Well, it's finally happened. Nicholas's armour has cracked. More than cracked. Almost as if it had exploded from within.
It's 5am. I should be asleep. Derek told me to be at a meeting in a few hours time, and it's going to be a big one. I need to be awake for it, alert enough to repair whatever damage has been done. Yet, I can't sleep. I hear every shift in the house, every gust of wind. Every time the floor creaks I wonder if it is him.
I want to go to Derek, tell him everything that happened, why it happened. I think he would understand. He does seem to genuinely like Nick, and not just because of his father. But I'm getting ahead of myself. A Legacy Journal is meant to be a record, and I need to tell it from the start. It's not like the police will ever be able to read it anyway.
I heard him screaming, even though he denied it later. Seals don't scream, apparently. But anyway, I got up to see what was going on, and ran into him. He looked I don't know, not scared haunted maybe. And startled to see me, although there was some relief there when he saw that it was me, and not one of the others.
I was the one who was scared. The hardest thing about being in the Legacy is not dealing with the ghosts and spirits and poltergeists, it's dealing with the people involved. And to see that expression, the one I have seen so many times on other people, on my Nick...
I asked if he was alright, and he told me he was, and that he was leaving. He said it defiantly, as if he knew that we had been told by Derek that Nick should stay on the island after dark. And I went with my heart, not my head. I told him that I would go with him, thinking that maybe I would be able to help somehow. We ended up in this bar on the mainland, sipping beer in a dark booth, not really saying a lot. I didn't know what to say, and he wasn't going to start the conversation. We sat there for maybe half an hour, neither of us saying anything. Finally, as the waitress brought us another round, and smiled suggestively at Nick, he looked at me and began to talk.
I won't write down what he told me, and no-one will ever make me reveal it. What Nick told me last night will stay between the two of us. I'm not going to even mention what he said to him. It remains in that bar, in a smoky booth.
But I think I helped him by listening. Just a little. When we finally returned to the Island he looked more calm, and he even laughed once on the trip. Then we drove up to the house and all was ruined. Derek stood there waiting, his face like thunder. Nick had broken his imposed curfew and our precept was not a happy camper.
Damn, footsteps. Someone's up. I'm not in the mood to talk now. More later.
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