“And your real parents? Have you ever tried looking for them?” “Well, yeah, actually, right after I turned eighteen. Henry and Trisha Logan were the names on the birth certificate, but I think they’re fake.”
“Fake?”
Emry stopped walking, bent, and picked up a white rock. He tossed it across the water and it skipped playfully a couple times across the surface before sinking. “The only reason I say that is because those names can’t be linked to anyone. I’ve hired different guys to try to locate them, and they always say the same thing. There’s no information on any Henry or Trisha Logan who were married and gave up a child. So I’ve pretty much gave up on the idea.”
I let that all sink in. Emry Logan abandoned and his parents put down fake names on his birth certificate? Did they know he was special? Were they like that and trying to hide the fact? I was sure he had thought about all these things, so I didn’t bother bringing them up. I didn’t want to risk upsetting him either or talk about him being abandoned. I could only imagine what a beautiful baby he had been. How could anyone have ever given him up or not wanted him? It was truly heartbreaking for me to think about.
“Have you ever seen anyone else here?”
“Not a soul.”
“That’s interesting.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
We walked away from the beach and into a patch of golden grass. It was like silk beneath my feet and felt wonderful and soothing to the touch. Red clouds rolled overhead. They were just a shade darker than the sky itself.
“And you haven’t been able to warp anywhere else? Is that the right word for it?” He laughed. “I don’t know what to call it either. Call it anything you want. And no, just here. Always here.” I inhaled a big gulp of fresh air. The sweetness of it enlightened my taste buds with the new sensation and taste. “Okay. So, you said you tossed Buck Brady into a tree by willing him to do that with your mind?”
He nodded, listening intently to the question at hand.
“So, why are you still in jail? I mean, can’t you just will yourself out or whatever?”
“Funny you should bring that up,” he said. “I’ve thought about that many times. Here’s the thing. First of all, I’ve never been able to do anything like that before until Buck had upset me with the accusations about Wes, so I have no idea how I did it to begin with. I’ve thought about conjuring up those emotions that set me off in an attempt to break out of there, but really, what good would it do me? I mean, they’d just hunt me down again and throw me right back in jail.”
“So why do you ever go back?”
“To Earth you mean?”
“Yes.”
He pressed his lips together. “I haven’t explored but only a portion of this land. I don’t have the first clue how to live here or what to eat. What if the water’s not safe? I just feel too insecure. I would love to be able to stay here, but it doesn’t seem feasible.” Emry turned toward me, his hands sliding over my shoulders and holding me in place. “Is this all making sense to you, the answers to your questions?”
“Actually, yes. Basically you’re just as clueless as I am at this point?”
He grinned. “Exactly.” His eye turned toward one of the edges of the cliffs. “Do you think you can climb? I want to show you a favorite spot of mine.”
“I can try.” The cliff was steep and jagged. The soles of my feet felt like they were getting stabbed with each step upwards. Emry would pull himself up first and then reach down and help me by practically pulling me up to the next landing. I had never tried mountain climbing before. The movements were a struggle for me, and my body ached and ultimately refused with each attempt.
As we reached the final hike to the top, Emry reached his hand down to me one last time. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead, and his hair came down to stick in his eyes as he lowered his head to look at me.
“Ready?” I reached up and felt his hand lock around mine and then my body being lifted upwards to the very top. The rock itself seemed brittle and unsteady as our feet cautiously stepped on it. Emry led me to the edge of it. It came to an abrupt sharp point that extended over the water.
“Now look down.”
I glanced at him hesitantly.
He gave me a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry. I have ahold of you.”
I carefully walked to the outer part of the roof of this cave, making sure to shift the majority of my weight to the balls of my feet. I heard a few pieces of rock crack underneath my feet. Emry’s strong hands were gripped tightly around my waist. I stretched out my neck so I could peer downwards.
The water was below us at a great distance, but it was as if I was staring into a sheet of perfect glass. Seeing through the clear water was an underwater cave that seemed to plummet endlessly in a spiral under the water. It was like a gigantic hole that stopped where the water’s surface began. I gasped for air as I realized I had been holding my breath.
“Oh, Emry,” I whispered. “That’s incredible. I don’t even know what to say. I feel like I could stare at that for hours.”
He pulled me back. “Could you imagine falling into something like that?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Can you imagine what kind of creatures are lurking in that dark hole?” He raised his eyebrows at the thought. “I don’t think I want to find out.”
“Me either.”
We went back over to a flatter area of the cliff and sat down. Emry wrapped an arm around me, and I leaned over to rest my head against his neck. You could see even more of Evadere from up here at this height. The golden grasses extended upwards and looked as if they touched the red sky. It seemed like miles and miles of gold everywhere as the sun danced off every aspect of this place and illuminated the whole thing. The white dots of stars were like diamonds that stuck out against the rose-colored sky even in the sun. I looked away and closed my eyes for a moment, just trying to concentrate on being here alone with Emry and feeling his arm pulling me in tightly, safely.
“You have to tell me what you’re thinking,” Emry pleaded. “You know everything, and I feel like I know nothing.”
