Overwhelmed by a toxic combination of regret and melancholy, I silently cursed myself for thinking coming here was a good idea. Luke was going shit a brick when he found out I’d returned home.
Home.
That was a strange word for a place that no longer felt like my own. I’d been born and raised in Chastity Falls. It had once been everything to me. I owned it and it owned me—it was a part of my soul. Growing up the son of the infamous Marcus Donohue, flying the nest and moving to the city was not something that had ever crossed my mind. The town would one day be mine.
Or so I’d thought.
A group of students jostled past me not even sparing me a second glance. That was who I was now—a nobody. Did my name still travel on the whispers of freshman? If it did, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know what they said about me now.
I turned my back on the Academy and climbed back in the cab. “Thanks for waiting.”
The cabbie eyed me through the rearview mirror, lingering a little too long. “No problem. Where to next?”
“Take the road out of town.” I didn’t give him a specific address. Gray-haired and local, he’d obviously been around long enough that it probably wouldn’t take much for him to put two and two together, so when he approached the road up to the house, I asked him to pull over and handed him twenty dollars. “Keep the change.”
What I really wanted was a hot shower and a drink. After leaving Cara, I’d headed straight for the bus station. The last bus out of Forest Grove was just about to leave, but I’d made it. It meant holing up in Beaverton for the night and catching the first bus out to Tillamook. Then I’d taken a cab up to Chastity Falls. The envelope of cash Luke had given me was depleting. Soon, I’d need a way to make some cash ... or I’d have to go back to Astoria. And I still wasn’t sure I was going to. There were still things I didn’t understand, parts of the story that made no sense, but it wasn’t as if I could just call up Jackson and ask for his version of events.
All I had now was myself. I didn’t even have Cara to ease the storm.
Cara.
I needed to push her far from my mind. Forget all about her.
Shaking her from my thoughts, I walked up to the gate of the house. It was locked with a thick steel chain. A ‘Private Property: No Trespassing’ sign was tied to one of the bars, but I ignored the warning. Throwing my bag over the top, I tested the gate’s strength and then climbed over, landing on the ground below with a thud.
The house looked like something out of a horror movie. The front lawn was completely wild and some of the creeping vines had started to wind themselves around the once white alabaster pillars holding up the front porch. Dirty stained windows gave way to even dirtier curtains. I worked my way around the perimeter of the house unsure if I wanted to break my way in. The last thing I needed was to be questioned by the cops, but from the way the whole place had been left to rot, it was obvious no one ever came out here.
I cleaned some of the grime off one of the windows with my sleeve and peered through the glass. It was the living room minus any furniture. A few smaller items were still in place, a table and a bookcase, but everything else was gone. Even the pictures that once hung on the walls were gone, discoloration left in the place of their once existence. The place I grew up was a wasteland... and I didn’t know how to feel about it. Because even though everything had changed for me the day I realized Dad wasn’t going to help me get out of Oregon State, seeing this was like a punch to the gut.
When your father was Marcus Donohue, getting into trouble didn’t matter. He could throw his wallet at any problem and it would disappear. But when I’d gone after Cole Calder, it was the final straw. I was deemed too out of control—a loose cannon—and O’Connor had issued the order to leave me to rot in there.
And he’d let it
Home.
That was a strange word for a place that no longer felt like my own. I’d been born and raised in Chastity Falls. It had once been everything to me. I owned it and it owned me—it was a part of my soul. Growing up the son of the infamous Marcus Donohue, flying the nest and moving to the city was not something that had ever crossed my mind. The town would one day be mine.
Or so I’d thought.
A group of students jostled past me not even sparing me a second glance. That was who I was now—a nobody. Did my name still travel on the whispers of freshman? If it did, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know what they said about me now.
I turned my back on the Academy and climbed back in the cab. “Thanks for waiting.”
The cabbie eyed me through the rearview mirror, lingering a little too long. “No problem. Where to next?”
“Take the road out of town.” I didn’t give him a specific address. Gray-haired and local, he’d obviously been around long enough that it probably wouldn’t take much for him to put two and two together, so when he approached the road up to the house, I asked him to pull over and handed him twenty dollars. “Keep the change.”
What I really wanted was a hot shower and a drink. After leaving Cara, I’d headed straight for the bus station. The last bus out of Forest Grove was just about to leave, but I’d made it. It meant holing up in Beaverton for the night and catching the first bus out to Tillamook. Then I’d taken a cab up to Chastity Falls. The envelope of cash Luke had given me was depleting. Soon, I’d need a way to make some cash ... or I’d have to go back to Astoria. And I still wasn’t sure I was going to. There were still things I didn’t understand, parts of the story that made no sense, but it wasn’t as if I could just call up Jackson and ask for his version of events.
All I had now was myself. I didn’t even have Cara to ease the storm.
Cara.
I needed to push her far from my mind. Forget all about her.
Shaking her from my thoughts, I walked up to the gate of the house. It was locked with a thick steel chain. A ‘Private Property: No Trespassing’ sign was tied to one of the bars, but I ignored the warning. Throwing my bag over the top, I tested the gate’s strength and then climbed over, landing on the ground below with a thud.
The house looked like something out of a horror movie. The front lawn was completely wild and some of the creeping vines had started to wind themselves around the once white alabaster pillars holding up the front porch. Dirty stained windows gave way to even dirtier curtains. I worked my way around the perimeter of the house unsure if I wanted to break my way in. The last thing I needed was to be questioned by the cops, but from the way the whole place had been left to rot, it was obvious no one ever came out here.
I cleaned some of the grime off one of the windows with my sleeve and peered through the glass. It was the living room minus any furniture. A few smaller items were still in place, a table and a bookcase, but everything else was gone. Even the pictures that once hung on the walls were gone, discoloration left in the place of their once existence. The place I grew up was a wasteland... and I didn’t know how to feel about it. Because even though everything had changed for me the day I realized Dad wasn’t going to help me get out of Oregon State, seeing this was like a punch to the gut.
When your father was Marcus Donohue, getting into trouble didn’t matter. He could throw his wallet at any problem and it would disappear. But when I’d gone after Cole Calder, it was the final straw. I was deemed too out of control—a loose cannon—and O’Connor had issued the order to leave me to rot in there.
And he’d let it
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