His dark-blue eyes narrow. "I'm starting to think your memory isn't back, Sam."
I nod in agreement, completely lost on the things inside me.
He links his arm in mine, pulling me down the long corridor to the security checkpoint. "Let's get out of here before ya go and start telling me how bad your period was last month."
I glare at him. "I don't get periods, ass."
He pauses. "What? Ya were a right bitch every month-don't tell me I don't know ya."
"I haven't had a period since I can recall. Derek said I was injured in the car accident."
He purses his lips. "We need to find out what the hell is going on."
"I think we need to find out who Derek is. Or rather Benjamin or Dash or whatever his name is this week. Who he is will tell us more about what the hell happened to me." I glance into Rory's dark-blue eyes, saying the last thing I ever expected to say: "As soon as I see Pat and make sure she's all right, I want to go to my father's house." The words even make me shudder.
He gives me a sideways look but doesn't say a word. He leads me to the security desk, where Pat is sitting in a small room. When I get inside, she leaps at me, dragging the blonde wig off my head with her arm. "You're okay!"
"I am. Look, Derek turned out to be a criminal, and apparently, I might have undergone the brain surgery by force. I don't know what's happened, but I am pretty determined to find out. Until he's caught, we can't let you run around for him to abduct in order to bribe me with. Can you stay with Antoine until I know what's what?"
"Oh, uhm." Her eyes fill with worry as she glances at Antoine. She looks worried, but he offers the nicest smile I'm sure he owns. "I don't really know, my love. If he's coming after you, maybe you should just stay here with me too."
I smile, softening my face. "It's okay, I swear. I'll be safe. These guys aren't going to let anything happen to me or you."
"This isn't the first time you done said that to me, my love." Her eyes grow cold, made creepier by the different-colored anger in the different-colored eyes. She turns, directing all that freaky hate at Rory. "You better not let her get hurt or I'll kill you with my bare hands."
He swallows hard, looking nervous, but I suspect it's more like he's filtering the annoying responses he has for her threat. He nods, leaving it at that.
Antoine looks annoyed when I smile at him. "Take care of my aunt." He sighs his answer to my request and offers her his arm. "Shall we?" His face is back to being sweet again.
"Stay safe." She hugs me again before taking his arm and being led out the back doors.
Rory points after them at the doors. "We have a chopper out there. Let's use that. I don't feel like driving all the way back to Alabama."
"Flying in a helicopter?" My fear of heights whispers through me, like wind echoing through a rocky tunnel.
He grabs my arm and drags me out the back door. "Ya used to fly them, for the love of Christ and all things holy." His Irish accent thickens when he's feisty.
When we get inside he pulls on a helmet and hands me one. My fingers ache with fear and hesitation as I take it, pulling it on. I feel like maybe we should have life jackets and better padding than regular clothing. He starts the engines, putting on sunglasses and grinning at me like an idiot.
As we lift off the ground I gag, closing my eyes and waiting for the tipping feeling from the lack of ground beneath me to subside. It doesn't, so I don't open my eyes.
"You're missing everything. It's beautiful up here."
I lift a thumb into the air, not speaking or opening my eyes at all.
"Chickenshit."
I switch to my middle finger, still with my eyes closed. He chuckles, and the sound tugs at my heartstrings.
I don't know how long we fly. I honestly don't even sneak a single peek, but I am bored out of my mind when we do finally land. He shuts it off, shoving me lightly. "Wakey wakey!"
I shake my head. "Not sleeping, just counting forward and backward from a hundred repeatedly."
"You still do that?"
"Guess so." I don't open my eyes until I hear the spinny part on the top stop moving. I have a fear of having my head chopped off too.
He's standing on the grass across the yard with his arms folded when I climb out slowly. My legs tremble with each step, threatening to buckle completely. When they do, I land on my knees, gripping the grass and heaving my breath.
"What the fuck did he do to you?"
I shake my head. "Look, heights combined with a flimsy little helicopter is a completely normal fear." I gag a little bit, burping some of the bagel I had earlier as I pass gas out the back end. "I don't think my stomach is so good. We should stay here."
"No. Get up or I'll leave you here."
I wince, shudder, and fart again. At least they're silent and he's across the grass.
"Can we go? Today? Please?"
I drag myself up, wiping my hands across my face to clear the sweat. "I want to drive back."
"Not a chance." He turns and starts walking through the swampy woods. I contemplate staying, but the place makes me uncomfortable so I get up and stalk after him.
I don't even know where we are until I see the small house in the distance. This is my backyard from when I was little. As we pass a shell of what used to be a house I pause, turning toward it. It pulls me to it, capturing me in its tractor beam of magnetism. Something about this house haunts my very soul. I stop just short of the overgrown grass, looking at the collapsing walls and sunken-in roof. An image trickles through my head in flashes and flares, but not a distinct picture. "Leona Larson lived in this house." The words are mine and they aren't. I don't know how I remember it all, and yet still don't remember much. This thought is just there, like something I know. Like a fact.
I hear Rory walking on the grass, crunching on the dead yard. It's all around us. No one has cared for this house or yard in a long time. I don't think he's close, and yet I continue to speak to him. "He liked her better than me. He was nice to her. He gave her treats and made me play outside. She was supposed to babysit me, but I always had to go outside." The words join the wind in a sinister whisper. "I hated her."
"What are you doing? Do you see something?" He's so loud and in the present, but I'm stuck in the past. It's almost black-and-white-it's so old and discolored in my brain.
"He liked her better than me." My 'Bama accent is so thick I can hardly understand myself. "He gave her ice cream and told her she was real pretty."
"The Larson family?"
I turn. "You know of them?"
He looks completely confused. "Of course I do. They're the family whose eldest daughter went missing first in the area. Her family was interviewed during the whole your dad turned out to be a monster affair. Her father was a witness in the trial. Said he saw him beating the shit outta ya in the yard a few times and that he suspected your father in the case of his missing daughter. Nothing was ever proven."
I shake my head. "I don't remember that or what happened exactly, but I swear she was there. She was the one my father tortured."
"I think you're confused-the file says you were at school, telling one of the teachers why you didn't get your homework done." He says it like he's desperately trying to recall it all. "Yeah, you told the teacher, in great detail, I might add, about what happened to you. About how your dad was making movies so you couldn't do your homework. It was fucked up. Anyway, when your dad went to jail, the Larson family moved away. The house has been abandoned for a long time. Same as your house. No one wants some house where a pedo hurt little kids."
I step back as her name brings a realization forward. "He never hurt me."
He scoffs. "The whip marks on your back would disagree with you there. They may have faded, but they haven't ever gone away completely."
"There are no scars on my back, and he never touched me like that. It was Leona. It never was me."
He sighs. "This is getting old, Sam. How do you not know your own back is scarred to shit? And your dad was a fucking weirdo pervert. Trust me, the story you told the police was thorough. You had many details." He grabs me, lifting my shirt and running his hands down my back. "See, scars everywhere."
I turn my head, shaking it. "I can't see. I need a mirror." My back burns as if the injuries I didn't know about are fresh.
He points at the house. "Come on, we can get this over with and you can use the mirror in the bathroom. How the hell do you make someone not see the scars they once had? Dash is a master of something, that's for sure-mostly bullshit, I think, though." The whole conversation is coming out of our mouths too easily. We clearly have some ability to detach.