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.
I see the paint.
How I'd have paint all over from the finger paint I was given to play with. I remember how I'd be sat up on a counter naked to be cleaned off.
I see his straggly long grey hair.
I see his yellow tinted glasses from the nicotine sitting low on the bridge of his nose while he'd watch me, slowly wiping my body clean with wipes until the smudges of blues and greens were gone.
I smell the stale scent of the cigarettes that would cling to his fingers, his beard, his breath.
I can feel his eyes on me.
Sense it across my whole body.
I still feel how he'd sit me in his lap and run his fingers through my hair and down my back. How his belt buckle would dig into my flesh, making me squirm.
I remember my mother's tears.
I remember her sitting me on the counter in our kitchen asking me so many questions. Asking over and over to describe things I didn't have the words so young to give her.
I was so young.
So very young and innocent, and confused.
He was family.
I didn't understand.
I didn't get why I was telling her things and why her face twisted the way that it did. I didn't understand her questions or the fear in her eyes. I didn't understand.
I didn't understand.
I still don't understand.
My mind has shielded me for once.
I don't know if it's trauma or just being so little.
But I only have those small memories. Little things I'd see. Feeling something was uncomfortable. Not knowing if what I was telling my mother was right or wrong. Seeking comfort from her when I felt so confused.
I never came back to this house after that talk with my mom in our kitchen.
I didn't really know why.
Not at the time.
I just knew it wasn't something we'd do anymore.
I knew I wasn't upset about it. I never missed my visits here. Never missed that man. Never asked why.
As years passed, so many people would ask me things. Family members, my parent's friends.
"Why don't you go say hi?" They'd say when they'd see my uncle.
"Why don't you go out and give him a hug." They'd say when he'd pull up outside of our house to speak with my father.
"Are you sure?"
That last one always stung the most.
I was just a little kid.
So many questioned me in the years following our separation from that side of the family. So many posed the idea that I was just making it up. That I didn't understand what was really happening. That he was a good man and loved his family and I'd been wrong about the things I'd said.
It happened so much that sometimes it really made me doubt myself. I don't remember the truly bad things happening. I can't pinpoint the root of the twisting sick feeling I'd get whenever his name was brought into conversation.
So many people didn't believe me, vowed that whatever I thought was wrong, that I couldn't help but wonder eventually.
I think that's when I started to learn to not even trust myself. They placed doubt on me, put guilt in the pit of my stomach.
How many nights did I lay awake wondering if I had lied? Wondering if they were all right? If the only person who believed me was my mother and father, then wasn't it possible that I'd been too young? That I had been confused? That I'd pointed at a man and called him a monster when he wasn't?
I used to be so tormented by those feelings.
But standing here now.
This feeling of unease doesn't come from confusion. It doesn't come from being too young to understand what was happening to me. It doesn't come from holding onto an idea I had as a tiny child.
The way my body and mind completely shut down at the mention of him or this place, the way I couldn't meet my own mother's eyes whenever she'd accidentally slip up and mention him or what happened around me, it wasn't guilt to lying.
It was shame.
I've always carried the shame.
As an adult I know what happened to me here wasn't something for me to feel shameful about, but that's the thing with abuse. You carry it on your flesh for the rest of your life. You can't run from it, or hide. It's always there, always lurking.
I didn't know how to process my feelings about it then, and maybe I still don't.
What I know is that I was molested by my uncle. Right here in his home. Right beneath the noses of the rest of my family my innocence was stolen from me and it had led my life all of these years.
No one talked about it. No one helped me understand. No one got me help or tried to let me know that I shouldn't feel bad.
We just split from them.
And that was the end of it.
Until the day he died he was right here, in the same town as me, a reminder just waiting to happen.
I realize too late that I can't go inside.
I'm afraid to.
My mind has kept me safe this long and I'm afraid what will happen if I step foot in that house. I'm terrified that seeing it again, smelling it, might break the barrier my brain has constructed to keep the ugliness away.
"Aries!" I call out over the noise of the storm whipping around my body. "Aries!"
All of the windows of the home are dark.
Nothing moves from within.
Fuck.
What if I'm wrong? What if I'm here for absolutely no reason at all?
