Chapter 2 - Reading Journals
Avery spent all night reading her father’s journals. It skipped a lot of years, she guessed that the lawyer only gave her the later years, the ones before the crash. But the one she and Shane found last night was from when she was a baby. When she finally finished all six journals she walked down the stairs to see Shane sitting at the table reading.
“You’re still here?” she asked throwing down the journal that they found onto the table. “Mary, coffee please?”
“Good morning to you too.” he rebutted sarcastically. “How were the journals?”
“Informant, but did my dad ever talk to your dad about someone named Silas Blake? His name shows up a lot in the journal we found.” she said taking the coffee from Mary and thanking her a million times over. She stayed up all night reading the journals meticulously.
“No. I’ve never heard of that name. What do the passages say about him, this Silas Blake? Anything good, weird fantasies with your father? Weird fantasies with your mother?” he asked taking the journal and flipping through the pages.
Shane was starting to get on Avery’s nerves with his whole creepy, I’m here to rescue you bullshit. So she picked up a blueberry muffin, her mother’s favorite they could not have any other flavor besides blueberry, and chucked it at his head. “Fucking asshole.” she muttered taking another muffin but this time taking a bite from it.
“Sorry, forgot your parents.” Shane apologized sliding the journal over to her. “So what does it say about him?”
“It just described old times, memories basically. There’s a passage in here about my parents taking me to see him when I was a baby. It says an exact address.” she grabbed the journal and flipped to the page she had marked.
“Read it.”
Avery shook her head and rolled her eyes before beginning to read. “December 12th, we took Avery to the funeral. Silas was a mess, he didn’t know what to do or how to act. So Raleigh took over and finished the arrangements. We all cried over the loss of friend, a family member, a genuine person. Avery had been sick for a long time. Maybe it was her turn to go but not like that. All of this has got me thinking, what if something was to happen to both me and Raleigh? What would happen to Avery and the company but mostly Avery? I talked to Silas, a very old and loyal friend, we talked about what would happen to Avery. We both agreed that when the time was inevitable and we had to leave this world that we would make sure Avery found her way to him. That he would protect her and keep her safe. Like Raleigh and I should have. He will help her run this business and keep her self afloat and not let her become distant from the world. Sometimes I regret the decision we made to keep her in the dark from the media. What if one day she needs it and it won’t be there because Raleigh and I have sheltered her from something we thought was menacing? Good bye Avery Blake, a beloved friend to my wife and me, a genuine person to the world, who knew how to make everyone laugh at time like this. She probably would’ve said “What are you all doing crying over me? You know I would’ve died eventually.” Good bye.” she finished reading the passage, her father was always poetic with his writings.
“You said there was an address, where is it?” Shane asked flipping through his newspaper while the maid working in the kitchen began to clean up the blueberry muffin that hit him in the head.
“Some suburban town in Virginia. It’s called Eagle Rock.” Avery said looking at the address again and again. She watched Shane stand up with his paper and cup of coffee, he put the cup into the dishwasher and the paper on the counter before walking out of the kitchen and down the hall. “Where are you going?” she called walking after him to the pool house.
