Page 35 of Creed
“You’ve done your research about me,” he said, biting the words as much as saying them. “Why? You already knew I was a soldier. What good will knowing my parents’ names do you?”
“Not much,” Chester Grieve sighed as he closed the folder. “You’ve barely spoken to your parents, or any of your family, since you left for the service. But I’m curious about one thing.”
He leaned forward as far as his wheelchair would allow.
“Why would a man with plenty of living family, and even a dear friend waiting for you, choose to buy a random patch of land that he has no connection to?”
CHAPTER 7
Creed
While Kaydenand I had been locked away together, I hadn’t just been trying to crack the code to Lisianthus’s journal. I’d also been preparing myself for the inevitable interrogation we would face. A man like Chester Grieve would only be so patient. Sooner or later, he’d demand answers from us.
I had mentally run through every question and interrogation tactic I thought he would use and composed answers beforehand.
I thought I’d prepared for any possibility.
I was wrong.
Out of all things that the man could have asked, I never expected him to question why Magnus, Brody, and I had purchased our property in Emberwood.
There was no point in even trying to bluff an answer when I had no idea what he was looking for.
“I... don’t understand the question,” I was forced to admit.
Chester Grieve idly waved a folder that was probably filled with pages of information about me.
“I’ve looked into it. Neither you nor your companions have any ties to the area. No family nearby, and by all accounts, none of you have even visited the state, let alone ever set foot in Emberwood before.”
“So what?”
Cold eyes, frosted with their advanced age, regarded me without a hint of human emotion. A robot would have had more life in its gaze.
I’d seen that look on only a few people before. Those who were so hopeless they had nothing left in them, and those who were so sure in their convictions there was no room in them for anything else.
Chester Grieve was many things, but he was not hopeless.
“It just strikes me as odd,” he continued to say as if we were merely having a casual conversation. “I can understand if you didn’t want to live near family. Not all families are... harmonious, after all. But of all the random mountain towns in the country, why Emberwood?”
I recalled the day Magnus, Brody, and I had first discovered the property listing. We’d been randomly looking through real estate sites in our spare time, mostly just trying to figure out what we even wanted. Until then, we’d had a vague list of requirements, such as the amount of land we thought we could handle, and a price point we were comfortable with, but other than that, everything had been up in the air.
The idea of building our homes from scratch hadn’t occurred to us, until we randomly stumbled across the listing in Emberwood.
From the moment we saw it, something about the place just felt right. Plans for what we could do with the land fell into place as if we’d been discussing them for months. We could already tell exactly where Magnus’s garden would go, and where Brody would put his workshop.
But how could I possibly explain this to Chester Grieve?
The man was expecting a concrete answer, and I had none.
“We just... liked the place,” I eventually said.
I expected Chester Grieve to get angry over my lack of a proper answer; even to my own ears it felt like I was deflecting.
Instead, however, a smile spread across his face.
“You just liked the place? How very... sentimental.”
“Is there a point to this?” I snapped. Something about the man’s tone sent an unpleasant feeling snaking up my spine. The way he looked at me made me feel like a display in a museum, like I’d been unearthed against my will and given meaning that even I didn’t understand.
