Secrets

00 || Prologue

[1762]

The man, in the deep blood colored chair, frowned as he saw his wife carrying the three-day-old child in her arms. The woman neared the man, placing a kiss on his bald and sweaty head.

"Dearest, are you feeling well?" His wife asked him.

The man nodded, "Just a tad tired. I shall be alright."

He paused as he looked his son in the eyes. He was adorable, but there was something off about him. His eyes were a dark green and it went well with his small patch of chocolate colored hair atop his pale head. The man patted the child's head and then stood from the chair.

"Put the child to sleep." The man closed the drapes, he blew out the lantern that lit up the small one-roomed cottage. "Follow me out to the cellar."

The woman obeyed setting the baby down in it's wooden and lop-sided crib. She kissed his cheek and then slightly pinched it. She covered the child up with a cotton blanket that she made herself when she was carrying the child.

Once the boy was asleep, the woman left the cottage walking precisely a mile away from the house to the cellar where her husband was to be. "Katrina?" A deep man's voice asked from the
cellar.

The woman nodded but then remembered that they couldn't see each other. "Yes,"

"Well, come on down then." He demanded in his softest voice, but it still sounded all rough and a bit scratchy.

"Where did you put it?" Katrina asked her husband. "Edward? Tell me!"

The man, Edward, took a box from under the floor and set it down on the table that looked as though it would fall apart at any moment. "It's here."

Edward lifted his hand and set it on the box. "We should open it."

Katrina shook her head, "No,"

She put her hand on his. "we should not! It is not to be opened. Not now, not ever."

The couple heard the off distance sound of boots clapping against the rocky pavement. They were close to the cellar. "We must go, now!" She whispered to her husband.

He shook his head. "I will not make it far. You go, save him, save Oliver."

The woman hesitated, but then obeyed grabbing the box from the table and started to run out of the cellar. She quickly peaked her head out from the door.

"This way!" She heard a man shout. He was closer than she thought he was. "Kill it!"

Katrina froze on her way home when she heard her child whine for help. She wanted to run for her child but then she heard the crying stop. Katrina knew what had happened. The man, the men, they had killed her young child.

She felt her heart pumping, yelling at her to run. Run away from the men. Run from your now dead life. Run. The woman screamed and then ran from her past. She must bury it. She must make a new life.

Of course, she would not forget her husband and her son. But she could not stand living by herself, she wanted comfort and love. She wanted to live.