Pure Redemption (Tainted Legacy) (12 page)

Since the evening she’d run into him she’d begun to close her curtains and blinds every night before the sun started to set. It offered little comfort but it was better than allowing him to steal glances at them while they were sleeping.

As she drove,
Gabe looked agitated.

“We don’t have to do this,” Ava told him.

“We should,” he decided. “Maybe it’ll help. Maybe it won’t. But at least we’ll know. I just, I kind of just want to get it over with.”

He was silent the rest of the way and Ava just let him be.

“This is it, up here on the left,” she said as she pulled off the main road. “It’s the first house. You can’t see it all that well from here. I don’t dare go down the driveway, though.”

“No,” Gabe agreed, “you shouldn’t go down the driveway.”

He peered down the drive, catching only a glimpse of red brick. Just the sight of it sent a jolt of dread bolting through him. His skin prickled as a feeling of foreboding gnawed its way up his spine.

“Let’s go,” he said, his voice icier than he’d meant
for
it to be.

“Okay,” Ava agreed. She drove down to the next driveway before turning around. As they passed the house again, Gabe stiffened in his seat but couldn’t seem to pull his eyes from the tree line.

“Are you alright?” she asked when they’d covered the short distance back to the stop sign.

“Yes
,” he said even if his tone disagreed.

She drove, silent for a while, trying to give him a moment.

“Did you…” she finally asked.

“No,” he snapped. “I didn’t remember anything.”

“Ohhhkay,” Ava carefully said as she turned her attention back to the road in an effort not to annoy him. Something had obviously triggered his bad attitude. No, not just
something
. It was the house.  But if he didn’t want to talk about it, she didn’t want to push it.

Actually, she
did
want to push it. She just
, yet again,
wasn’t going to.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just, there’s something about that place. It feels…off. Wrong.” He hesitated for so long Ava thought the matter was closed. “It feels evil. And I lived there?” he sounded disgusted at the thought.

Ava nodded. “You did. No
t long. About half a year or so. M
aybe not even that.” His face had clouded over. It was a look that Ava knew well by now. He was trying to remember.

And he couldn’t.

“What do you mean the house felt ‘off’?” she finally dared to ask.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” he said with a sigh. “That first night in the church, it felt peaceful. When we’re at your cabin, it feels comfortable. When you drove by there? It felt wrong in just about every way imaginable.”

“How are you feeling now?”

“It’s faded. I don’t really feel much of anything.”

She hesitated before asking her next question. “The only other place that I think might be important to you is the radio station over in Granville. You spent a lot of time there. I thought we could go there next. Not go inside
,” she hurriedly threw out in explanation
, “but maybe just drive by. Or do you think it’s a bad idea?”

“We can try it. It can’t be as bad as that house. And honestly, I’m getting pretty fed up with not knowing who I am,” he
said, his voice harsh. It was the first time he’d admitted this to her.

Ava dared a glance at him. He was dragging his hands across his face.
His body looked tense and his voice had been full of aggravation. To be honest, they had both thought it would only be a matter of time before his memories came back. The disappointment and frustration had begun to wear on them both.

“I really
lived in that house?” he asked. D
is
belief and disgust intermingled
in his tone.
His eyes were narrowed at Ava, waiting for her answer.

“You didn’t actually live
in
the house,” she
said, hoping it would help. “You lived in the guest house around the back. Rafe lived in the house. And your father—”

“
D
on’t call him that
,
” Gabe ground
out.

“Right, um, okay then,” Ava stammered
, startled by his outburst
. “When
Azael
was there I think he stayed in the
main
house, too.
You did your best to keep your distance from both of them.
”

Gabe had nothing to say to this and Ava didn’t dare to try to fill the silence. It seemed Gabe just needed time. Again. And she knew the best choice she could make was to give it to him. She was silent the rest of the drive.

“This is
it,” Ava said as they finally reached the lot across the street from the station where Gabe h
ad spent most of his days. She’d
parked in the back of the lot, out of the way.
She had never been there but she’d driven by enough times
while she’d been in town
to know where it was located.

He gazed at the stucco covered building.
The call letters, in the form of a neon sign, adorned the side of the building, next to the door.
It was in the middle of a city block in
Granville, tucked between a consignment store and a beauty shop. People were scurrying about on the sidewalk out front.

“I
never went there with you
,” Ava admitted. “But if you weren’t with me, or you
weren’t at home, I think this is
where you were. You got to be friends with some of the DJs.” She was carefully watching his face,
futilely
hoping for even the slightest flicker of recognition. His expression remained blank as he remained silent.

Ava’s frustration grew. Not
at
Gabe but
for
him. It was easy to feel sorry for herself, at her loss of him not knowing her, but she knew it was nothing compared to the loss he was facing.

