Chapter Seven — A Town That Keeps Secrets
1271 Words
Raven Creek looks different when you know someone is watching over you.
Not smaller. Not less pretty. The morning light still does that thing where it catches the creek at the end of the main road and turns the water gold. The old men are still on their bench doing nothing with great commitment. Dolly's chalkboard still has the breakfast special in careful handwriting.
But I see the edges now.
The way certain men slow down when they pass the diner window and glance inside. The way Cole shifts his weight when a car he does not recognise comes down the street. The way Margaret looked at the door last night when I came in from my shift, checking behind me before she closed it, like she was confirming I was alone.
They are all doing it.
Watching.
I am not sure if that makes me feel safer or more afraid.
Both, maybe. At the same time. Which is a strange way to feel and not one I have a lot of experience with.
I finish the breakfast shift and help Dolly wipe down the tables and somewhere around ten in the morning, when the diner is empty and Dolly is in the kitchen doing her ordering, I sit at the counter with a coffee and I open my phone.
I search my mother's name.
Elaine Vale.
The results are what they have always been. Nothing useful. A few old directories. A mention in a local paper from twenty years ago about a school fundraiser. Nothing that tells me anything I do not already know.
I search the ring.
Silver family rings engraved Vale 1974.
Nothing.
I sit back and look at the ceiling.
My mother came from somewhere. Everyone comes from somewhere. She had parents, grandparents, a history that stretched back before I existed. But she never talked about any of it. No photographs of her childhood. No stories about where she grew up. No relatives who called at Christmas or sent cards on birthdays.
Just the two of us in a small apartment in the city. Just her quiet careful love and her worried eyes and a ring she made me promise to keep close.
I always thought she was just a private person.
Now I think she was a frightened one.
The diner door opens and I look up.
It is not Cole. It is a woman I have not seen before. Mid thirties, dark hair pulled back, wearing a Black Reapers jacket that sits on her like she was born in it. She is not tall but she takes up space the way confident people do without trying.
She looks at me with direct, uncomplicated curiosity.
"You are Sera," she says.
"I am," I say.
"I am Nadia." She sits down at the counter two stools from me. "I run the club's books and I fix things when they break and I am generally the most useful person you will meet in this town." She says it without arrogance, just plain statement of fact. "Cole talks too much and Kael talks too little so I thought someone should come and actually have a proper conversation with you."
I look at her.
"Does Kael know you are here?" I ask.
"Kael does not tell me where to go," she says pleasantly. "Coffee please."
I pour it.
She wraps her hands around the mug and looks at me the way women look at other women when they are deciding how honest to be.
"How are you doing?" she asks. "Genuinely."
The question catches me off guard. Everyone else in this town has been kind in a practical, task oriented way. Margaret fed me. Dolly gave me work. Cole kept watch. Kael gave me carefully rationed information.
Nobody has asked me how I am doing.
"Honestly?" I say.
"Please."
"I feel like I walked into a film that started twenty years before I arrived and everyone knows the plot except me."
Nadia nods slowly. "That is a fair description of Raven Creek generally."
"Is it always like this?"
"No." She turns her mug in a slow circle on the counter. "You changed things when you walked in. Kael has been different since that night."
"Different how?"
She considers this. "Focused," she says finally. "More than usual. Which is saying something because Kael is already the most focused person I have ever met." She pauses. "Something shifted for him when he saw you."
I look down at my coffee.
"He knew who I was," I say quietly. "Before I ever walked in. He already knew my name."
"Yes," Nadia says simply.
"You knew too."
"Yes."
I look up at her. "How many people in this club know who I am?"
"The ones who need to."
"And who decides who needs to?"
"Kael," she says. "Always Kael."
I absorb that.
"Can you tell me anything?" I ask. "Anything at all. Because right now I have a ring with my family name on it from 1974 and a man outside watching the street and three strangers who looked at my face like they were checking it against a photograph and I am running out of patience for being kept in the dark."
Nadia is quiet for a moment.
Then she sets down her mug and she looks at me steadily.
"Your mother did not leave the city because she wanted a quiet life," she says carefully. "She left because someone made it very dangerous for her to stay."
I go still.
"Who?" I ask.
"That is Kael's story to tell. Not mine." She holds up a hand before I can argue. "I know that is frustrating. But there is an order to these things and the order matters. Trust me on that."
I look at her for a long moment.
"Why should I trust any of you?" I ask. Not aggressively. Genuinely.
Nadia looks back at me with steady honest eyes.
"Because Kael could have handed you over the night you walked in," she says quietly. "There were people who expected him to. People it would have been much simpler to say yes to." She pauses. "He did not."
The words land somewhere deep and stay there.
I think about Marsh. About the way he walked out of the diner when Kael appeared. About the money left on the table next to three untouched coffees.
People who expected him to hand me over.
"Why did he not?" I ask.
Nadia picks up her mug.
"You should ask him that," she says.
She finishes her coffee and stands and pulls her jacket straight with the easy movement of someone always slightly in motion.
"Sera," she says before she leaves. "Whatever you are feeling right now, frightened or angry or completely overwhelmed. It is all reasonable. You are allowed to feel all of it." She pauses. "But do not run. Not yet. Not until you know the full story."
She walks out.
I sit at the counter alone.
Do not run.
Three days ago running was the only thing I knew how to do.
I look out the window. Cole is still across the street. He raises a hand when he sees me looking, a small easy wave, like a man saying I am here and everything is fine even if we both know that is not entirely true.
I raise my hand back.
Then I pick up my coffee and I think about a mother who was frightened her whole life and never told me why.
And I decide that whatever comes next, I am going to stop running long enough to find out.
- Writer
