Lines 12/5 - Fearless Part IV

Just two weeks to go! I can't quite believe it.

From Fearless
Part IV: Follow You Home

Copyright © 2014 by Lauren Gilley

**

          She wanted to cry, looking at what had once been his home, and that was before she turned to look at him, and saw the naked pain in his eyes. The house wasn’t the only thing that was haunted. The boy that it had raised was full of ghosts too.

            Ava wanted to reach for him, touch him, comfort him. But she felt the chasm of ignorance opening up between them. She didn’t know his ghosts; and she needed to know them if she ever hoped to exorcise them.

            “Sometimes, the best thing you can do is wait,” Maggie had advised her once. “Everyone can talk. But waiting’s an art.”

            So she waited.

            Birds called in the tree tops. Dragonflies swooped low along the water. The midges and mosquitos teemed. Something plunked into the water.

            Mercy said, “Do you want to know about Oliver Landau?”

            “Very much.”

            “It’s not a nice story.”

            “Most aren’t. I can handle it.”

            He nodded. He took a deep breath, and in a haunted patch of swamp, while the sweat rolled down their bodies, he told her the tale of his life’s turning point. The journey that had led him to her.