and she clapped as my father completed our spin. “She’s here in my head too. She’s told me things.”

  “Whatever she told you is bullshit,” Riley said. “Don’t believe a word she’s said.”

  “You aren’t listening. She’s here in my head because I invited her in.” I saw Riley’s mouth drop open. I nodded sadly. “She knows everything, Riley. She knows because I accepted her three years ago.”

  “What?” I knew that it was going to take a few moments for Riley to grasp what I was telling him. I knew exactly what that felt like having been in the same position not too long ago.

  “It was when Bruno Proctor’s goons hit me over the head and dumped me in the Calamata Bay. We assumed that I drew on Eva’s powers to save me, but that wasn’t quite right. Apparently she had helped me out other times over the years because I would call on her. This last time, I guess she’d had enough of the freebies. She wanted out.”

  “She can’t coerce your acceptance,” Riley said.

  “She didn’t though. The circumstances I found myself in at the time were not of her making. But I asked her for three years. So I would give myself over after three more years of living as myself.”

  “You remember this?” Riley asked quietly.

  “No, that place in my memories is still a black hole,” I said.

  “Then she’s making it up,” he sputtered.

  I put my hand on his arm. “Riley, she’s in my head. She’s in here with me. How could she be there if I hadn’t accepted her in? She’s been waiting for the time we agreed on to elapse, but she knows and sees everything that’s happened to me since then. She knows about you and me. This was my fate. It always was my fate.” My father set my younger self down, and she was talking excitedly to the two of them. I wanted to get closer just to remember what that conversation was, but I didn’t dare. I felt that getting too close would somehow distort the memory, so I continued to watch on the periphery.

  “Take me somewhere else,” he said. “Show me another memory.”

  There was only one place I felt it necessary to go before I let myself wither away. It seemed only fitting that I would take Riley there with me.

  CHAPTER THREE – RILEY

  I was still trying to process Paige’s revelation when the world shifted around us again. We stood in the street outside a house that looked almost identical to all of the houses around it. I felt as if I had seen it before, but I couldn’t remember where. As I slowly spun around, it seemed as if we had landed in Anywhere, USA.

  “Where is this?” I asked. I needed time to think. I wasn’t going to let Paige just give up. It was clear to me now why she hadn’t fought back. Eva had her believing her fate was inevitable. We’d see about that, but I had to approach the whole thing carefully. If she got too upset, she’d be able to kick me out. I couldn’t have that.

  “Flagston, Texas,” Paige said. She stared at the house in front of us. “We moved here three days before my fourteenth birthday. It was during the middle of the school year, and I was so mad at them. I had just found out that I got the starring role in the spring play at my old school, and then they whisked me away to this drab, dreary place. I hated the idea of starting over. Again.”

  Flagston. That rang a bell, but I didn’t have time to think about it further. I was focused on the despondent woman in front of me.

  “You were fourteen when your parents died,” I said. I had a bad feeling about where Paige had brought us in her memories. I wanted to experience the happy ones with her, but I sensed that she wanted something else from me.

  “I was,” she said. She stepped forward and opened the gate. She motioned for me to follow her. “I was supposed to be home late that day because I had soccer practice after school. I wasn’t feeling well, so I came home earlier than expected. I didn’t call them to tell them though. I figured I’d just show up out of the blue. I knew it hurt my mom’s feelings when I treated them that way, but I was a full-blown teenage bitch complete with hormones and temper tantrums.”

  “We all go through it.” I wanted to lighten the mood, but that wasn’t what she needed from me. Her tone was practically hypnotic. She wanted me to see this, and I would do it for her. This was likely the most painful night of her life. The fact that she wanted to share it with me made me want to wrap her up and take all of that pain away. But I couldn’t. These memories were the kind that haunted you for a lifetime.

  “My mom told me to call home every afternoon when I knew I was going to be late to check-in, but this day I didn’t. I was usually so good about it that I knew not doing it would cause her to worry. I didn’t care. It made me happy to think that she was going to be worried about me. That’s the kind of kid I had started turning into.”

  “I ran away for a week after my mom and Alice told me what I was,” I said. I knew that my experience wasn’t going to make her feel any better, but I had to try. “My mom was worried sick about me, and when I finally came home, she grounded me for a month.”

  Paige turned toward me then. “What made you come back?”

  I shrugged with a sheepish half-smile. “I was hungry.”

  She nodded. “I was thinking about running away then. I thought I could go back to my old town and stay with my best friend, Clarissa. I’d re-enroll back in my old school and star in the play, and everything would be hunky-dory. God, I was so stupid.”

  I took her hand. The more we delayed, the more painful I thought this memory would be for her. “You came home early, and you didn’t call your parents like you normally did to tell them you were going to do that. What happened then?”

  “It was so quiet,” she said. She looked at the house, and I sensed what she meant. Despite the fact that it was dusk, there weren’t any lights turned on inside the house. The street was eerily quiet. No dogs barking or kids laughing. It seemed like a strangely empty world almost more reminiscent of our time at Slinky Pete’s on the other side of the veil than the memory of a living place.

  “It didn’t really dawn on me until I came through the gate.” She paused and looked back at the metal gate as it swung closed behind us. “I was so focused on all the smart things I was going to say to my mom when she scolded me for not calling her that I missed some of the obvious signs.”

/>   “Like what?” This whole scenario had ‘proceed with caution’ flags all around it. I felt a pit of dread growing in my stomach. I knew the outcome, but that didn’t stop the irrational sensations of knowing that something bad was about to happen.

  “My dad would take his whiskey out on the porch after work.” Paige pointed at the two white wicker chairs sitting on the porch. “He’d bring the newspaper out with him because he left so early in the morning that he didn’t have time to read it. My dad always preferred to read the news versus watching it on TV.”

  I could tell she had drifted backward in time and was relating more to this memory than the present time with each passing second. I didn’t want her to have to go through this again, but I wasn’t going to interrupt it either. It seemed important to her, and if bearing witness to it was what she needed me to do, then I would gladly do it for her. I just hoped that on the other side of it, I’d be able to talk some sense into her.

  She stepped away from me toward the porch. “From five-thirty until seven my dad was a permanent fixture on the front porch. Around six-fifteen or so my mom would come out with a fresh drink for him. She’d kiss him on the side of the temple, and he’d murmur a thank you even though he was fully engrossed in his paper. Then she’d go inside to finish dinner. Dinner was served in our house at 7 pm promptly every night. I knew that. So I was coasting on thin ice by arriving home just before dinner.”

  Now she put her foot on the first step. She pointed at the wicker table between the chairs. I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to see there. It was empty. “My dad always forgot the paper when he came in. He’d set his glass on top of it before he’d wander inside to wash his hands. I think he always meant to come back out and get it, but it’s something they’d pick up when they came home from their walk.”

  “Still an evening walk every night then?” I asked gently.

  “It was their thing,” she replied. “We didn’t have a lot of money for fancy dinners and entertainment. My parents had their evening walk. They were simple people really. There weren’t a lot of fancy things they required to be happy. My mother always said that as long as she had my dad to talk to, that was all she needed. He was her best friend.”