Stolen Secrets

Stolen Secrets- Chapter 22

~Jeff~

Something woke me up early the next morning. Like 3am early, again. I shifted to get comfortable again when I realized Natalie wasn't in the bed.

I bolted up and just sat on the bed. I hesitantly stretched out an arm and touched the bed where Natalie had fallen asleep last night. I have a habit of staying up until I know she is asleep.

The sheet next to me was freezing cold. She hadn't been here for a while.

I got out of bed and crept down the hall to Brandon's room on the rare chance that she had gone in there, she hadn't.

I checked every room, but all of them were empty of my angel.

On a whim I opened the front door and there Natalie was sitting, out in the freezing cold. It might be warming up now, but the nights are still as cold as ever.

"Angel," I called out to her. "What are you doing?"

She didn't answer me, I hadn't expected her to.

I walked forwards and joined her on the step. I put my arm around her and held her to my side.

"It's my fault," Natalie said after a couple minutes of silence between us. "All of it."

"What's your fault?" I asked.

"Everything that has gone wrong, it's all because of me."

"What is?" I asked. I failed to see how anything was her fault. All of it led to that man who had taken her to use as bait against her dad. That could hardly be her fault.

"Mom's deaths," was her answer.

At first I thought I had misheard her, she must have send something else. But I realized that I had heard right when she continued talking.

"I was home alone that night. I kept hearing strange noises and I got scared. I called Mom because talking to her always made me feel better and she said she would come home from the party she was at to be with me," Natalie said surprisingly easily considering the amount she was crying. This must have been something she was thinking about lots for it to come out so easily.

"I told her not to but she said she wasn't having a great time anyways." Natalie raised her head to look at the stars above us. "It was her work Christmas party just a couple months late. They liked being different than anyone else in that way. I knew she was lying.

"I let her come home anyways. I was selfish, I wanted her to be with me instead of her coworkers. I just wanted be special." She spat out the words like she didn't like the way they tasted in her mouth.

Natalie closed her eyes and leaned into me slightly.

"It was on her way home that she was hit." Her voice came out clear and strong, the sadness was obvious in it. But it wasn't just sadness. It was also defeat and resignation. It was depressing to listen to Natalie talk with so much emotion in just simple sentences; sentences that described how her life was changed in just minutes.

I tightened my arm around Natalie's shoulders. I too closed my eyes. I couldn't bare to keep them open. Natalie was telling the story with so much emotion I could almost see it playing out in front of me on the empty street. I could hear the tires squealing and the loud clash of metal ringing in my ears as two cars hit each other.

"I waited and waited for her to come but she never did. I waited by the phone for it to be her calling to say she hadn't left yet. I watched the door but she never entered. It was hours later that the cops came and told me that she had been taken to the hospital.