Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
PAIGE
Icut off as Ford yanked on the handle of my door. He rattled the knob back and forth, twisting and pulling. He was strong—I knew firsthand how strong—but the door didn’t budge. The knob turned under his hand, but it was as if a deadbolt had been flipped, though there was none.
“What the fuck?” Ford muttered. He pounded at the door, the sound echoing back at us, oddly muffled.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, not getting it. “Is it stuck?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “There’s no give.”
I plucked the manila envelope from his hand and set it on the table by the door. Wrapping my fingers around the icy crystal knob, I turned and pulled. The knob turned easily, the latch clicking as it pulled back, but the door didn’t budge. I yanked harder. Nothing.
“It’s kind of a problem, because it’s fucking cold in here,” Ford said, frustration tightening his voice. “Really cold.”
“The heat must be out,” I said, pulling again at the door.
“Clearly,” he said, “but I can see my breath in here, Paige.” He turned to look out the window into the dark night beyond. “It’s cold outside—as cold as it’s been all year—but Heartstone is built too well for it to be as cold inside as it is out there.”
He had a point, but still… “It’s windy,” I said. “Maybe—”
Ford shook his head, dismissing that explanation, and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “What the fuck?” he said sharply, scowling down at the screen.
Rather than asking to see his phone, I pulled out my own and saw SOS where there should have been at least two bars. We never had SOS in the house. I pulled up the Wi-Fi and tried to connect. I could see the network, but I couldn’t get on it.
“Fuck,” Ford muttered, staring out the window. “It’s too soon, and he couldn’t have gotten anyone in the Manor.”
“What are you talking about?” I lifted my fist to pound on the door. As when Ford had hit it, the sound was oddly muffled.
“Haywood,” Ford said, now looking at his phone. He held down a button on the side as the screen went black. “He as good as admitted there’d be more coming after me, but he couldn’t have found someone new so fast, and he’d never get anyone in the Manor.”
That distracted me from the door. I’d picked up enough of what was going on that I wasn’t surprised Cole Haywood would send another killer after Ford.
But someone who could get into Heartstone?
“No one is getting past Hawk and his team,” I said, pounding on the door again.
“It’s just really cold and the heat is out. ”
Ford looked down at his phone; the screen lit again. “Fuck. Still SOS.” He shoved his phone in his back pocket. “This is more than the heat being out, Paige.”
I shook my head. What more could it be? “It’s been really cold all day. Maybe the heat went out earlier and the room chilled, but you were distracted when you came in, so you didn’t notice.”
I hadn’t picked up on it at first, more focused on Ford and the picture in his hand than the icy temperature in my room.
I trembled violently with cold. Crossing to grab the throw blanket at the end of my bed, I wrapped it around myself.
It didn’t help much, considering the blanket felt as cold as the air in the room.
“I’m going to see if turning my phone off and back on again makes a difference,” I muttered, sitting on the edge of my bed and doing just that.
Ford didn’t bother to point out that he’d just done the same to no effect.
I watched him pound helplessly on the door, the strange, muted beats echoing back at me.
My brain refused to accept what was happening—the plunging temperature, the SOS on my phone, the stuck door.
I rebooted the phone. Still no signal. How?
“Can we go out the window?” I asked, dropping my phone on the bed and crossing the room to the window. I leaned over a console table to wrench it open. It didn’t budge a millimeter. It was as if it had been nailed shut from the outside.
“Does it usually open?” Ford asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I haven’t tried.”
“I don’t think we’re getting out of here for the moment,” he said grimly.
“Well, that sucks.” I pulled the blanket tighter around myself. “I’m going to freeze to death in my own bedroom.”
Ford picked the manila envelope up off the table by the door and sank back into the armchair in the sitting area. He leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his knees, turning the envelope over and over in his hands.
“It seems pretty hypocritical,” he said quietly, his eyes on the envelope, “to be so angry at you for lying after all the things I’ve done.”
I sat on the edge of my bed, kicked off my shoes, pulled my feet up, and curled into as tight a ball as I could to conserve body heat, fighting the shivers running through me.
