Bury Me(16)

I watch as my father’s shoulders tense, and I try not to flinch when he reaches out and brushes a strand of hair from my eyes that must have come loose during my momentary outburst earlier. Tucking the strand behind my ear, he cups my cheek in his palm.

“You’re Ravenna, my beautiful, wonderful daughter,” he tells me softly. “The same person you’ve always been.”

“Just keep reminding her who she is and everything will be fine.”

The words my father spoke to my mother play on a loop in my mind, and I can feel my temper begin to flare. My hands clench into fists in my lap and I feel my fingernails digging roughly into my palms.

“I know it’s frustrating, but the doctor said it would take time,” he reminds me with a placating smile. “Just stop trying to force things, or you’ll make it worse.”

I’ve heard these same words so many times in the last few days that I want to smack his hand away and scream in his face. I want to grab the lapels of his suit jacket and shake him until he stops feeding me the same bullshit and is honest with me. How could things possibly get any worse? Every time I close my eyes, I’m afraid a new memory will pop up, leaving me scared and even more confused, and now I have a journal that I don’t even remember owning, let alone writing in, missing all of its pages except for the one with a scary, cryptic message in it. Is there really something worse than this reality?

“Do I know how to swim?”

He looks startled by my question but hides his surprise with a chuckle, dropping his hands from the side of my face.

“Goodness, no! We could barely get you to take a bath when you were little.”

He closes his eyes for a moment, and his face looks peaceful as he most likely reminisces about my childhood.

“Why was I so afraid of the water?” I ask softly.

He opens his eyes and sighs, waving his hand in the air as if he’s brushing off the question.

“Just a little accident that happened when you were little. It really wasn’t that big of a deal,” he answers, giving me a tight smile as he rests his arms on his knees. “These silly questions aren’t going to help. All you need to do is get back to your normal schedule, spend your days just like you always did, and things will fall into place.”

It enrages me that he thinks my questions are silly. Why is figuring out the parts of my memory that I’m missing considered silly? Why is trying to understand who I am a waste of time?

“Why can’t you just be honest with me?” I whisper desperately.

He pushes against his knees with his palms to stand up. Sliding his hands into the front pockets of his suit pants, he jangles the loose change in there and stares down at me.

“I don’t know what you expect me to say, Ravenna. Why would you think I’m not being honest with you?” he asks me with a frustrated sigh.

“Why was I in the woods that night?” I immediately fire back, refusing to back down.

He squares his shoulders and lifts his chin. “Your mother and I have already told you we don’t know.”

“Fine, you don’t know why I was out in the woods in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm,” I reply sarcastically. “Then who found me? How did you even know I was hurt and to call the doctor?”

It never occurred to me to ask this question until now. The only wooded area on our property is on the other side of the lake, more than an acre away. If that’s where I got hurt, how would anyone have even known to look for me out there, unless they saw me leave the house? Unless they were following me.

Unless they were chasing me.

I can see myself running as fast as I can through the dark woods, tripping over tree roots and stray branches. I can almost feel my heart pounding in my chest as I run away from something, but it’s not because of fear. I’m proud of something I’ve done, and I’m angry that I’m being forced to run away from it instead of confront it.

My father sighs in frustration, the sound pulling me out of my thoughts. “I can’t answer your questions, Ravenna. I was busy working in my office, and I heard your mother scream. I ran downstairs and saw you unconscious on the floor, and I immediately called the doctor.”

It doesn’t escape my notice that he told me he can’t answer my questions, not that he didn’t know the answers to them.

Unfortunately, even his partial answers are the same my mother gave me, and they don’t help me at all. She was getting out of the shower and heard a noise downstairs. She came down and saw me lying in the middle of the floor, sopping wet, covered in dirt and leaves, with scratches all over my arms and a head wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding.