Bury Me(48)

“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.

“There was another sheet of paper in the file that had a list of special rules and regulations the state made my father agree to in order to allow Tobias to stay here while my father was the warden,” I tell him distractedly as I flip to the next page and keep looking down the list. “Stuff like twice as many prison visits from the state to interview guards and other employees to make sure my father wasn’t giving Tobias special treatment and additional reports to fill out that had to be signed by everyone who came in contact with Tobias. I’m assuming the state knew it would only be a matter of time before they shut down the prison and letting Tobias stay here wasn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.”

Nolan leans close to look over my shoulder and I try not to move away. Now that I’ve decided to forgive him for the time being, I’m right back to being irritated that having him touch me or try to get close to me puts me on edge. I hate it just as much as I love it and I really don’t need this nonsense right now, but I do need the use of his brain since it seems to be in much better working order than mine. The only reason I’m searching through the phone book right now is because of his suggestion.

“All of this is just so weird because in the two years I’ve worked here, I’ve never seen your father be anything but nice to you whenever you two were outside together,” Nolan muses quietly, right by my ear. “I just don’t understand why all of a sudden you don’t get along, and he’s acting completely different with you.”

I clench my teeth and try not to rip out a handful of pages from the phone book, crumple them in a wadded-up ball, and shove them right in his mouth.

“We don’t get along because I’ve caught him in lies, and he screamed at me and told me it was my fault my mother killed herself,” I reply in a snippy voice.

Nolan puts his hand on my back and pats me softly, and I force myself not to think about finding the nearest sharp object and chopping off his hand.

“Hey, I’m sorry, don’t be mad. I’m not saying it’s not true. I’m just talking out loud, trying to figure things out,” he apologizes. “I’ll admit I wasn’t sure at first about your theory that everything revolves around the night I found you in the woods, but there has to be a reason it’s one of the only things you still can’t remember and why everything around this place seems to be imploding since that night.”

I nod, dismissing my thoughts of the bloody stump of his hand thumping onto the porch steps—for now.

“When I first woke up, Dr. Beall told me that sometimes our mind puts traumatic events into a secret corner until we’re ready to process them, and I just had to give it time, be patient, and I would eventually remember everything. Considering the things I’ve already remembered and how awful they are, I’m assuming this must be really bad.”

Nolan starts moving his hand in a slow, small circle in the middle of my back, and I try to enjoy it like a regular eighteen-year-old girl would if a cute older boy showed affection and comforted her. It does feel nice physically; it just doesn’t comfort me mentally.