When you know

26. Home again

"Does he have to come?" Ariana asked Agent 21, quietly but loud enough for Aidan to hear. She refused to look at him and talk to him. He stood in the room waiting to escort her to her old family home.

More than ever and especially with the news, she felt determined to have as little contact with him as possible but it was proving difficult. He hadn't left her side. She spoke to him through others and never addressed him directly. She had told the security to not allow him into her hospital room but he had waited outside. She ignored his gestures, whatever they were. She ignored his words. She ignored him. She just didn't want him to have an effect on her and opening a dialogue with him, would open her wounds again. The best way was to just pretend that he was a ghost.

"Yes I am afraid he does. He's assigned to this and has-"

"There's plenty of others-"

"No. He's going and that's final." Agent 21 said irritated and stern as always.

"Ariana, this is getting quite ridiculous." She could hear Aidan's  frustration and that he was almost at the end of his tether from the way Ariana was treating him. But she knew the truth. So, why was the pretence continuing? Why didn't he just leave and go on to his next mission or something? Because it wasn't over yet, she reminded herself. But it soon will be. So, she raised her chin and pretended that he wasn't there.  She just wanted to get it done and over with.

She folder her arms and walked to the back of the car and not into the side door which Aidan held open for her. She opened it herself and got in. Another black car followed behind them, for safety's sake. Safety from who because everyone was gone, Ariana wondered.

She hated the being confined in the same space as him and what made it worse was that it was just the two of them in the car. Had Aidan purposely requested it? He had tried to talk to her, but stopped when he realised that she wasn't listening and in a world of her own as she stared out the different yet familiar buildings and scenes that past her. So, they continued to drive in silence which Ariana was grateful for.

She figured that if the information was in any place, then it'd be in the secret compartment her father had built. He had made her promise to never open it unless it was an emergency when she had been ten years old. She had long forgotten about it until she had been in the hospital when it had suddenly just bolted to her mind. She couldn't guarantee that it was there but it was worth a try.  

As the sleek black, tinted car drew up in the driveway, Ariana felt a gush of memories, happier memories coming back. She used to love putting her hands under the in the three-tier stone fountain in front of the house after they would come back from somewhere. But her mother had always made her wash her hands at home again. Sometimes, she and her father would soak their feet in the water to her mother's great disapproval as there was a pool at the back of the house. But there was something different about the fountain as it was over a hundred years old, so it felt like they had transported back through time where hundreds of others had done the same thing. She smiled at the memory and quickly wiped it away when she caught Aidan looking.

Ariana felt nervous entering the house again. It had been so many years since she lived here and now she had returned to it. The house looked exactly the same, warm and impressive but something was amiss. It wasn't hers anymore. Her Uncle had sold the house less than a year after her parent's death. She had missed it terribly. Her parent's items were sold off and it felt like everything she knew was being taken away from her.

The residents had been cleared from the house due to their visit. She wondered if the secret compartment lay inside still or whether it had been discovered but probably not. It only opened to three fingerprints; her parents and her own and also required a password after all.