Chapter 2

Raelyn

Located 12 miles off the coast; the spectacular mixture of mountains, lush green foliage and brilliant blue of the island I find myself on, is in fact, leaving me in awe. The astounding beauty of it surely draws in tourists from near and far, each wanting nature to incite a feeling of peace so profound that utter contentment is bestowed upon them. If only that was what had brought me to this small town. Instead, I’m here searching. For answers, definitely. Vengeance? Thoughts of it are the only thing that has kept me going when the heaviness of despair wants to consume me, holding me captive until thoughts of retribution break me free again. What happened to them 9 months ago when they disappeared? Vanished. Suddenly dropped off the face of the earth as if they had never even existed. Any and all traces of them deleted. All except for me. Here’s what I knew: they had been weirdly overprotective all my life. No social media. Ever. I couldn't have any new friends that had not been vetted by them. Spoiler, most did not make the cut. Boarding school in Switzerland. There had never been any family gatherings that I could recall. I had actually grown up thinking that I just didn’t have any relatives, until I was old enough to realize there had to be one or two floating around out there. We had always lived in the most remote places, away from the hustle of town life. I wasn't allowed to tell anyone anything that was true about myself. Instead, I was encouraged to make up a whole new life story every time we moved to a new state, which we did every couple of years, starting from the time I was 8 until I was 13. And that only ended because by the time I was 14, they had shipped me off to Switzerland, where I lived year round until graduating. There was a mantra I lived by as a kid: fake it, but don't break it. I could bend the truth, tell white lies, embellish the hell out of a story, but I didn't ever want to go so far in remaking myself that I forgot who I was completely. The person I was before I started reinventing myself at every turn. Admittedly, sometimes even I got caught up in my lies, preferring the lives I created more than the actual one I truly lived. Don’t get me wrong, I never doubted that my parents loved me, indeed, they had come to visit me in Switzerland often, albeit that was probably more so because I didn’t go back home for the duration of high school.

Once I was done, they pulled their normal and moved somewhere new, but the protections they had in place became even more intense. None of it ever made sense, but I never questioned a single directive, gave complete obedience and never would have ever considered going against them. I loved my parents more than anything in the world, they were literally all I had. I willingly did any and everything they wanted, no matter how big or small, no matter how much it tore at my soul at times to do so. Now that they no longer seemed to be a part of this world, it was time to do a little questioning.

I began by ransacking their house, scrounging for even the smallest clue, any detail that could give me a place to start this search. It took a solid week to go through every single item they owned, every drawer, closet and air shaft thoroughly enough that I didn’t miss anything. Then I obsessively did it three more times. It didn’t help that I didn’t even know what I was looking for. Basically anything I didn’t understand or it seemed like was even the slightest bit out of the ordinary got put into a pile. I walked away with two numbers, neither one I recognized, a book in a language I wasn’t quite sure of and a small but extremely thick safe with a 4 digit combo electric keypad. I tried every combination I could think of, and then when that didn’t work, I began trying every other one of the 10,000 combinations it could have been. It took a little over a week to do it in a manner that didn’t lock me out, but on the 1,935th try, I finally got it. Inside was only one thing. A brass key with the numbers 4366 down the side. After trying the key on every lock in the house, a stupid long shot that proved unfruitful, I set out looking for anything else it might belong to. There were no other safe boxes, no lockboxes, random storage lockers, or anything of the like attached to their names to try the key on either. Feeling defeated, I put it on a chain to go around my neck, where it has been ever since.

Eventually, one of the 2 numbers called me back, but only after I called them both compulsively for 12 days in a row. That was not a pleasant first phone call back, I’ll tell you that much. And there was a ton of verifying of who both of us were. I wasn’t exactly sure how to confirm his identity since I genuinely had no clue who the hell he even was. Randall, however, had me prove that I was in fact who I said I was, in about twenty different ways, before he would even start to giving me any kind of information. In the end, it did get the ball  rolling on where to go from there.

When I arrived at the small town off the coast of Maine four months ago, I thought integrating myself into the small community might present certain difficulties. And I was right, it had, in spades. The people of Cane’s Harbor don’t take kindly to newcomers. They may need to welcome tourists for revenue purposes, but that doesn’t mean they like it. Not a problem though, being ‘one of them’ was never my goal. I had no desire to 'fit in' here,  just 'blend in' enough to not raise suspicions. And fortunately for me, being close to the residents is not a requirement to find out what I need to know. From all I had observed so far, the only thing that doesn’t fall perfectly into their carefully constructed image, was Annabelle. She appeared to be the heart of the town, but even I could see the way she carried her own secrets, keeping them hidden from the ones she was so desperately trying to convince that she was exactly who she was pretending to be.