His entire past was nothing but a question mark.

She jumped when his head snapped back.

“Who is that?” he asked. His
tone was so hard it startled her.

Ava’s gaze flew over the cars that were parked in front of them and back to the building. A tall man with ineffably red hair had just pushed his way out
of
the door. He hesitated for a moment and Ava’s heart seemed to stop beating as she waited, sure he was going to swing his gaze their way.

Would it matter if he did?

She didn’t know.

When he kept moving down the block, toward a Chinese restaurant several shops down, she felt her muscles relax ever so slightly.

She turned to Gabe who was now curiously watching her.

“That,” Ava said, feeling the same sense of foreboding dread that Gabe had felt earlier, “would be your brother.”

“
You said he wanted to speak with me. What do you think he wants
?” Gabe asked her.

“I have no idea,
”
she honestly replied.

“I don’t think I want to find out,” he said with a grimace.

Chapter
9

If showing Gabe where he used to live and where he used to work was a bad idea, and Ava felt very much that it had been, she was sure that going to the old church would be an even worse idea. Or perhaps it was her own fear of the church that made her judgment on the matter a little hazy.

But the idea to go
had been Gabe’s
. And since he’d really asked so little of her, she couldn’t tell him no.

The abandoned building was in a rural area outside of Hunter Falls. It was down an old gravel road. There were very few houses on this road. Mostly, there were fields and other old, dilapidated, forgotten buildings. The church itself was surrounded by dense woods.

What had once been a gravel drive leading to the front of the church was now overgrown with weeds of all varieties. The lawn that had once been green and well kept was now brown and overgrown as well. The windows had been removed and boarded up. The roof sagged as if it were only hanging on by a few nails. The white paint had peeled revealing weathered, ugly
gray
, bare boards.

“This is the last place I can think of to take you,” Ava had admitted as she drove.

Gabe stole a look at her profile.
She looked tense but resolute.
He knew she didn’t like this idea, yet that hadn’t stopped him from insisting she take him.

“Ava,” he’d said quietly, “nothing has sparked my memory so far. I don’t think the church will either. That’s not why I wanted to come here. I just wanted to see it.”

She silently nodded.

He continued, sounding resigned. “I’m kind of thinking at this point, nothing is going to bring my memory back.”

She
gave him a sympathetic
smile as she looked at him. She wanted to say something reassuring but words of that sort evaded her. Instead, she just acknowledged their arrival. “This is it,” she said, as she pulled in a deep breath.

As they got out of the car, e
very cell in her body was begging her to leave. She was momentarily overcome with an almost paralyzing fear. What if, since this is where it all began, where Gabe was pulled away from her, what if it happened again? What if the floor just opened up and swallowed him?

“Aren’t you coming in?” Gabe asked as he turned around and noticed that her feet were stuck in place. He’d already made it halfway to the front door, pushing his way through the weeds, leaving a trampled path for Ava to follow.

She bit her lip, trying to squelch her emotions before saying, “I’m not sure that I can go in there.”

He tilted his head to the side and offered her an empathetic look.

“I don’t think you should go in there either,” she hurriedly added on. “What if something happens to you? I couldn’t go through that again.”

He pulled his eyes from Ava and took in the ramshackle church once more. When he looked at her again, he looked determined. “Ava, I have to do this.”

She nodded as she pushed her feet to move. She was grateful it was the middle of the day. A bright, beautiful sunny day. Bad things weren’t supposed to happen on days like today. If it were night, or even cloudy and gray, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to go through with it.

Gabe patiently waited until she caught up with him.

He
tentatively held his hand out to her. S
he took it without hesitation.

“Is that better?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered. Now that he had offered it to her, she had no intention of letting go. If the unthinkable happened and he was pulled away again, she was going to do her damndest to hold on and be pulled away with him.

As if he knew what she was thinking, he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and
tacked on
a weak smile.

Together, they pushed the rest of the way through the waist high mess of grass and brambles. When they reached the door, it was open, as Ava knew it would be. Azael had opened it to let himself in that night. When Ava had returned days later, looking for traces of Gabe, it had stood ajar. She had pulled it shut that day, but the lock had been broken.

Not that there was any point to locking it anyway.
She couldn’t imagine anyone but them visiting and it wasn’t as if there was a single thing left inside for anyone to take.

The hinges didn’t creak as Gabe pulled the door open. Instead, they made a grating, grinding sound of protest. The inside of the church was dim because of the windows being boarded up.
With one hand,
Gabe pushed the door open all
of
the way, allowing the sunshine to pour in. Ava never let go of his
other
hand.