The Winter Garden (IMD #2)

Chapter Sixteen: Hesitation

Chapter Sixteen:

 

Hesitation

When the doorbell rang, Immanuel darted down the steps but hesitated with his hand only inches from the knob. What if it was that man again? He had come once, and he could always come back. Immanuel pulled back the curtains beside the door and caught a glimpse of unmistakably red hair. With a relieved sigh, he stepped aside to allow Adam Fenice into the foyer. His companion’s eyes ran over Immanuel’s form, immediately noting his downcast gaze and wrinkled clothing. Something was amiss. He looked as he did outside the museum after he calmed down. The terror had passed, but now the guilt of fear remained in each crease and darkened feature. But what had scared him so this time?

“I received your letter when I arrived home from work and came as soon as I could. What did you want to talk about, Mr. Winter?” Adam asked as he followed him into the front parlor but heard not a single voice in the house apart from his own.

Immanuel stared past Adam’s head as his eyes stayed fixed on nothing but a blank spot on the wall. “I don’t know if I can talk about it now.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Inviting you here was a mistake. I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Mr. Fenice, but,” he drew in a breath and exhaled slowly before resolutely tightening his mouth into a straight line, “no one should hear what happened.”

“But why?”

The white of his ink-stained eye glistened. “Because it is too horrible.”

“Then, I must hear it.”

Immanuel’s eyes shifted onto Adam’s face and pierced behind his sockets. Holding him there, he probed for honesty, for the readiness to grasp the gravity of what had occurred, and for the understanding that wounds leave more than misaligned fissures of gnarled flesh. It didn’t take long to find them within Adam Fenice. He had already seen the scars on his soul. The intimate glimpse had occurred in the museum when reality had been ripped from Immanuel’s feeble grasp. He had not judged or pushed him back in line as the others might have. He led him outside, and while standing only inches away, he asked if he was all right. All Adam wanted was to know what was going on inside Immanuel’s mind, and his loyalty had finally gained him admittance. Immanuel’s gaze broke from Adam’s brow and roamed to the street that lay just beyond the pane. This was not a conversation for front parlors or drawing rooms.

“Let’s talk upstairs then.”

Adam followed Immanuel up the two flights of stairs and down the hall to his bedroom. The nightstand sat askew a few feet from the bare bed with the curtains behind it drawn against the afternoon sun. A solitary cushioned chair in the corner faced the wall, but as the redheaded man pulled it closer to Immanuel, he noticed the edges of a pillow and blanket peeking out from under the bed. His companion sighed as he took several sheets of paper off his dresser and studied them before dropping onto the edge of the mattress. Without looking up from the typed page, he pushed the bedding further under the bed-frame with his foot until he was certain Adam could no longer see it.

Immanuel swallowed hard. “How much did Mrs. Hawthorne tell you about what happened to me?”

“Just that you were—” Adam rubbed his wrist. “You were tortured.”

Immanuel smoothed the page he copied from the doctor’s records. He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t bear to relive all that he went through. To say it was to acknowledge all of the pain and humiliation during those two and a half months in hell. How could he have thought he would be able to tell Adam what happened? The man was staring at him, watching the beads of perspiration collect on his forehead. At least Mrs. Hawthorne had already told him the gist of it. Even if he couldn’t understand it first hand, Adam would know why it was so hard for him to speak of it. If the word barely came from his mouth, how could anyone expect him to be able to recount it?