The Things We Couldn't Forget

Chapter 37.

This couldn't be a worse idea if I'd tried.

Between this storm, this crap car, and my incessant shaking, I'm losing hope fast that I'll ever even make it to Ruth's estate.

Some of it is probably my own subconscious sabotage of the mission. My very body does not want to return to that place. The rest is definitely the storm.

Wind shakes my car, whistling and screeching violently around my tiny car. The tires feel bald and unable to grip the numerous patches of black ice I manage to keep finding.

Multiple times the vehicle swerves and grinds along the road.

I'm so afraid.

Terrified that this is going to end with me in a ditch and my end actually coming from freezing to death.

How long does that take?

I remind myself of the cellphone in my pocket. If something bad does happen, I can just call for help. I'm not going to be stranded and freeze to death in my car while the snow piles up around me and leaves me undetectable until the storm passes.

It's the only thought that keeps my foot gently pressed against the gas pedal.

My eyes burn with tears from straining so hard to see through the snow.

It feels like it takes a lifetime to take what on a normal day would be less than a fifteen minute drive.

My stomach twists like it always had when I'd think about this. The fact that they were always so close. Right here in the same town but an impassible wedge between the two sides of the Jacobs families.

How as a kid, before he'd died, I'd always get an uncomfortable prickling of my skin going to the store or out to eat with my family. The little fear of seeing him again always in the back of my mind.

Even after he died, seeing Ruth in town was just as uncomfortable. I wanted nothing to do with her either or the man I couldn't help but see in my mind when I'd look at her.

When I finally make my turn at the Jacobs's estate it all starts to hit me again.

I hate Aries a little for making me come here, for making me have to face this all head on, even if he doesn't know the full truth behind it all.

I decide to park the car at the end of the driveway and make the walk up to the house.

The cold is brutal as I trudge up the long curving driveway until it opens up to a massive clearing.

The house sits on a large open lot, backed by the woods like my own home. However, this place is massive and cold where mine was always small and warm with love.

I stare up at the dark brick house.

Unbidden, little flashes of memory creep in.

The back bedroom where I'd sleep, just a baby. So small and innocent until I was robbed. So young my mind had no idea why things felt so wrong. Why I was always so uncomfortable being here.

I see the bedroom door.

How the room would be pitch black all but the small orange glow of the hallway light beneath the crack of the door.

I can see how that light would grow as the door would slowly crack open, the light cutting a small path across the small bedroom.

A shadow of a man coming into view before the door would close and the room would seep back into darkness again.

I see the bathtub.

I see the blue tiled wall of the shower tub combo where I'd be given my baths. My eyes settling on a small spider as it crawls across the tiles.