“I don’t know every mistake you’ve made, Ford, but you didn’t do anything bad to me,” I said softly, my voice trembling.
“And I lied to you. Maybe not overtly, but I was still misleading you. I came here because of your mother.”
“You should have told us,” he said.
“I know,” I whispered. “I didn’t think it would matter.
I didn’t think there’d be you. Or that I’d love your family so much.
I was angry and grieving, and I thought I saw a chance to find my father, so I took it.
And the funny thing is, you’re angry and I’m going to get fired, but I—” I shrugged under the blanket, unable to look at him.
“I never even really looked for him. I asked around a little. It didn’t take long to learn that no one likes to talk about Sarah and…
I’ve been happy here. It didn’t seem as important. And now I wish I’d…”
I shook my head, looking at the carpet, my vision blurring as tears rose in my eyes.
“Now I wish I’d left it all alone. Taken the job because Janice Smith recommended me, and just let it all go.” I forced myself to meet his eyes, unable to read anything in those cool green depths. “I’m sorry I wasn’t honest.”
“What makes you think you’re going to get fired?” Ford said without accepting my apology.
“Oh, come on,” I said, pulling the blanket tighter around me.
“Griffen and Hawk are so tight on security, background checks. When they find out I misled them about who I was—that I took the position, in part, to use your family history to find my father? You know he’s going to fire me.
” My throat tightened, words choking inside.
I raised a hand to brush a tear off my cheek.
“It’s fair. But I like being here. And I—” My voice caught again, and I choked the words out.
“I like being with you, and I’m sorry I ruined everything.
” I lowered my eyes. “And I’m even sorrier that I did it to find someone who never cared about me in the first place. ”
It was the hard truth, one I hadn’t admitted to myself.
But my father hadn’t cared about me. If he had, he would have come back.
I wasn’t even sure what I had hoped to find out about him, now that the truth had come out.
Did I want him to apologize? To love me?
He’d made it clear he didn’t by staying away.
“Why did you need to find him so much?” Ford asked quietly.
I considered my words. I wanted to tell him the truth, even if it hurt.
“I wanted to know where I come from, other than her. She hated me so much. I could never do anything right. It was always, ‘You’re just like him,’ ‘you’re a loser,’ and ‘you’re stupid and selfish,’ and whatever insult fit the moment.
Everything bad about me was because of him.
When I was a kid, I believed he must be a monster for her to hate him so much.
And then I got older and saw that the hateful one was her.
And I started to wonder—was he that bad?
Or had he just escaped?” I swallowed hard.
“But he didn’t take me with him. If he escaped, he left me there—with her.
And I have to believe he knew what he was leaving me with.
He knew, and he left anyway. And then I found that trunk, and she was gone, and I thought…
Maybe I came from something better than her.
If I could find him, I could understand why he left. I didn’t know your mom left you, too.”
“I wondered the same thing when I was a kid,” he said quietly, eyes fixed on his joined hands.
“How she could have left us with him. Miss Martha loved her so much, and I didn’t get how someone that lovable could have abandoned her children.
But then I grew up with my father, and I understood what she might have done to escape.
He never mentioned her—not like your mother did with your father.
He took down all the pictures, removed every memory of her, and married MaryAnne a year later.
It was like our mother never existed. She was just gone.
” He paused, turning the envelope over in his hands again before holding it out to me.
“I’ll give this back, but I want to read the letters.
I don’t have anything like this of hers. ”
I nodded, tears spilling over my cheeks, my heart twisting in my chest as I thought of what I would give for an envelope full of letters written in my father’s hand.
“He must have written her back,” I said. “But she probably destroyed them. Especially if they were hiding their affair.”
“I’ve been going through boxes of papers in the attic,” Ford said, “and I haven’t seen any letters.”
I nodded, not expecting there to be any.
I rose off the bed slowly, crossing to the door.
Only hours ago, I’d been so full of hope.
I’d realized I’d been looking forward to finding Ford in my room after dinner, pulling off his clothes, drawing him under the covers. And now? Everything had fallen apart.