Chapter Fifteen #2
Indignantly yanking his arm from Felipe’s grasp, Oliver cried, “Don’t apologize to him, and don’t let him out of your sight for that matter.
There is no reason for him to have this blanket.
” The words came out louder than Oliver intended, but he didn’t care.
He wasn’t being unreasonable, though the wary, placating look on Felipe’s face gave him pause.
Running his thumb over the stitchwork, Oliver deflated slightly.
“I only want to know how it came into his possession.”
“May I see it?” Oliver reluctantly handed the quilt to his partner. Opening it up and turning it over, Felipe frowned. “What’s so special about it that you’re ready to interrogate our host?”
“My nana made it. Look, there’s her mark on the back.”
“Oliver, I say this with the utmost respect, but I think you’re overreacting. I’m sure many people have quilts your nana made. Didn’t she sell them?”
“Sometimes, but this wasn’t one of them. She made this special for someone. I remember.”
“Are you sure she didn’t use a pattern or make a second one for someone else? I know you’ve had a very tiring day, we all have, but you can’t just accuse people of— of I don’t even know what. There are plenty of ways he could have ended up with that blanket.”
“I’m not overwrought!” Oliver yelled, his voice shrill in a way that didn’t help his case.
Taking a calming breath, he hugged the familiar quilt beneath his chin.
If he closed his eyes, he was four years old again hiding in his grandmother’s attic because she had company over, and he very much did not wish to speak to them.
Even after his nana reminded him the blanket belonged to someone else, Oliver had secretly taken it out of its trunk and hunkered into it more times than he could count.
A four year old didn’t truly understand or care that the handsome, warm blanket with a horse on it didn’t belong to him.
Oliver didn’t remember that much from when he was so young, but he vividly remembered sorting a tin of buttons while wrapped in the horse blanket and the comfort it brought.
When the trunk disappeared one day while he was outside playing with a neighbor, he was beside himself.
His nana had quieted his tears and reminded him that he had several perfectly good blankets of his own, but they weren’t that quilt.
After thirty-three years, he still remembered how it smelled back then, like wood and leather and ever so slightly like his grandmother.
Now, it smelled like the sachet of herbs hanging inside the linen closet to ward off pests, yet it was undoubtedly the same.
“You don’t understand, I remember this quilt.
I coveted this quilt. If we had stumbled upon it in a junk shop or some other person’s house, I would have thought it was a marvelous coincidence to run into an old friend, but,” Oliver dropped his voice and held Felipe’s gaze, “Mr. Allen is not saying something. Ever since I got back, he’s been looking at me.
Mark my words, the man knows something he isn’t telling. ”
Felipe ran a tired hand over his face. “Oliver, if you’re worried that he pushed you into the woods, he couldn’t have. He was at the sheriff's office with me the entire time.”
“Then, perhaps he knows who did because he seems very alarmed that I’m still here. I know you think I’m overreacting. If I was overwrought and upset, I would admit it, but I’m not. Ask him. Ask him what he’s not telling us.”
Holding up his hands in surrender, Felipe replied, “All right. We can ask him, but you need to calm down first. Mr. Allen is the only person in this town willing to cooperate with us. We can’t afford to lose that right now.
Let’s go into this assuming there is a logical explanation for him having this blanket and looking at you strangely, okay? ”
Oliver was fairly certain the explanation was that whoever was raising the dead needed more fodder and killing off a few more investigators would do quite nicely, but he nodded anyway.
Frowning at him, Felipe stepped closer and rubbed Oliver’s upper arms as he would back at the society.
The tension in his neck and shoulders fell away under his partner’s touch, but the knot of unease in his chest remained.
With a quick kiss and a squeeze of his shoulder, Felipe motioned for him to follow him into the parlor.
Gwen gave Oliver a raised brow, but he merely shook his head.
“Is everything all right?” Mr. Allen asked, his hoarse voice thin and his mouth tense as his attention flickered from one man to the other.
“Mr. Allen, can you tell us where you got this blanket?” Felipe asked, gently taking it from Oliver’s hand and holding it out to the other man.
“A dear friend made it for me years ago. Why?”
“What was your friend’s name?” Oliver pressed, ignoring Felipe’s exasperated look.
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“What do you mean you’re not at liberty to say? It’s a blanket, not a bomb. Ever since I came out of the Dysterwood, you’ve been acting weird. Did you get this from Abigail Hansson of Philadelphia or not?”
Mr. Allen’s blue eyes widened in surprise. “How do you know Mrs. Hansson?”
“Because she raised me! She was my grandmother.”
“Your grandmother? Then, that means— Come closer.”
Setting his pipe against the horse figurine on the end table, Mr. Allen motioned for Oliver to stand before him.
He glanced at Felipe for help, but he nudged him toward the innkeeper.
As Oliver knelt before his chair, Mr. Allen held the monocle to his damaged eye and studied his features.
Oliver tried not to squirm under the man’s intent stare.
He wasn’t certain Mr. Allen would find much of anything that resembled his nana in his features, but he let him look.
Mr. Allen’s gaze slid over Oliver’s hair and moved to his eyes and down his nose before coming to rest on his hands.
Oliver resisted the urge to tuck them out of sight when Mr. Allen hesitantly reached for them.
He eyed the lattice of veins on the back of his hands and the shape of his fingers before letting them go.
Mr. Allen shook his head and blinked as tears crept to the corners of his eyes.
