After a few abortive attempts, Amy gave up trying to get me to talk. She retreated grumpily to the orchard and I let her go. Even if I could make her remember and keep remembering, she was probably safer if she didn't. At least I had one person I cared about who wasn't caught up in the Pattern. Exhaustion made my head spin with trying to keep everything straight. I needed to tackle Helen again but I wanted to wait until I wouldn't be interrupted. Did Helen hear all my thoughts when I joined with her? I couldn't hear all of hers, but then she left scraps of memory behind like old coins and shards of pottery in an ancient burial site. Kate pinching her to make her cry. Reverend Weston patting her head as a child. John, pious, heavy with his fists and overly familiar with his hands…What if I left bits of my life with her? I didn’t trust her not to use them. Didn’t trust her at all.
What Ciarán said about talking to Dad had been eating away at me. The old me would never have had courage to ask Dad anything. The new, tougher, more focused me knocked on Dad's study door. If there was something about Mum that had been kept from us, I wanted to know. I would feel better if I solved just one mystery. I knocked again. No answer. I tried the door but it was locked. If Dad was in there he wasn't coming out. My stomach was a churn of frustration. Fine. Later then. He couldn't hide forever. I almost laughed as I thought it. Dad had been hiding. And all this time I'd been too timid to realise. Cursed village aside, I felt seriously annoyed with myself. Had I really paid much attention to anyone except the Dead since the accident? That needed to change.
Grace was asleep when I checked on her. Her eyelids were a pale lilac with deeper shadows underneath. Her skin was chalky and her lips were dry and cracking. She breathed fast and shallow like a cat. I was afraid to wake her. Afraid I would get Kate, not Grace at all. I quietly closed the door.
Lost, I drifted up to my attic. I wanted to get my thoughts straight before I tackled Helen again.
Haze didn't set the Pattern. The more I thought about it the more certain I became. There was no real benefit in it for him – it had failed to restore Kate to him for two centuries. He did not act unless it benefitted him in some way.
Kate couldn't have done it. She was already dead.
Helen was so afraid of hell and all the dogma instilled by John over the years, that even if she had been out for revenge, I doubted she would have ‘played at witchery’ to set it in motion. Or that she could. Who did that leave? Clayton? Ridiculous. Reverend Weston? Ada? None of them fit. They were all bit players. So who? Who?
My brain was on spin cycle, churning nothings. I needed a starting point. I couldn't untangle anything without one. My head ached fiercely. I leaned my head against my pillow and shut my eyes, trying to will the pain away. If I could just think. I was missing something. I knew I was. If only I wasn’t so tired.
I Belong to the Earth (Unveiled Book 1) Page 49
