Page 17 of Eternally Ginger

10

Ginger

Ihad to admit, I felt a little bad omitting part of my plan from Tin Man and Sac. The truth was, I was going back to the store for the second time this week, but that wasn’t the only place I was headed today. Actually, it was an excuse to leave, so I could go alone to my Uncle Kenneth’s cabin to search for clues. I didn’t expect to find anything, but I’d never been more hopeful I would be wrong. Everyone deserved a little bit of a break occasionally, right? Maybe today was my day.

It was surprisingly easy to find the place, given I hadn’t been there since my parents’ divorce when I was nine. A lot had happened since then; I was an entirely different person. I no longer saw things for the light and potential they held. It was the depravity and ugliness that captured my attention now.

A car was in the driveway, and yellow light beamed out of the windows, giving the impression someone was there. Maybe my luck had profoundly changed. Panic pulsated through my bloodstream, and I swallowed hard, mentally preparing myself for what I was walking into.

I should have asked Ghoul to come along with me. There was no telling who or what lay behind that green door. Thing was, there was a reason I didn’t wake him this morning. He was my only reason for living. I’d grown too attached to him, and I wouldn’t be able to live if something happened to him. Plus, if by chance Mom was here hiding, I didn’t want to spook her, and Ghoul made a lot of people nervous. Most of the time, I didn’t care what others thought of him, but I needed her to stay put if she was safe. If she was here, it meant Ghoul or one of the other brothers of the Royal Bastards could kill the man who they suspected of her abduction.

The mud squished too loudly around the edge of my boots as I tiptoed to a window. It was absurd to think that someone inside could hear it, but it didn’t dial my anxiety back one bit. The panic within my body was almost insufferable. Every cell beneath my veins screamed at me to run away from this place, but I refused to give in to that fear.

I searched for something to stand on and luckily found an old milk crate someone had tossed into the weeds. Praying it had enough strength left in it to hold me, I climbed on top of it, wiped the dew off the glass, and peeked inside.

“Mom,” I whispered to myself, my palm flattened against the wet glass, and the tiniest bit of relief engulfed me. She was alive. Not only that, she was okay. Her mouth moved, but I was not in the right place to read her lips. Where she was sitting, I could only see her side profile, and her neck down was hidden behind the wing-backed couch.

A man with a full beard slowly entered the room and shook his head, waving his hands aggressively. He went from calm to belligerent in a matter of seconds. His relaxed gait as he came into the room was a huge contrast to anything he did thereafter. They were yelling at each other, that much I could hear, but the words were too muffled to make sense of anything. She must have tried to reason with him because after she spoke, his movements weren’t as sharp. It wasn’t long before his hands were in the air again, and he pointed his jagged finger in her face. He was pissed about something, but there was no guessing as to what.

I had to get closer to understand them. Now, more than ever, it was important to have all the details. He stalked closer to her, and rage blasted inside me. Her head bent backward and then forward. Did she spit on him? What the hell was going on? If I moved, I might not see what happened next, but if I didn’t, I wouldn’t know what was being said between them.

While my heart thrashed out a distress call, the beats resembling the sound of a stampede of tap dancers, my hands trembled with fear, and my mind ignited with fury. My body recognized something was off about the situation but couldn’t decide which response was correct as the events unfolded before me. As soon as both of my feet were on the ground, one would step onto the crate again, afraid I would miss something crucial if I relocated. It took a couple of times repeating the movements for me to convince myself. It wouldn’t take me that long, forty-seconds maybe, and that was being liberal with my time.

Praying I made the right decision, I snuck around the house and onto the porch. Its window offered the best view into the house and was closer to where they were.

“You can’t have her. I’ll die before I tell you where she is,” Mom shouted. Who was she protecting? She was the one who needed to be saved, not anyone else. Why did she not see that? She might have been so blown out of her mind she was talking in the third person. Sadly, it would not be the first time I witnessed her speaking like that; therefore, it was not an unreasonable assumption. Only, the way her voice shook with fear told me a different story. Her posture was straight, and her shoulders pinned backward. By reading her body language, it was undeniable she was reacting defensively.

“Don’t act all high and mighty, Karen. You are just as guilty as the rest of us,” he said in a familiar tone. This unshaven man, whom I didn’t recognize, was my Uncle Kenneth. I would know that smooth voice anywhere. One of the last times they talked, Mom told Grams she was clean. Perhaps this was a disagreement over drugs?

“No. It was Jacob and you.”

“Bullshit! If you hadn’t stayed so fucking high, you could have saved her, but no, you wanted a family. I told Jacob he was fucking up when he kept you. He should have sold you when you were ripe. Now, look at you. Fucking spoiled goods.” His opened hand landed against her cheek, and she fell onto the couch cushion.

I needed to move. She needed my help, but no matter how many times I told my feet to take a step, they wouldn’t. It was like watching my dad’s murder all over again. It had been years ago, but I was still the same scared little kid within. All of my negative thoughts surfaced, and I was suffocating. Fear shook my muscles, and confusion struck my brain. What did he mean by they should have sold her? I repeated the words to myself, and then realization smacked me hard.

“Holy shit,” I murmured softly. Mom was one of Dad’s victims, and Uncle Kenneth helped him capture her, or at the very least, he knew what happened. It took a couple of seconds, but the scene playing in front of my eyes finally made sense. This wasn’t about drugs. It was much worse. Kenneth probably was not my uncle at all. He was the man the Feds were looking for, and he had, in fact, abducted my mom.

“I’m sorry, Karen,” he said in a caring voice, helping her get into a sitting position and rubbed the skin he’d struck seconds before. “You make me so crazy. I love you,” he apologized, and she forced a smile.

I wanted to scream at her, “Mom, get up! Run the fuck away! I’m here!” but I didn’t. I needed to save her, and no matter how pissed off I was, my voice couldn’t be heard. My presence had to go unnoticed. I was no good to either of us bound or dead, and that was exactly what I would be if I busted in there without some type of strategy. I was no match for Kenneth or whatever his name may be. I wouldn’t be stupid about this. He couldn’t know I was here because that wouldn’t help Mom or me out of this situation.

She stared past him and found me, her gaze darting from him to where I was hidden. He was too busy laying his head in her lap and groveling to pay attention to what she had discovered. Thinking on my feet, I blew heat onto the window and dragged my fingertip across the surface, writing the words, “Be back soon.” Almost immediately after my hand left the glass, the words begin to fade.

Her head shook faintly to disagree as she mouthed the word, “Run!”

I wiped away the little bits of the written words erasing any traceable proof I had ever been there.

I wanted to disagree, but there wasn’t anything I could do without a weapon. He was not a scrawny man. In that instance, my plan began to form. Taking him by surprise was the best advantage I could have, so regardless if I wanted to leave or not, I had to in order to save my mom. The hardest part was going to be getting back here without Ghoul. Our love had blossomed as if it was the most beautiful of white roses. My thirst for revenge would stain every last one of its breathtaking petals red with blood before they reached their maturity. We’d moved so far in our relationship, and I felt the shift but wouldn’t admit it. Perhaps somewhere in the depths of my mind, I was afraid that if I acknowledged it, something would come along to ruin what we had, but the ruins came regardless. Often, it took trauma to make a person have an epiphany. I guessed this was mine. I was in love with a man who may never know it if my plan did not work out how I wanted it to, and I died.

Hot tears of regret and guilt streaked my face as I ran to the vehicle and quietly opened the door. Alone in the van with my thoughts, my stomach turned and flopped, thinking of how many years my dad might have spent violating my mother. My skin shuddered. I had no clue what the truth was. The possibility of her going along with him and abducting kids was too wild to even consider. None of it made sense. Did she think she was the only one, that he’d stopped with her? My heart refused to accept what Kenneth professed as the truth.

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