“I can’t tell you that.”
Old Bob looked away, then back again, his face growing flushed and angry. “You come to Hopewell with a story about your college days with Caitlin that’s all a lie. You manage to get yourself invited to our home and then you keep from us the truth of what you are really doing here. You do not warn us about Nest’s father. You may think you have good reasons for everything you’ve done, John, but I have to tell you that I’ve put up with as much of this as I’m going to. You are no longer welcome here. I want you off my property and out of our lives.”
John Ross stood firm against the old man’s withering stare. “I don’t blame you, sir. I would feel the same. I’m sorry for everything.” He paused. “But none of what you’ve said changes the fact that Nest is still in danger and I’m the best one to help her.”
“Somehow I doubt that, John. You’ve done a damn poor job of protecting any of us, it seems to me.”
Ross nodded. “I expect I have. But the danger to Nest is something I understand better than you.”
Old Bob took his hands out of his pockets. “I don’t think you understand the first thing about that girl. Now you get moving, John. Go find Nest’s father, if that’s what you want to do. But don’t come back here.”
John Ross stood where he was a moment longer, looking at the old man, trying in vain to think of something else to say. Then he turned without a word and limped away.
CHAPTER 28
Nest fled into the park in mindless shock, her thoughts scattered, her reason destroyed. Had she known a way to do so, she would have run out of her skin, out of her body, out of her life. The face of the demon would not leave her, the image burned so deeply into her mind that she could not dispel it, his features bland and unremarkable, his blue eyes pale and empty.
Your father…
Your father…
She flew into a dark stand of pine and spruce, flinging herself into the concealing shadows, desperate to hide from everything, frantic to escape. The leathery branches whipped at her face and arms, bringing tears, but the pain was solid and definable and slowed her flight. She staggered to a halt, grounded anew, lacking a reason to run farther or a better place to go. She moved aimlessly within the tangle of the grove, tears welling in her eyes, fists clenching at her sides. This wasn’t happening, she thought. It couldn’t be happening. She walked through the conifers to a massive old oak, put her arms about the gnarled trunk, and hugged it to her. She felt the rough bark bite into her arms and legs, into her cheeks and forehead, and still she pressed harder.
Your father…
She could not say the words, could not complete the thought. She pressed and pressed, willing her body to melt into the tree. She would become one with it. She would disappear into it and never be seen again. She was crying hard now, tears running down her face, her body shaking. She squeezed her eyes tight. Had her father really killed Gran? Had he killed her mother as well? Would he now try to kill her?
Do something!
She forced herself to go still inside and the tears to stop. Her sobs died away in small gulps as the cold realization settled over her that the crying wasn’t doing any good, wasn’t helping anything. She pushed away from the tree and stared out into the park through gaps in the conifers, rebuilding her composure from tiny, scattered fragments. She caught glimpses between the needled branches of other lives being led, all of them distant and removed. It was the Fourth of July, America’s day of independence. What freedom should she celebrate? She looked down at her arms, at how the oak’s bark had left angry red marks that made her skin look mottled and scaly.
A shudder overtook her. Could she ever look at herself again in the same way? How much of her was human and how much something else? She remembered asking Gran only a few days earlier, weary of the years of secrecy, if her father might be a forest creature. She remembered wondering afterward what that would feel like.