"Faceless Future" Book 2 of "Secrets Unraveled" Trilogy |COMPLETED|

Chpt 35: Revelations.

Adrien's phone beeped.  He was tempted to ignore it as he was almost finished with reading the last chapter for the literature assignment.  But, when the phone beeped another message right away,  he figured his mind wouldn't focus back on the reading until he knew what the message said.  He sighed and took the phone out of his pocket and stared at the screen in disbelief.  The message was from his father!  No, actually, both were from his father!  His heart started to race, but he clicked on the first one anyway. He had to know.

The first message said: "Adrien, come to the hospital right away."  Adrien snorted.  Wasn't that just like his father to command him to do something even through a text!

Adrien scrolled down to the second one.  "It's Nathalie.  Hurry.  Please."  Adrien gasped.  Nathalie must be doing a lot worse if she was now in the hospital.  And he had never, ever heard his father say please to anyone.  It must be really bad!

He shut the phone's screen off and ran upstairs to Marinette's room where she was working on sewing the new dress she designed with the material that had just arrived yesterday. Adrien burst into the room startling Marinette, who then lost control of her stitches.

"Adrien!" she cried, as she pulled the material out from under the sewing machine to see what the damage was.  She frowned as she realized how many stitches she was going to have to pull out.  She turned around and started to say "This is going to take a lot of work to . . ."  but she abruptly stopped talking when she saw the look of fear on his face.  "What is it?" she asked him, bracing herself for the bad news.

He walked over to her.  "It's Nathalie.  She's in the hospital.  And, my father said 'please'," he said, trying to convey the seriousness while he tried to decide what he was going to do.

Surprisingly, Marinette basically understood what he was saying.  She thought he looked like she needed him to take charge so she said "You need to go!  Now!  See how she is doing and see if you can get some information out of your father.  Maybe he will finally be desperate enough to tell you something useful.  I would come with you, but he probably wouldn't talk to you then.  Plus, he's not supposed to know I know anything about any of this," she said. She waited for him to reply, but he remained silent.

"Adrien," she said sternly, trying to snap him out of wherever his brain went, "you need to do this.  For you, for Nathalie, for your mother.  And even for your father."

Marinette stood up and gave him a fierce hug, before grasping his upper arms to turn him around and giving him a slight push toward the stairs.  "Go!  I'll tell my parents where you're going."

Adrien blinked and shook his head to clear it.  "Right!  I'm going!" he said as he raced down the stairs. His mind was in a whirl between worry over Nathalie and the fact that he could hardly believe he might finally be getting some answers!

- - -

Adrien stood outside the room displaying the number that the nurse gave him.  The door was open, but he was having trouble getting himself to walk inside.  How bad was Nathalie?  Would his father finally talk to him?  He clenched his fists, resolved to do this and was about to head in when he heard his father talking.  His voice was so quiet Adrien could only make out some of the words.  Adrien paused in the doorway to listen.

"Will you ever forgive me, Nathalie? . . . can I ever forgive myself?  . . .two of the most important people in the world to me . . . can be done?"

Gabriel's voice seemed to trail off. Adrien waited another minute to see if he could hear more, but then walked in once he determined that his father had stopped talking.

"Father?" said Adrien anxiously, peeking his head around the corner.  He saw his father sitting in a chair next to Nathalie's bed, with his head in one hand.  Gabriel sat up straight at the sound of Adrien's voice.