I know I won't be able to sleep.
But I do my best to pretend for Kelsea.
She needs to rest just as much as Dallas and I do, and I know she won't as long as she's staying away trying to watch out for me.
So I lay in Dallas's bed, mind racing, staring at the wall until I'm sure she's asleep.
She'd stayed up longer than I thought she would be able to. I could see the light coming from her phone beneath the blankets she kept up over her head and just make out the muffled voices playing from its speakers.
Every time I'd hear my own name mentioned, I would strain my ears to hear more. To be let in on what they're saying about me now. They aren't releasing much. Just that Aries and I are persons of interest and they're asking for anyone with information on the two of us that might lead to an arrest to come forward.
The idea terrifies me.
How many people in this town are still here that remember my father? That remember me? That would love nothing more than to see me fall the same way he had?
Between the two of us, Aries and me, I know this town is going to have a lot more to say about me.
I don't want to hear it, but I strain to listen anyway. I hate hearing his name over and over. I hate the way it twists the knife in my back deeper and deeper. It slices through muscle and sinew and aches with a pain I don't have the words to describe.
How could he do this to them?
How could he do this to me?
How can I be laying in the same room thinking of the exact same questions I'd laid here thinking about after my father made his confession?
Was it all a lie?
Everything that ever happened between us? Everything I believed him to be? Did he ever even actually care, or was he always this dark and evil person existing right under my own nose just as my father had done under this roof?
The question plagues me in the dark.
It slams against the confines of my mind on repeat, no matter how hard I try to drown it all out.
Where is Amie?
They haven't found her body yet, and I'm not sure that they will. I know they've already searched Aries's house. I hear the muffled sounds and the reports talking about their search warrant into his home and vehicles and how they aren't disclosing at this time any findings.
What did he do with her?
It's the question we all want answers to.
People all over the country are tuning into this tormented story I'm stuck living inside of.
None of us were worried about Aries. He had full access to this house without even needing the stolen keys because he had had me. Stupid, naive, idiot me. The girl he knew would never suspect him.
For all I know, he's already brought her here. She could already be over the bluff and gone. He had been here, right down stairs while the rest of us slept.
I hate myself for trusting him.
I hate myself for trusting Luke.
I hate myself for trusting my father.
They'd all played on my stupidity.
I'd breathed a small sigh of relief when I heard Kelsea finally lock her phone and roll over in the bed across the room.
I'd been patient.
I've laid here for long enough that her breaths have evened out into long heavy breaths of sleep.
I wait a little longer, just to be sure, before I quietly crawl out of the bed and tiptoe across the room and out of the door.
I creep into the kitchen and quietly as I can, I guard my eyes to peer through the glass of the back door, scanning for Dallas.
I can just barely make out the shape of his tent just to the left of the small back porch.
I'm nearly certain he's probably not sleeping but I do hope that I'm wrong.
Part of me muses what it may be like if I do somehow get out of all of this and I get to leave with Dallas. Would we be like we used to be? Or would it be different now that we are both grown and essentially strangers to each other now?
I shake the thoughts from my head and leave the kitchen. Fantasizing about things is the last thing I should be doing right now. There won't even be an after all of this to obsess over if I don't get through this in the first place.
So instead of planning the future, I decide to make a trip to the past instead.
If I have any chance of outdoing Aries and his plan to ruin me, I need to be better at noticing the signs. I need to be better than I had been before.
I slip into my parent's room and quietly shut the door behind me before closing the blinds and curtain and turning on the bedside lamp.
My eyes drift up to the wall. The one I'd been so sure had been painted over before.
I step over the bed frame to get closer, running my fingers over the white wall. It doesn't look like it's been painted over, but I don't trust it. I trust myself and what I saw.
I close my eyes tightly and take a deep breath, dredging up the foggy memory in my mind. MURDERER, it had said. I'd touched the wet paint. I picture myself doing it, lifting my own hand to the wall in front of me and I open my eyes.
With the edge of my fingernails I scrape at the paint, moving with efficient deliberate slowness not to make too much noise.
I'm about to give up the stupid endeavor when, finally, I've scratched enough white paint away. I bring my hand to my face and inspect the white flakes of paint beneath my nails, and right there under my middle finger...
Red.
I look back at the wall, at the tiny spot of red paint that was covered with the white.
I wasn't crazy. I wasn't seeing things. Someone-no-Aries, had gone to great lengths to make me believe I was insane. He wanted me to not trust what was right in front of me because then I'd be that much easier to manipulate.
Anger pulses through me.
I step out of the bed frame, dusting my hands off on my pants and stare around the room. He'd been the one to put those pills back in that hole. He'd been trying to push me to keep using. Keeping me weak.
If my resolve to stay clean wasn't strong before, it sure as hell is now.
I let my anger fuel me to do something I've been too afraid to do before.
I move to the closet and open the door, looking at the top back right corner for the box.
I have to hop and shimmy it forward before it's on edge enough for me to grasp down, but once I have it I sit in the floor with it, slowly removing the lid.
I move around some of the junk inside before I find what I'm looking for. The big leather bound family album.
The four of us used to take it out every Christmas Eve and flip through all of the pages my mother had painstakingly filled with pictures of hers and my father's life and then with me and Dallas.
Each year we would take a picture together in front of the fireplace and take turns every year getting to be the one to place the new Polaroid into the album.
It's a book full of happy memories. The things I've avoided thinking of since the day they were both gone from this world and I was all alone.
