Grounded

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

I wake in a cold sweat. It's pitch black and the pounding of my heart is audible in the stillness. Or maybe it's an internal noise punctuated by the thumping inside my chest. I'm in bed. A bed that is not my own. It's comfortable enough but has the muffled walls of a cellar. In Hemlock Hollow I fall asleep to the sounds of the night, the howl of the wind or the chirp of crickets under the moon. It's too quiet in this room and too loud inside me. Nightmares of giant rats and officers in green uniforms plague my dreams.

Surely my anxiety is due to the questions riddling me. Is Stuart Manor a safe house or a different kind of prison? Will I ever see Jeremiah or my father again? What will Maxwell expect from me tomorrow? When can I return to Hemlock Hollow?

There's a Bible verse in the book of Matthew that says, Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. I've heard Bishop Kauffman preach on it often enough. Dwelling on these thoughts isn't right or helpful, but casting them aside is nearly impossible.

I decide to take a walk to try to calm my nerves. The lights in the hallway are on. It's three a.m. I guess they never turn off. I wander toward the gym and beyond, with no particular goal but to wear myself out so that I can sleep. I end up lost in the maze of hallways, finally finding a landmark in the blue palomino painting. The door to my right is the healing chamber, and the staircase behind me leads to the main level of the house.

On my toes I jog up the stairs and cross the wood floors to the wall of windows at the rear of what Korwin calls "the great room." The night calls to me through the glass. Pale moonlight guides my way, and stars poke pinholes of light in the late summer sky. I need to be outside, to be under the same moon as my father, Jeremiah, and Hemlock Hollow.

I trace my fingers along the cool glass until I reach a pair of French doors and, after some experimentation, figure out how to unlock them. Stepping out into the warm night air, I jog across the enormous white deck to the railing. There is a stark drop and then miles of lawn blend into ever-thickening woods.

"Makes you want to run to the Outlands and never look back, doesn't it?"

Startled, I pivot toward the voice, gripping the rail of the deck to steady myself. Jameson sits in an Adirondack chair pressed against the side of the house, a place he'd be impossible to see through the windows. He swirls a glass of something brown and syrupy in his hand, the ice clinking with each rotation of his wrist. Striped pajamas hang off of him like loose skin. They age him. Or maybe it's the moonlight that gives his face the quality of parchment.

"Jameson. You scared me," I say, adding a breathy laugh. "I didn't see you there."

He lifts his drink to his lips and gulps. When he lowers it again, the ice clinks to the bottom and he sets the empty glass on the deck next to his chair. "Maybe, you should be scared."

What? "I think I have enough to be scared about already," I say. Why is he staring at me like that?

He stands and approaches me. "If it would make you take your security seriously, I could pretend to be a threat."

"Because I came outside? Is this not allowed?" Maxwell said we were on "lockdown" but what harm could come from being on the grounds in the middle of the night?

Jameson doesn't answer me. "Where did you come from, Lydia?" he asks.

I have no idea how much Jameson knows or understands about my plight. How much of my conversations with the Stuarts has he overheard or been told by the Stuarts? I decide right then I won't burden him with the details. "Willow's Province."