Page 148 of Hunting Pretty

I didn’t want her to talk. I feared her words would dislodge more pieces of her past like sharp rocks from a mountain above, ready to crush her under its weight.

Knowing was one thing.

But now she was starting torememberwhat he did to her.

If I had only managed to convince her to stop investigating, she might never have started. She could have kept going, ignorant and happy.

I curled my arms around her, willing my love to shield her from any more pain, from more memories of my father. Even as hopelessness weighed heavy in my bones.

I had to protect her from any more memories. From any more pain.

But I didn’t know how.

A new wave of fear surged through me. There were still pieces missing, fragments of the nightmare I’d kept hidden from her.

And if she ever rememberedallof it… if she ever realized just how deep it went, I didn’t know what that would do to her.

I held her tighter, my hand trembling slightly as I stroked her back.

The floodgates had only just cracked open. How much longer until everything came pouring out? Until she uncovered the things I had tried so hard to shield her from?

And what would she do when she found out what I was still hiding?

Because she still hadn’t remembered everything.

AVA

For so long my memories were blank spaces in my mind. Like pictures that had been taken down off the wall and locked away in a long forgotten trunk in the attic.

But now the box that contained them all was cracking, splintering, jagged pieces falling out. One by one. Cutting me open.

Until they would drown me in my own screams.

“…Alice opened the bottle and drank a little of the liquid,” the professor read. “‘What a curious feeling!’ said Alice; ‘I must be shutting up like a telescope.’”

The professor peered at me over the top of the illustratedAlice in Wonderlandbook that he held in his weathered hand. “Do you want me to keep going, Ava?”

I wanted to beg him to keep going, to keep reading, but I couldn’t speak.

“Ava?”

A dangerous gleam shone from his beady eyes as he set down the book on the little side table and picked up his glass of whiskey.

Prickles swept through my small body as I slumped back on the couch, feeling heavy. So heavy.

He sipped at the amber liquid, never once taking his eyes off me.

Then he smacked his lips, set the glass aside, and parted his mustache over his thin lips with his fingers.

My throat was dry but I couldn’t even swallow.

I couldn’t reach for my mug of sweet hot chocolate which had enough of a sip left to soothe me.

Why couldn’t I move? Was I asleep? So why could I still see and feel everything?

He rose from the armchair and came to sit at the edge of the couch, a strange icky feeling coming over me as his eyes traveled over my paper-thin nightgown.

I couldn’t move as his thick fingers began to pull at the sweet little ribbon at my throat.

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