Close Your Eyes: Book Four

Chapter Nine

"What?" Liam asks me.

She knows where we live?

How did she find me? How did she find us? If that letter sent from Connecticut, it, it would have been in the mail for a few days!

She could be coming! She might be an hour away!

"Savannah, what?" Liam grabs my shoulders.

"You need to go." I say. "You need to go now. Take the kids with you. Right now. Right now, Liam. Now. Right now."

"What's going on?" Lindsay asks.

Liam grabs the letter off the counter and starts to read it.

After a couple of seconds, he stops, looking at me.

I feel like I'm being strangled.

"Let's just finish reading the letter, okay?" he says. "It might be nothing. Here, finish the letter," He holds it out to me.

"Start packing," I tell him. 'Start packing right now."

"I-no, okay? Read the letter first, and if we have to, we are all leaving. This isn't the same situation as last time, okay? You're coming with us."

I look back down at the letter, putting my hand on my throat.

Dear Savannah Noel,

I know you are extremely confused why somebody is writing you some random letter. I understand that, but I just recently was notified of your situation, and I couldn't sit idly by. My name is Eleanor Rolan, and Damien Rolan is my son.

I want to assure you that I am in no way a danger to you or the family you might have. I just want to write you to apologize.

As a child, Damien was troubled. He was mean to animals, and when he was thirteen, he was diagnosed bipolar. He had the tendencies of a serial killer, and he terrified me. One time when he was fifteen, I heard screaming from his bedroom, and I found that he had tied up a child. I let her go, and his reason was because he was "bored." I called the police and he was put into a mental institution until he was eighteen. When he got out, he seemed normal. It was me and his father living with him. He slowly stopped taking his medication, and one night I woke up to him standing over me with a knife. I started screaming and my husband kicked him out for good. We haven't seen or heard anything about him since, until two days ago.

We are not exactly tech savvy, but an officer came to our door, claiming he had been trying to track us down for years. He let us know that Damien, along with his wife (we didn't know he had a wife) were both dead. We always wondered about him. I hoped he got it together. After the officer left, my husband looked him up on the internet and we found you. We read the news articles, about how he kidnapped you out front of your home and held you there for six years. He almost beat you to death before you escaped.

I know I probably shouldn't be reaching out to you. I can understand you being terrified we are going to come after you, but I promise you, we won't. We just wanted to write you and tell you how sincerely sorry we are for what our son did to you. If I could, I would go back in time and abort him. He ruined your life, and the effects he must have on you keeps me up at night.

I am so, so sorry, Savannah.

My dearest apologies,

Eleanor Rolan

P.S.

As a sincere apology, there is a check for $25,000 dollars in the envelope. We were going to travel, but you deserve an amazing life much more than we do. Your parents created a smart, resourceful girl, and we created a monster.

Liam is standing in front of me, his muscles tense, watching me intently.

My hand remains on my throat and I find it's hard to breathe.

I grasp the envelope, reaching inside.

My fingertips graze another piece of paper, so I pull it out and flip it over.

Pay to the order of: Savannah Noel

$25,000

Memo: for a better life

Eleanor Rolan's signature is scrawled across the bottom right line.

"What do you want to do?" Liam asks me quietly. "Are we staying or not?"

Two pieces of paper isn't enough proof that they're not coming after us.

I don't need to talk to Liam. The decision is made.

"You guys are staying," I whisper. "But I'm not."

"What?" he snatches the paper from my hand and starts to read it, glancing up at me every now and again.

After a minute or two, he takes the check from my hand, and then he looks at me.

"Where are you going?" he asks me.

I take a deep breath.

"I'm going to Connecticut."

"What?" he asks me. "No you're not. I-no. I forbid it."

"You can't forbid it, Liam. I'm a grown woman."

"Why are you going?" he asks frantically. "For what?"

"For proof that they're not coming after us."

"Then let me come with you." he says. "Let me come! We can find somebody to watch the kids! Your parents! My Dad! Mason and Aria!"

"We can't," I shake my head at Liam. "Because I could be walking into a trap. You need to stay here."

"No." he says. "Absolutely not."

Lindsay is kind of standing back watching the two of us argue.

"You have to stay, Buddy-"

"No, don't Buddy me! You yourself just said this could be a trap, and you're going to walk yourself right into it? Are you fricken kidding me, Savannah? No! You're not going!"

I put my hands on his arms.

"This trap could be coming for us right now." I whisper shakily. "For our kids. I have dealt with the Rolan's before, I can do it again."

"They could take you," he whispers. "They could take you again."

"I escaped before. I will do it again."

"Just stay. Please." He begs, gripping my arms tightly. "Just stay. We can go to Canada. We can go to Australia."

"I don't want to live my life running," I shake my head. "I don't want everyone I care about to live their lives running. These people could be just as psychotic as Damien, and I can't subject the kids to that. If this is a threat, the target is on my head, and I'm going to keep it that way."

He knows that I'm going to go whether he wants me to or not, so he reaches out and pulls me into his arms.

"What if you don't come back?" he mumbles.

I pull back to look at him, and he has tears in his eyes.

"I'm going to come back," I murmur. "I promise."

_________

SOBBING

~SaM