Oliver nearly apologized out of habit when he patted his cheek and smiled.
“You’re Joanna’s boy. When I heard you came out of the woods, I was afraid Edmund or Francis had had a child out of wedlock, but no, you’re Joanna’s. Did you know you were born here?”
Oliver nodded. “That’s why I came.”
“It’s been, what, thirty-seven years since I carried you all the way from Aldorhaven to Philadelphia to take you to your grandmother.
The last time I saw you, you weren’t even a year old yet.
Now, look at you. You’re a grown man. I can’t believe it never occurred to me that it was you.
I knew your name was Oliver, but that’s not an uncommon name.
You probably don’t remember me, but I lived with you and your grandmother for a year until I got on my feet and joined the Union Army. ”
“And you left your trunk in our attic.”
Mr. Allen nodded. “Why is your last name Barlow? I assumed you would have taken your grandmother’s last name, but I didn’t think to ask. It’s not as if anyone calls a baby by its full name.”
“Technically, I did. Barlow was my nana’s maiden name,” Oliver said quietly.
“Of course, she gave you a different last name. We didn’t know if anyone in Aldorhaven knew Joanna’s maiden name was Hansson.
” Staring into Oliver’s features once more, Mr. Allen lingered on his eyes.
“You look so much like your parents. I didn’t see it before because I wasn’t looking.
Now, I can’t not see it. For years, I wondered what you would look like, which of your parents you took after. It’s both.”
“I wouldn’t know.” A flare of bitterness rose in Oliver’s throat that this man had known his parents, both of them, when he couldn’t. Pulling out of Mr. Allen’s grasp, Oliver staggered back on shaking legs. “I don’t know anything about either of my parents. My nana never spoke of them.”
“That was to protect you. That’s all any of us wanted, to keep you safe, and now, that’s all gone out the window.
You were never supposed to come to Aldorhaven.
That was the whole point of the plan, for you to go somewhere safe and never look back.
It’s why I never tried to reach out to find you after the War Between the States; I wanted to give you a clean break and to not say something that might lead you back here.
” Letting the eyeglass drop into his pocket, Mr. Allen sat back and rubbed his brow with a grimace.
“Joanna told me to leave Aldorhaven behind and never come back. I should have listened. I came back and tried to fix things, and now, you’re here.
I’ve undone everything she and Stephen sacrificed themselves for. ”
When he let out something that sounded like a groan or the prelude to tears, Oliver froze.
“You didn’t do anything to bring me here.
I’ve known about Aldorhaven for years. I found the letter my mother left for my grandmother, the one she was supposed to throw out.
I could have come here eighteen years ago. ”
“But you didn’t. You came because I wrote to the Paranormal Society for help.
If I hadn’t come back here, I doubt anyone would have written to them, and if the woods hadn’t taken the first investigators and scared off the second, you all wouldn’t be here.
Maybe Joanna was wrong, and you really can’t fight fate. ”
“I chose to take this case,” Oliver snapped.
His face heated and his chest tightened with frustration.
He had chosen to go to Aldorhaven. He didn’t believe in destiny or fate, and him coming there against Felipe’s wishes and his own sense was his choice, not some cosmic game to spite his parents or Mr. Allen.
When Felipe’s hand closed around his shoulder, the righteous fire dimmed a fraction.
He would not be a pawn. “Whether you wrote or not, Mr. Allen, I would have eventually come here looking for answers.”
“Either way, you all should leave Aldorhaven as soon as possible. You shouldn’t have come back here, Dr. Barlow; it isn’t safe for you. Once whoever pushed you into the woods realizes you survived, everything Joanna and Stephen did will be for nought. Eventually, they will figure out who you are.”
Who am I? Oliver’s pulse pounded in his ears, spurring his spiraling thoughts.
And who were Mr. Allen and his grandmother trying to keep him safe from for all these years?
If he hadn’t been overwrought before, he was now.
Suddenly, his body was tight with unspent tension, and he didn’t know where to put his hands or how to stand when all he wanted was to curl in a ball and be invisible.
All he wanted was to be Oliver Barlow the necromancer and medical examiner and nothing more.
He shouldn’t have come. He should have minded his business about the horse blanket.
And about his parents. And about Aldorhaven.
And about— A soft, furry head nudged against his hand, and Oliver looked down to find Argos pressing his body against his legs.
The moment Oliver knelt to pet him the dog bullied his way onto Oliver’s lap.
Argos stared up at him with large, soulful eyes as he rested his wide head on Oliver’s chest. Oliver released a tremulous breath as he ran a soothing hand over the dog’s back and watched Felipe whisper something to Gwen.
She nodded and slipped out of the parlor without a word.
A single tug came across the tether as Felipe patted the dog’s head and approached Mr. Allen.
“Before we make any decisions about leaving, Mr. Allen, we need to know what we’re up against. Oliver truly knows nothing about his family or why he shouldn’t be in Aldorhaven, and it isn’t fair for him to have come all this way and leave with nothing.
If we can’t stay to finish the case, Oliver at least deserves to know what happened to his mother and father. ”
For a long moment, Mr. Allen said nothing.
When Argos let out a mournful whine and gave Oliver’s face one long lick, Mr. Allen relented.
“As much as it pains me to see Joanna and Stephen’s work in jeopardy, it’ll be safer for you to leave at first light.
Let me deal with dinner, and I’ll tell you everything I know. ”