AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Your grandmother is so full of surprises that I bet whatever is going to be on there is not going to be boring,” Mason adds, and it’s nice for me that they’re all as equally invested as I am.
“You know, I wish I’d paid more attention to her when she was alive. We might have been able to fill in some of the blanks that you have about her. As it stands, we only really knew of her because she was one of the most influential people in town, and we always like to keep an eye on those.” Rome adds as we trudge our way back through the woods, still following Ace.
“Me too, but it’s also kind of fun to learn about her through the clues that she’s left behind. I know that I never met her, but I feel like I know her through what I’ve been able to find out about her, and I think we would have gotten on amazingly. I would have loved to have her teach me about all the poisons, their uses, and how to make them, but at least I have her journals to learn from.”
“You never know Blue, there might be some videos or more journals loaded up on her laptop,” Ace adds, and I watch as he looks from side to side and then frowns.
“Yeah maybe. Are you sure you know where we’re going?” I ask him.
He scrubs his hand across the back of his neck as he pauses completely.
Malachi throws his hands up in the air as he exclaims, “Seriously, dude? You were walking with so much purpose I thought you knew the way back. Mase thought this would happen.”
“I do know the way back, at least I thought I did, but now I’m not all that sure. Nothing looks like how I remembered it,” he replies, sounding slightly defensive.
“Well, let's see if your dogs really can find the way back,” Rip mutters, sounding more amused than annoyed that we’ve gotten lost.
“Sure thing,” Ace replies, as he confidently gives his dogs the command, and they sniff around for a second before trotting off slightly to the left of where Ace was leading us. “See, I was only slightly off.”
“Yeah, but how much more slightly off could that have gotten if we had carried on following your slightly off path,” Mason asks.
Ace clearly decides he’s not going to bother answering Mason as he simply grabs my hand, and we take off after the dogs instead. Thankfully they aren’t going too fast, so we can follow them easily enough, but they are setting a faster pace than we were when we came out here, and since we’ve now been walking for a long time, I’m starting to get tired and wishing I was chilled out watching a film back at the house, rather than still walking. The faster pace also means that there’s not really any time for talking; with every step I take that hopefully brings us closer to the house, the more excited I get about what will hopefully be revealed on my grandmother's laptop.
I’m trying really hard not to get my hopes up too much, there could just be more poison stuff on it, like Ace said, which would be great, but what I really want is information on my father, so I’m going to be disappointed if there isn’t anything on him on there. It was clearly very well protected, so hopefully, that means there’s something worth finding on it.
Maybe whatever is on it has something to do with the gap in the dust that’s in the safe in her office, we’ve never worked out what was there, and I asked Gerald if he knew, and he said he had no idea. I’m extremely good at reading body language and knowing when a person is lying to me, and Gerald didn’t give me any of the tells that a person usually would, so I believe that he was telling me the truth. There are so many mysteries surrounding my grandmother that I’m beginning to get almost desperate to solve at least one of them before even more of them start to build up.
“See, I told you they could get us home,” Ace exclaims, pulling me out of my thoughts, and I realise that I’ve spent far longer than I thought lost in my thoughts.
“If you’re so confident then why do you sound so relieved?” Rip asks, raising his eyebrow as we all head toward the back of the house.
Ace sniffs and then replies, sounding all prim and proper, “I think you must be imagining things. I would never be unsure about a claim that I’ve made.”
I immediately burst out laughing, and accuse with an affectionate grin, “Bullshit.”
His head snaps around to look at me, his eyes comically wide as he gasps dramatically, “Now that’s just rude.”
“Come on, let’s go and see what secrets this laptop is hiding,” Rome announces as he pushes on ahead of us, and I’m suddenly not bothered by my back and forth argument with Ace.
“Does anyone want a drink?” Rip asks as we walk through the doors, and Ace drops to the floor to give the dogs lots of well-deserved praise.
“Yeah sure,” I reply, taking my shoes off and feeling immediate relief, they aren’t exactly uncomfortable, but they aren’t made for walking that far.
“I’ll take one, I’ll just grab my laptop and your grandmother's one, and we can see what’s on it. Do you want to hook it up to the TV in the front room so that you guys can see it too, or do you want me just to go through it and tell you about anything interesting that I find?” Ace asks as he stands up and checks that the dogs have enough water.
“Up on the TV if that’s okay?” I reply when all of my men look at me to see what I want to do.
Ace nods, “Got it, I’ll meet you guys in there then.”
As he rushes from the room, Rip hands me a soda, and then we all head into the front room. While we’re waiting for Ace to come back down, my leg bounces nervously and Rome gently grasps my knee, stopping it from bouncing as he looks at me concerned.
“Why are you so nervous?” he asks gently.
“Because there could be something about my father on there. I don’t understand why Gerald can’t tell me anything about him, and I don’t understand why there are no pictures of him anywhere. I just don’t understand why there’s so much secrecy surrounding him. I want to know who he was.”
“Of course you do,” Rip replies, “that’s completely understandable, and I’d feel exactly the same if I were in your situation.”
“I also agree that it’s weird as hell that there’s so much secrecy surrounding him, and I’d be willing to bet that the things missing from your grandmother's vault were something to do with him, which means that it is being kept specifically from you and it's not just that no one in the family talks about him like he’s been disowned or something similar,” Rome adds, thinking out loud.
