Page 122 of Forever Dark
“Please, if there’s anything you can tell me, it could be important, even if it doesn’t seem like it.What did Elias Croft do to you that’s so upsetting?”
“It wasn’t Elias,” she said at last, voice raw.
Selena stayed very still.“Who was it?”
Donna opened her eyes again and looked past Selena rather than at her.
“A man named Nolan Pruitt.He plays keyboard at the revival.”
Selena thought for a moment and barely remembered him.She was almost disappointed it wasn’t Elias who had wronged Donna.“Tell me what happened.What did this Nolan Pruitt do?”
Donna’s mouth trembled before any words came.
“I met him after one of the services,” she said.“He was nice.Quiet.He listened.We spent time together.”
The last word came out with a kind of shame attached to it.
“You started seeing him?”
“For a while.”
“How long?”
Donna gave a weak shrug.“Long enough to fall in love.”
Selena did not push the timeline yet.Not while Donna looked this close to splintering.
“You cared about him.”
Donna laughed once, bitter and small.“I thought he cared about me.He said that I was different from the other women he knew.”Her mouth twisted.“That I was trying.That God still had plans for me.”She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand and looked down.“I believed him.Stupid, right?”
“No.It’s never stupid to believe in something.”
Donna’s face crumpled then.Not loudly.Nothing theatrical.Just the quiet collapse of someone who had been holding a private grief in the same place too long.
“I got pregnant,” she whispered.
Selena said nothing.
The room seemed to contract around the words.
Donna pressed a fist to her mouth, then lowered it again with effort.“I didn’t even know at first.I was still using some heroin.Not as much.I was trying to stop.Trying to be better.”Tears slid down into the corners of her mouth.“Then… Then the baby didn’t make it.Oh God help me…”
A chill moved through Selena, slow and exact.Her heart broke for Donna.She knew how much addiction could ruin someone’s life, no matter how well or how badly it was already going.No matter how strong a person was, it could consume them.
Selena spoke gently.“How far along were you?”
“Six months.”Donna drew a hard breath that hitched on the way out.
Selena thought of the Latin on the walls.The wordburies.The Roman numeral four at Tara’s murder scene.The killer’s obsession with impurity, punishment, sacrifice, correction.She kept her face neutral and let Donna keep speaking.
“How did Nolan react?”
Donna’s answer came after a pause full of swallowing and breath.
“I think it broke something inside of him.Then he just went cold.”
“Cold how?”