“What do you want to know?” “You’re here with me now in my beautiful Evadere.” He grinned smugly at the name he had created for this place. “You know more about me than anyone else, and the only response I’ve gotten from you are facial expressions. I need to know your thought process to it all.”
What was I going to say? I had doubted him, and I didn’t want for him to ever know that, because it had been such a disgraceful thing to do to this beautiful creature sitting before me who had never felt like he belonged to my world because he probably didn’t. He belonged to some place like this, and how did someone like me become so fortunate as to experience something like this? I didn’t feel like I even deserved to be with him, let alone for my eyes to be able to see this place. “I’m just trying to wrap my mind around it all.” I looked up into his eyes and then looked away again, hoping he wouldn’t be able to see how sad I was suddenly becoming. I didn’t belong here. I belonged to Seneca, to live my same, expected, dull lifestyle there until I was old and gray and then I would die there.
“I think it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” I told him. “More beautiful than anything I could have ever pictured in my mind on my own. And, I think you’re beautiful, every part of you.” I felt bold, as if I could tell him anything in the way of how I felt toward him. It was almost as if this were my last chance, the last time I would get to be with him all alone in this way. I tried to shake the sudden burden of loneliness so I could enjoy this moment and what I had left of it now. “I’ve always been drawn to you. There’s something about you, and now I know what it is. You are different, but not in a bad way. You’re kind and gentle. You’re a good person, Emry. You have these remarkable gifts and strengths, and the fact that you’ve told me your secret, well, that’s just crazy to me.”
“Why?”
“Because who am I to know these things?
I’m just an ordinary girl without anything special. I feel like you’ve wasted your secret on me,” I blurted out. I could tell instantly that my words had pained him as his eyes gave it all away. He pulled his arm away from my shoulder and positioned himself so that he was still very close but directly in front of me, face-to-face. “Don’t say that about yourself, Anna. You are special. You’re a good person, too. I don’t know much about you, but from what I can tell, you’re caged in just as much as I am. It’s like you have no sense of freedom or any way to express who you really are.”
“Too much is expected of me.”
“By others. But what do you want for yourself? Have you ever asked yourself that question?”
I buried my head into my knees, attempting to hide the tears that had come on so quickly and that were now racing down my cheeks. “I hadn’t until I met you.”
“What do you want, Anna?” he asked more sternly. I cried into my knees for a few minutes before being able to talk again. He didn’t try to interfere with my moment of emotional release. “I want a life of my own. I want to be my own person. I feel like everything around me, everything I have ever known is a lie.”
“It’s not a lie, Anna, it’s just that there is so much more to be realized.” I looked up at Emry, feeling the burden of everything that had been heaved upon my shoulders lately and wanting to let it all go, wanting to cave in and tell Emry everything. It wasn’t fair that he told me all about his life and I told him nothing. Why was I trying to be so brave? I didn’t need to hold all of these things in anymore. I had someone I trusted and could talk to, someone that would listen. I needed to finally get it all out in the open. He wouldn’t judge me if I told him about my father, about Carlin, my mother being in the hospital.
“Emry, there are these things that have been going on lately,” I began.
“What kind of things?” He lowered his eyebrows as if concerned.
I felt a lump in my throat and swallowed hard. It didn’t budge. “It’s my family,” I told him. “They’re not what they seem.” I went on to tell Emry everything. It all came gushing out. Once I started, I couldn’t stop talking. I told him about Buck Brady and his interest in me, how I decided to play along just to know more about Emry, how Buck’s car had gotten the flat tire and we saw my father with Mrs. Anderson at her house, how upset I had been and my mother’s heart condition. I told him about my mother’s reaction to Mrs. Anderson showing up at the hospital and then about Carlin and the dark cloud she had brought into our already demented household. I even told him about Russell, the man my mother had been engaged to and who Carlin had also loved. It seemed like Emry had sat there forever, listening to me go on and go about all of my so-called problems.
When I was done, I felt so much better, so relieved to have gotten it all out. I leaned between Emry’s legs and bent over to rest my forehead against his hard chest. I felt his hand touch my head and then begin to repeatedly run through my hair.
“Those other times you came to see me, you never mentioned any of this. I had no idea,” he whispered, his other arm wrapping around my back to comfort me. “I didn’t want to bother you with it,” I replied.
“Why?”
“Because,” I said, irritated with myself that I now had burdened him with all of my insignificant dramas. “You’re in jail, Emry. You have much bigger problems to deal with.”
Emry chuckled, the noise vibrating in his chest and radiating to my head. He placed his fingers under my chin and gently pushed my head up so that he could look into my soggy brown eyes. “You’ve done so much for me. The least I can do for you is listen. I want to know what’s going on in your life, Anna, you have to believe that and know that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Listen to me. You have a lot going on. Don’t think of your problems as less to deal with than what I have to deal with.”
“They’re not even close to being the same.” “I wish you didn’t have any problems,” he admitted, his eyes penetrating into my own. “I’ve only created more burden for you.”
