Page 61 of Possession

Longer than some, sure. Long? Not nearly long enough. Annabelle had still been in the prime of her life and vibrant. Indicating she’d had a lot of years had to sting considering she was gone, and her granddaughter missed her every single day.

The last thing I wanted to do was hurt Grace. Even though I already had, numerous times. And would again. It was unavoidable.

“She had so much left to do,” Grace said softly, moving her hand over the trackpad. She continued to scroll through the endless documents, searching for what, I didn’t know.

A clue. A memory. Answers.

Some reason why her grandmother had left a video before her death, saying Grace was in danger. Probably that reason had a lot to do with the recent break-ins by supposed “kids” at her grandmother’s house.

Myhouse now. As hard as it was for Grace to come to grips with that, she wasn’t the only one. I’d forever be the young boy peering longingly through the windows even though all that glass now belonged to me.

Grace shifted on the stool, locks of her silky blond hair slipping down her back, and all I could see were the parallels between those windows and Grace.

Both seemed transparent. Both blocked out just as much as they let inside.

“I know.” I cleared my throat and tried to shove down everything but what mattered now.

The facts. Only the facts. Muddled and full of what the fuck as they happened to be.

“The grandmother I knew rarely dated. My grandfather died years ago, and then it was just her and me. But in her diary, she mentioned two younger men. I don’t know when she saw them. When she even hadtimeto see them, since she was so focused on me and my activities. As I grew older, she would’ve had more opportunities, of course. But when I first came to live with her and when I was a pre-teen, then a teenager—well, I thought her life was an open book.”

“It’s hard for children to see their parents or grandparents as they truly are,” I hedged.

“What is that supposed to mean? I saw her just fine. Or I thought I did. She just had hidden sides. So many parts I never knew about.” Blowing out a breath, she braced her chin on her hand and stared at the screen. “What the hell is this?”

I glanced from her to the laptop and couldn’t stop my quick intake of breath. I was on her screen. Oh, the picture was grainy, and she probably wouldn’t recognize me from that long ago. Not right away. I wore my hair longer back then, in a messy style that made me cringe. I’d had on the full complement of denim and leather, and a surly expression dominated my face.

But it was definitely me, standing outside the Beacon School. With a perfectly coiffed Annabelle at my side, all smiles. We’d been surprised by the picture taker, my teacher. Ms. Phelps had wanted to add some “fun” shots to her classroom wall, and Annabelle was a prime benefactor of the art program, so she was a natural choice to photograph.

Me, I’d been an unhappy bystander. Caught outside smoking and tugged into conversation with a woman I mostly tolerated because of her granddaughter.

Grace.

“Photographs too.” My voice sounded rusty from disuse.

“Yes, Blake, photographs. There’s a ton here. A bunch of my grandmother with people from town, with me. Some with my parents. But this one.” She closed the one of me and Annabelle and immediately opened it again. “This is at the Beacon School,” she said slowly.

“Yes.”

“And this boy?—”

I reached out and gripped her shoulder. “It’s me.”

She bolted off the stool as if I’d scalded her from the warmth of my hand. “You told me you knew her. You just didn’t tell me when, or how, or why. Goddammit, why?”

Swallowing hard, I laced my fingers behind my neck and paced around the counter and back again. She gave me a wide berth.

I suspected she’d be doing a whole lot more than that soon enough.

“What other photographs are there? Show me.” When she made no move to oblige, I sat at the laptop and slid my fingers over the trackpad, prepared to do the honors myself.

Instead, I just stared into my own angry, mistrustful eyes.

We’d both been children back in those days, Grace more so than me. I’d been fully a teenager then, shuttled to a summer art program in the hopes I wouldn’t end up bleeding out in a gutter somewhere as my father had. That was the legacy he’d left me, you see. To threaten and cheat people while I smiled in their face and waited for the day a knife appeared between my ribs.

I’d grown up using my fists. Kids talked, as they always do. They knew my mother raised me alone, and they made comments. Innocent things sometimes, usually not. They called me a bastard and other things, names that I used as fuel later on. At first, I’d ignored them. Then came the day I beat a boy until his mouth was raw with blood and I knocked out his two front teeth.

After that, I’d been transferred to a school for problem children. An alternative school, they called it. My grades were fine. More than. I was acing all my classes. But I didn’t fit in. I was a potential threat to the other students.

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