My bones feel as if they’re made of ice. My hands shake and my knees buckle. My vision blurs and then goes dark.
I hear Cherry yelling my name before I hit the floor.
Chapter 19—Confessions
The torment of thoughts and emotions running through my head is overwhelming. I’ve gone from curious to defensive to furious to terrified and then back to furious and defensive—all in a matter of minutes.
All my suspicions have been confirmed, albeit inadvertently. The Orso family is clearly into illegal activities though the exact nature isn’t clear to me yet. One thing is for sure—normal people don’t suddenly walk into a room with some other family’s medical records.
I remember when I was ten, and one of those traveling carnivals came to a nearby town, and I begged Aunt Ginny to let me ride on a huge, rocking boat. I was so excited when it started, but halfway through the ride, I started to feel sick. I begged my aunt to tell the carnival worker to stop the ride, but of course that didn’t happen. There was no way off. Aunt Ginny held me as I puked on the floor of the ride, embarrassed beyond belief. Once the ride had stopped, and my Aunt Ginny helped me off of it, I continued to feel sick. We went home, and I cried the whole way because I had never been to a carnival before, and I didn’t get a chance to try cotton candy or pet the animals at the petting zoo.
I want off this ride.
Nate and Nora are yelling at each other. The looks he is giving me are so hateful, they penetrate my soul, and all I can manage to do is curl up in a ball with tears running down my face as I fight the urge to puke over the back of the couch. I keep trying to tell him that I don’t know what’s he’s talking about, but he just refuses to listen.
I wipe tears from my cheeks, but they just keep coming.
When Threes comes in with a huge stack of hospital records, everything goes from bad to worse. Even though Nate stops looking at me with suspicion, I keep hearing the same thing from all of them: “She’s a Ramsay.”
All this time, I’d been trying to figure out who my real parents were. To discover they were the sworn enemies of Nate’s family was bad enough, but then I find out they are both dead, and a deep sense of loss hits me.
Roland Ramsay.
The name rolls around in my head. Though I’d heard the Ramsay family mentioned several times since moving to Cascade Falls, I’d never heard the name Roland mentioned before. Maybe if I had, it would have struck me sooner. I admit to knowing the name, while my insides feel like they’re turning to liquid and sloshing around in my gut. As the others go over the documentation for the tenth time, I think back to my childhood.
“We have a visitor coming today,” Aunt Ginny told me.
“We do? Who is it?”
“Oh, no one you know.”
“I thought all us Accidentals knew each other,” I said with a laugh.
“He’s not from Accident, Cherry.” Aunt Ginny smiled and shook her head. “He’s from Ohio.”
“I know where Ohio is,” I said. “It’s a state and there’s a river, and they have trains and they mine coal there.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s on my puzzle map of the United States! There’s a picture of the river, and a picture of coal cars on a train.”
I heard a knock at the door, and I jumped up to join Aunt Ginny as she greeted the visitor. He was an old man with grey hair and a moustache. I didn’t like his moustache, so I went to sit by the Christmas tree and string popcorn as Aunt Ginny talked to him. He didn’t stay long, but before he left, he came over to me.
“You’re doing a good job there, Cherice,” he said.
“Do you like popcorn?” I asked.
“I do.”
“Aunt Ginny said I had to string all these together, and I’m not allowed to eat them. They’re going to decorate the tree at the antique shop!”
“That’s an important job,” he said. “You are a very important girl. Did you know that?”
“I am?”
“Oh, yes. You’ll know all about it someday.”
Had my father been right there in our house, and I hadn’t even known who he was? Had he visited other times as well just to check in on me? Why did he tell me I was important, and should I reveal this to Nate and the others?
No, at least not right now.
Part of me is thrilled that I may have actually met my father at some point in the past even if I didn’t know who he was at the time. The rest of me is just in a daze. Despite how important it is for me to find out about my lineage, all this information has me wishing I’d never found out at all. Clearly, Nate feels the same way.
They continue to pour over the information, lining up the clues and pointing the proverbial finger right at me.
“Cherry not knowing about any of this,” Nate suddenly says, “even if I believe her, doesn’t make any difference. I can’t go against what Pops says.”
I glare at him. I’m so officially tired of his questioning my word, I clearly miss what’s happening around me. Again, I want to defend myself, but when I look at the faces of Nate’s family, I realize something else is going on.
They aren’t looking at me. They’re all focused on Nate.
“Pops?” Nora shakes her head.
“Nate, dude, what are you talking about?”
“He’s right there! What the fuck is wrong with