I follow the long empty drive way around the side of the house. I stop at the basement door positioned between the two garage doors and rub at the glass to try to see inside.
The garage is empty on the left side, but there is a car under a tarp on the right.
I knock loudly against the door but still no movement from inside.
Frustration growing, I walk around the back of the house.
The back yard is expansive and crowded by the trees at the back of the lot. A tiny swing set still sits unused, the metal chains of the swings creaking and groaning as the wind blows them from side to side.
I walk briskly up the back stairs up onto the big wooden back porch, griping the railing on either side to keep my balance.
I cross the porch to the window that looks into the kitchen and peer inside, just an empty kitchen. I move to the back door and slam my gloved fists against it.
"Aries!" I call out again but it is beginning to feel more and more useless the more I say it.
I twist the knob, squeezing my eyes shut, but it's locked. I let out a huff, turning to look out across the yard again when something catches my eye at the back of the yard beside the storage shed.
I make my way back down the stairs, slipping and falling hard on the last step.
I hit the ground with a painful thud, my head knocking against the bottom stair.
I stare up at the snow pelting my face and again curse at myself for coming here. Of course Aries wouldn't lead me here. He doesn't even know why I'd hate this place. Only knows we don't come here.
It was stupid for me to think I could figure all of this out on my own.
I roll to my side, getting my bearings again. I rub at the knot already beginning to form at the back of my skull and angrily pull at my hat, getting it back into place.
I'm about to call the whole thing off when I remember the storage shed.
I dust myself off and creep through the yard, the whining of the swing set still filling the air with a sticky eeriness.
I walk to the back of the yard, the storage shed to my left and a vehicle covered with a blue cover to my right, the wind whipping beneath it adding a whooshing sound to the rest of this awful scene.
I grab at the door of the shed and it clicks open.
I walk inside, thankful for a little shelter from the wind and snow, but I can't see shit.
"Hello!" I yell into the shed but my own voice is all I hear.
I fumble in my pocket to pull out Kelsea's phone. Getting even more agitated as I try to turn on the flashlight but can't with the stupid gloves.
I take one off with my teeth and click the light on the phone.
The white light clicks on, pointed at the wooden planks of the ground under my boots.
I lift the phone, shining it around the shed.
The walls on either side have wooden shelves stacked with tools and other random junk, while the back of the shed has boxes shoved and stacked against the back wall.
I tug on the metal chain over my head to try to click on the single overhead bulb but the power isn't on.
Of course not.
Mrs. Statham had the power turned onto my house while I'm in town, but of course this property didn't need it.
I turn to leave when the light of the phone flashes across something shiny on the lowest shelf by the door.
I walk over, directing the phone over the shelf.
What the fuck?
Across the shelf is women's jewelry, a couple sets of keys, and the most disturbing of all...
Amie Farmer's smiling face looks up at me from her driver's license.
I drop the glove from my mouth as I stare at it. Then slowly the other sets of mismatched earrings and rings and a butterfly hair clip.
I slam into the door trying to get out of the shed.
I scramble back out into the yard, my heart stuck pounding in my throat.
I turn and look at the blue tarp flapping over the vehicle, the big tires coming in and out of view.
I run over and yank and tear at the covering, having to jump and use all of my weight to pull it back, the phone glowing a bright white light up into the air where I've dropped in on the ground.
I yank the cover free and step back in horror.
Right in front of me is a old white Toyota Tacoma, windows blacked out. I run to the back and stare where the tag should be but there isn't one.
"Oh my god." I cry, running away from the truck and back to the house.
I go to the basement door between the garage doors and pull.
It's unlocked.
I run into the garage and to the car on the right side.
I whip the tarp away and it crumbles to the ground of the garage, exposing a small blue Kia.
Amie's car.
I'd been so wrong.
So very wrong.
I run from the garage, sprinting as fast as my feet will carry me to the driveway, desperate to get back to my car.
I've got to get the fuck out of here, but when I round the front of the house I slam into someone.
"Missy!" Aries grabs me by the shoulders.
"Get the fuck away from me." I push at him, trying to free myself from his grasp.
But he wraps his arms tightly around my body, dragging me backwards.
"I can't let you go."