The Things We Couldn't Forget

Chapter 1.

I swore to myself when I was 18 year's old that I would never again come back to Faulkner Montana.

There was nothing left here for me.

Best laid plans, however, tend to screw me over in the end.

I'm no stranger to bad fortune, everyone knows that to be true, because every single person in this God forsaken town knows me. Hell, most of the country knows me.

When I got out of this place, I watched it shrink in my rear view mirror before I refused to look back at it at all. This place was nothing but a nightmare to me.

It's a hell hole surrounded by the most beautiful mountainous views, a sky painted with orange and pinks in the mornings, and a deep cobalt at night. Here the stars are more clear than any other place I've tried planting my roots in. It's all a facade, this beauty that pulls you in, makes you think this is a place you can see yourself waking up with a smile for the rest of your life. Like most things though, when you pull back those layers of beautiful wrapping, inside is just a regular old town, just like everywhere else in this world.

No place is perfect, I'm aware of that, I just hold to the belief that Faulkner is even worse than anywhere else. Monsters live here...or they-he, did.

As soon as I take the exit off of the highway leading down between the valleys that will lead to my home town, I feel the panic start to set in.

My pulse is louder, my palms grip the steering wheel ahead of me with an unnecessary amount of force, and I can feel the nervous sweat beginning to pool beneath my arms and on the palms of my hands.

This is a mistake.

It's the mantra I've been repeating to myself over and over for the past two weeks, since I got the call to come back home.

This is the last place I'd like to be, but my options were limited. I'm the only one they were able to track down.

My great aunt Ruth, had finally died.

When I got the message from her lawyers handling her estates, I didn't feel sad. If I'm being entirely honest, my first thought was that only the truly worst people live that damn long.

At the ripe old age of 98, Ruth Jacobs, had finally gone on home to her home in the sky with her ever merciful lord and savior.

I wonder if that's the same savior that apparently told her not to take my brother and me in after everything happened. She was the next of kin, after all. A statement made by the police that fall that didn't seem to register with her.

I guess I get it.

Who wants two cursed teens?

Certainly not Ruth Jacobs.

Ruth Jacobs wanted a pack of Marlboro reds and a hefty glass of wine before bed after a long day of winning at the bingo hall. Her daily plans had not left any space to be responsible for two kids. Because of her, we were split up and put into the system.

Or, at least I was.

Dallas ran away, only a year shy of freedom anyway. I begged him to take me with him wherever it was he was going, but he'd said no. I cried myself to sleep for months after being placed in a temporary foster home in the next town over from Faulkner. The family was nice, as nice as people who aren't your real family can be to a troubled teen with a haunted past. But they'd never been real family to me.

Dallas was the only one who had, and even he had chosen to leave. Had I been old enough at the time, I wouldn't have blamed him. I was mad for a long time but I knew I would have left too.