I open the front page, my mother's cursive sprawled across the first page.
The Jacobs family,
In this book, I hold onto every little moment spent with the person, and hopefully one day, the people, I love the most in all of the world.
My whole life, I've dreamed of you. I've searched far and wide for the feeling of completeness that I never could quiet grasp until the day my eyes met yours.
John, my love, you have given me a gift I can never repay. You have loved me wholly and completely without fail every day since we met. The life I now build with you will be filled with love, respect, adoration, and trust. The way I love you, my dear, can never falter, never waiver. No test will ever sway the way you fill my heart with such joy. I vow to love you passionately, patiently, and with unabashed abandon until my last breath passes my lips.
I swipe a tear from my eyes as I continue, the color of the pen changing as she added the next small section below the first.
My beautiful children,
I never knew what love could really be until I held you both in my arms. With you both, my life is so full, my heart so engorged with ever flowing peace and awe. Watching the two of you grow and learn, change and become bright, loving little humans is by far, the greatest accomplishment of my life. Know there will never be a day where my love does not wrap you up and hold you dear.
I set the book into my lap, wiping at my eyes as I stare down at her words. I'd always loved reading her inscription every year, and I didn't know how badly I'd missed it until right now.
I let my mother's words wash through me. Let them cool the fire burning inside of me. If I close my eyes I can still hear her reading it aloud to us as we wait impatiently to go to bed so that Santa could come.
I turn the first page, forcing myself to look at the pictures. To really look at them. It starts out with their wedding photos.
I stare into his eyes through the page.
But I see nothing.
I keep going.
Vacations, holidays, birthdays, the photos of the two of them and their life together keep going. In each one I search for something, any kind of sign at what he was beneath his kind smile and eyes.
Then the pictures of the two of them become fewer while photos of baby Dallas begin to fill the pages, and then me.
Still nothing changes. If anything, he looks even happier in his later shots with Dallas and me.
I flip towards the back, to where the chronological Christmas photos start. The first one Dallas and I are both babies, both being held by our parents.
A few pages later, and those babies are teens.
I stop on the last one.
The very last family photo we ever took.
There we are, the four of us standing in front of the Christmas tree. Dressed in reds and greens, all smiling. I stare so hard my eyes water. Nothing seems off. Maybe some bags under my father's eyes as he is turned to the side slightly, looking at Dallas and me instead of the camera.
I jump at a noise coming from the kitchen and I stand quickly with the album to go check what it was.
But when I stand, something hits my feet.
I stop to look down, the floor now scattered with envelopes.
I drop the album in my hands as I stare down at them. With shaking hands, I reach down and pick the first one up, bringing it closer to my face even though I know exactly what they are.
I look at the front of the unopened envelope addressed to me. The return address, Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby Montana.
"No." I whisper to myself.
My father had written me dozens of letters in his first few weeks in prison. I'd received every single one, and thrown them each away.
I look down at the others on the floor. Some are crumpled, some have stains, others, like the one in my hand, look just as fresh as they were when I'd taken them from the mailbox.
I'd been so angry with him, I'd had no desire to see anything else he had to say to me after what he had done to those girls and this family.
I'd hated him, and I threw these letters away. So how...?
Mom.
I play her words through my mind again. The ones she'd written with love for John Jacobs.
She'd never once said anything to me about the letters.
In fact, when I really think about it, she never said anything about our father after he went to prison. She'd comforted us, and coached us what to say to reporters, but never had we ever actually had a conversation about what had happened.
She must have found them and kept them for me. She probably assumed that one day, I'd want to see what my father had left to say to me.
Another noise in the kitchen has me tossing all off the letters on the floor back into the box. I put the album away and shove the box back into the closet, tucking the one letter into my waistband as I creep towards the door.
I lean my ear against the crack and listen for anymore movement but a king moment passes with no sounds.
I creep back out of the room and into the kitchen just as Dallas come in the back door.
"What are you doing?" He asks, turning on the kitchen light.
"Couldn't sleep." I shrug. "Body is kind of restless."
"I'm sure." He frowns, dusting snow from his shoulders onto the floor.
"What are you doing up?" I ask, looking him over.
"Couldn't sleep either." He tells me. "I went out and chopped some firewood. It's on the porch." He says, tilting his head towards the door. "Supply was getting low and it's gonna be freezing the next few days. Storm is blowing through."
"Great." I roll my eyes. "Just what I need, more cold."
"For someone who grew up in the snow, you sure do hate it."
"I'm moving to Mexico when this is all over." I joke and he smiles a little. "Can I ask you something?"
He gives me a half smile. "Of course," he says. "Whatever you want."
"Do you feel like you missed something?" I finally say. "Like, do you feel like there were signs you missed before?"
"With Dad?" He asks and I nod. "I don't know. Not really. He was just Dad to me. I don't see anything that stands out looking back." He tilts his head at me. "Do you?"
I shake my head. "No." I admit. "I just feel like there should be something. Some kind of sign that we missed so we could have seen this coming."
"Are you actually asking about Dad, or Aries?"
"Both." I sigh, letting my arms hang loosely at my sides.
"You should get some sleep, Miss."
I turn to go, but swivel back. "Do you ever...do you ever miss them?"
He thinks for a long moment before he bites his bottom lip and nods. "It's why I hate being here so much."
"Are you still mad at them?"
He huffs out a breath. "It's why I hate being here so much."