“I don’t regret meeting you, Emry. The burden that I carry is that I feel as if my whole life has been a lie.” I stood up and walked to the edge of the cliff, peering down at the wonder below me, the red skies overhead. I let the intense sorrow that I should be accustomed to, fill me to the point of more tears.
Emry immediately came over to me. He stroked the back of my head, his fingers running down the nape of my neck. “I don’t understand.” I turned around and looked at his beautiful face and all of its features that I had instantly loved. I didn’t want him to see my pain, but I was tired of trying to be brave, tired of hiding what I was truly feeling. “All of the things that were imprinted on me as a child, from being raised in the church, in a religious family.”
“You’re doubting God?”
“If there is one.”
Emry looked horrified that those words had come from my mouth. “Anna, do you even realize what you’re saying?”
I suddenly felt ashamed by his reaction, a sudden heat bursting forth in my cheeks. “You do believe in God?” “How could you not?” He put his hands in the air and turned around slowly looking at his beloved Evadere, this world that had found him and attached itself to him. “Anna, just look around you. This didn’t all just happen. Someone created it.”
The stars twinkled overhead at me, and I did feel foolish. Emry was right. How could I just turn my back so easily on my faith? “It’ll be hard to look at Earth in the same way after being here, but there’s beauty on Earth, too, Anna, and again, someone put it there.” He hugged me against his chest. I pressed my face into his bare skin inhaling the scent of him. “Nobody took me to church when I was a kid. You’re lucky in the way that you have that background. Me, I don’t really know what I’m talking about when it comes to that stuff, but you do. But I think I’ve really always believed. Sometimes even a guy like me prays. Does that seem stupid?”
I smiled. “No, not at all.”
“Really, it’s not so hard to believe there’s a bigger power out there than yourself.” He smirked.
No, not after today especially, I thought. My outlook on life had changed. There was this whole other realm out there. There was more beyond just ourselves. “I don’t know why I just said that. I think I was headed more in a direction of blaming God for everything going on in my family right now. It’s like nothing ever happened to us. We were bound together by an unbreakable bond, the kind of love that doesn’t falter. And now, one thing after another keeps happening. We’re a mess.” I sighed, shutting my eyes as the pain returned.
“Listen, nothing can always be perfect. Maybe these things were always there, you were just blocking them out. I could see you doing that. Now you see there’s more out there, and along with it came the realization that everyone around you who you thought were perfect aren’t, and it seems like a lot to handle all at once because you’ve let your walls down and along with it, reality has set in.”
I thought about what he was saying for a moment. Could that be true? Had my family always been this way and I just sort of ignored it?
“So really, I’m a mess, too.” “Well,” he said grinning. “Look what you’ve accomplished today. Pretending to be an attorney to get to be close to an accused murderer, traveling to another world … seems normal enough to me.”
I laughed at his sarcasm. “You’re right.”
“I know I’m selfish dragging you into my world … bad choice of words.”
I laughed again. He always had this way of making me feel better even when I felt at my worst. “I know you should run away from me, and if you want to go, I won’t stand in your way.” “Emry,” I tried to stop him.
“Just please listen. I don’t want you to go, Anna, but I don’t know how this whole thing is going to turn out. I mean, have you thought about it?” “You didn’t do it, Emry. You’ll get out of there.” But the truth was I had thought about it. That’s why I was so afraid this was the las
t time I’d be near him. That thought terrified me, but I wanted to be strong for him and not give him any doubt that he might be in prison the rest of his life. I couldn’t bear that sort of truth if it was what was headed in our direction next.
He took my hands in his and ran his thumbs over my skin. Then he released one hand to run his fingers through his hair. “There’s more to the story than just accusing me of killing Wes.” “What do you mean?”
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that right after Buck gets magically thrown through the air and into a tree I get arrested. Something else is happening. They’re afraid of me. Your dad’s involved, too.” “Father …” The word stuck in my throat. “I don’t know what exactly his involvement is. I don’t really know what’s going on or if they blame me for what happened to Buck, but my suspicions are pointing in that direction. Something more is going on, and Wes has just been a cover-up to get me locked up.”
He was probably right. What did they know, and why would they be afraid of Emry to have to falsely accuse him of murder and even get a witness to say that she saw it, to make sure he wouldn’t be able to get out of jail? And what exactly was my father’s involvement in this whole situation? It sent a chill up my spine. “I’ll get to the bottom of it,” I promised quickly as my mind was suddenly buzzing with how exactly I was going to be able to do this.
“No.” Emry pulled away from me so he could look straight into my eyes to get his point across. “I don’t want you involved in this mess.”
“I’m already involved,” I argued. “You can’t expect me to just sit back and do nothing.”
He nodded. “That’s exactly what I expect you to do. This is a dangerous situation, I can feel it.” His eyes were narrowed at me and he had a stern look on his face, making him look even more beautiful. I didn’t want to make a promise to him that I knew was impossible for me to keep. “You’re not going to listen to me, are you?” He had seen straight through it as if he had read my thoughts that exact moment.
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