There’s no way I’m imagining this. I saw the straw. Why would there be straw in the house? But I also know how this looks to Christopher.
“Why can’t you at least try?” Christopher booms as he charges into the room, wild eyes, fury etched in every feature.
I scurry back against the headboard, hating that he’s so angry.
“I can’t be here all the time, Ember! You have to understand that. I have a career. I have to earn for our futures. I need you to be able to stand on your own two feet while I’m gone. I can’t deal with the insanity. Why can’t you give me that?”
“He was here!” I shout, the sound foreign to my own ears. “I saw the straw. He has Scarecrow either with him or doing his bidding. I saw the straw! I’m not making this up. I’m not losing my mind. I told you from the beginning that he would never let me go. You think I’m safe here, but I’m not. Not from him. Not ever.”
Christopher crosses the room to me, hands fisted and rage in his eyes. “Do you hear yourself? I need you to be strong, Ember. I’m trying to be patient. I’m trying to understand what you went through.”
“What I’m going through now is far worse than anything I endured in Hallelujah Junction.” I instantly regret my words and wish I could take them back, but they’re out, and I might as well be honest now. “I feel like I’m in a prison. Like I’m in shackles on display for all to judge me. I’m the freak from the ghost town, who poor Christopher feels he has to take care of. You think I don’t hear? You think I don’t see? I know what I am to your mother and your friends.”
“Then stop acting like a freak!” he screams.
His words feel like a punch to the gut or a blow to the face. I know his mother thinks I’m a freak, but Christopher? Does he?
He begins to pace the room back and forth like a caged animal. And a caged animal is clearly what he is, and I’m the keeper of the key.
“My mother said you started screaming hysterically and throwing her priceless vases. Explain to me why you did that.” His voice is calmer, but he hasn’t stopped pacing, and his face is growing redder by the minute.
Of course his mother painted my actions in the worst light.
“I screamed when I saw the straw. I thought I heard Scarecrow and Papa Rich whispering down below. I felt he was near… maybe with Papa Rich. I picked up a vase for protection, and I… I didn’t just purposely throw the vases around. I would never do that.”
“My mother said both she and Ms. Evans saw no sign of straw anywhere. No sign that anyone had entered the house. You have them both in a near panic now, thinking some one-legged man has broken into the house. My mother had to take medication to calm herself down.”
“I didn’t mean to scare them,” I say as I look down to my hands trembling in my lap. “But he was in the house, Christopher. I know he was.”
He takes a deep breath and then exhales. He does this a couple of times with his back to me before turning around and slowly walking to the bed. He sits down, and I flinch as he does, preparing for a punishment of some sort.
He notices my cowering. “Why did you just flinch? Do you really think I’d hit you?”
“You’re angry with me,” I say softly.
“Yes. But that doesn’t mean I’d hit you. I’m not Richard.”
“I know you aren’t him, but I’ve also never seen you so mad at me.”
I know deep down Christopher would never really hurt me on purpose, but then at the same time, there have been times I don’t recognize the man in front of me. It’s like there is a passing sun over him. Sometimes, he’s in the shade, and other times, the sun is beaming on his handsome face. Sometimes dark and sometimes light.
He reaches for my hand and closes his eyes for several moments before looking at me with such sadness. “I’m frustrated. Extremely frustrated. But not just at you. I know this hasn’t been easy on you, and it sure as fuck hasn’t been easy on me. I’m trying to do the best that I can. I understand you’re afraid. I’m trying to be sensitive to that fact, but you have to stop with the Scarecrow and Papa Rich talk. If not for your own sanity, then for everyone’s around you.”
I want to argue. I want to shake some sense into him and make him see the truth. Scarecrow is out there. Papa Rich is out there. They are waiting and watching, and Christopher is too blind to prepare for the attack. And an attack is most definitely coming. But Christopher has just started to calm down, and I don’t feel like continuing down the path of fury any longer.