MORIANI HOME, CELLAR
The noise -- the shuffling of metal,
some creaking -- comes first to Claire
in the darkness of her sleep. It
increases, growing less distant until she realizes that the noise is not
part of some nightmare and that she is awake.
She has awoken so many times during
the night that this latest revelation means nothing ... until a glimmer
of what she realizes is sunlight, breaking through the crack in-between
the doors, catches her eye. She sits up straight against the cellar's cold
wall and lifts her head from her shoulder.
She fights the negligible amount
of sleep she received and the haze it is holding over her. The noise, she
realizes, is the sound of someone coming into the cellar. She looks quickly
over to the opposite wall and sees that Ryan
is still slumped against it,
asleep. Then her gaze returns to the doors -- just as they burst open.
Claire watches as Nick
Moriani descends
the stairs into the cellar, early morning sunlight flooding in from the
now-open doors behind him. She knows that in a moment he will spot her
and the game will begin.
And it does. Nick's head rotates
slowly as he scans the cellar. He passes over Ryan's motionless body and
continues until his gaze settles upon Claire. "Have a nice night?" he sneers.
It doesn't even cross her mind to
become engaged in a verbal sparring match with him. She just wants to get
out of here, away from last night and back to the reality she knows. She
pulls herself to her feet.
Her cold stare shoots right through
Nick and out at the world pouring in from the open doors behind him. She
needs to get out there. She bolts for the stairs, but Nick steps in front
of her and stops her with a firm grasp of her shoulder.
"Where are you off to so quickly?"
"Let me go," she snaps, yanking herself
away from him. "I need to get out of here -- I need to go see Tim ..."
"Very well," Nick says after a pause.
"What's going on?" Ryan interrupts,
trying to clear his head with a few quick shakes. He stands slowly.
"I figured you must be down here,"
Nick explains, strolling closer to his son. "I saw a phone lying by the
doors, and the lock looked like it had fallen into place strangely."
"We got locked in." Ryan shakes his
head again as he tries to wake up. "I'm sorry I missed the wedding -- did
everything go all right?"
"It was wonderful," Nick says. He
folds his hands in front of him and looks over to Claire, expecting a response.
He receives none.
"You're lucky we didn't plan on leaving
for the honeymoon until this morning," he says, turning back to Ryan. "If
I hadn't come back here to pick up a few things, you might've been stuck
in here for days."
There is again no response.
"Quiet crowd in here," Nick mutters.
"I need to get out of here," Claire
blurts out suddenly. She isn't sure why she says it -- it's not as though
she needs to explain herself to these two. She charges up the stairs and
disappears out the doors.
Nick watches her bizarre exit. "What
happened in here last night?" he asks Ryan.
"Nothing ... Being locked up all
night wasn't either of our idea of fun, that's all."
Nick nods, pursing his lips. "I would
imagine that would be the epitome of fun for you."
"Yeah, well, it wasn't."
"Why not? What happened between the
two of you?"
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