Never Tell Them, N.L. Hinkens [unputdownable books txt] 📗

Branches clawed at her face in passing as she thundered blindly through the forest. Her purse slipped from her shoulder again, and she frantically threw the strap over her head and continued running, unhampered apart from the canvas shoes slipping on her heels. She barely felt the pain of the blisters forming as she squelched her way through a watery bed of mud and leaves, her one goal to reach the main road and flag down help.

She could no longer hear if anyone was following her. But she couldn’t risk slowing down enough to look over her shoulder. Her only hope was that she was in better physical shape than Ray. Maybe the memory loss was a ruse, but he hadn’t been faking the bruises she’d seen in the hospital. Her hair slowly worked its way loose from the makeshift ponytail she’d put it in to work on her sketches, but she didn’t dare stop to adjust it. Pumping her arms, she propelled herself to go faster, hair plastered across her face.

In the next instant, her shoe caught in a tree root and she tumbled forward, throwing her arms out in a desperate bid to break her fall. She landed on her hip in the dirt with a thud and let out a strangled yelp. Panting, she jerked her head around in terror, but there was no one in sight. She rubbed her hip, trying to calm her rapid breathing. Somehow, she had to get up and keep going. Wincing, she got to her feet and hobbled back for her shoe. As she bent over to pick it up, she froze at the sound of footsteps.

“Sonia! Are you all right?” a voice cried out.

She didn’t dare move a muscle. She couldn’t have moved anyway. Shock had turned her to stone.

23

TWO MONTHS PRIOR

A myriad of emotions swirled around in Ray’s head as he exited the law offices of Smith & Buchanan, the firm in Booneville handling his mother’s modest estate. He’d driven down from Richmond the previous day and stayed in a hotel overnight, hoping to wrap everything up in one day. The minute he climbed back into his truck, he tore open the envelope the lawyer had given him and slid out the keys to his mother’s house. A familiar heaviness gripped his chest as memories he’d buried deep inside ripped through his consciousness like tree roots breaking through the dirt. Some small part of him was sorry to learn his mother was dead, but he was mostly numb. If he was grieving for anyone, it was for himself and the happy childhood he had missed out on. If he had been a drinker, he would have opted for a stiff drink right about then. But it wasn’t an appealing option for the child of an alcoholic. Even the smell of hard liquor, the very fabric of his childhood, was enough to turn his stomach to this day.

In some ways, the physical beatings and deprivation had been easier to take than the mental and verbal abuse his father had hurled at him and Tom—an unremitting barrage of cruel taunts, and hurtful words that he could still hear echoing through the chambers of his mind during sleepless nights. A nightmare of a life that Celia had been adept at covering up in public. But behind closed doors, it was a different story. Often, their father would start drinking early in the evening and stay up all night watching television, growing increasingly aggressive and unpredictable as the hours wore on. Half the time, Ray and Tom were too terrified to go downstairs to eat their dinner, and too traumatized to fall asleep, praying their father would pass out before he could stumble upstairs to unleash his anger on them for some perceived offense or another. The only respite they ever really had was when he occasionally disappeared for days on end. Ray had no idea where he went, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t working, as Celia claimed.

It had taken years of therapy for Ray to work through the scars from his childhood: the flashbacks, the anxiety, the depression. It had handicapped him in life relationally. In the jobs he’d held when he was younger, he was known as a loner. But his colleagues had no idea how hard it was to put your faith in people when those closest to you let you down time and time again.

On many occasions growing up, Celia had promised him and Tom that she would leave their father, but she’d always chickened out in the end. A part of him hated her for her cowardice, even though he knew how scared she’d been. He would never put a child through anything like what they had suffered. Maybe that was why he shied away from serious relationships. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had his chances. He could have been married by now, but he always panicked and ended the relationship when it came time to commit. It was too terrifying a prospect to pledge yourself to someone for the rest of your life when you were convinced it would only be a matter of time before they hurt you.

He tossed the envelope from the lawyer’s office on the passenger seat and put the truck in gear. He was dreading making the trip to the house his mother had been living in. But, like it or not, it had been left to him to handle her affairs. Her will had stipulated that everything was to be divided equally between him and Tom. Unsurprisingly, Smith & Buchanan had been unable to get in touch with Tom. After Ray explained that his brother had vanished without a trace when he was sixteen, the lawyer suggested filing a petition with the court requesting he be presumed dead. Ray wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It seemed too final—too cutthroat.

For years, he’d clung to the hope that his brother was alive.