Of course, when I got home yesterday, a lot was going on. I was bringing home the father of my son, a man who had been locked away in prison for the last decade. I had a lot on my mind. If there’s ever a time when I might have put the keys in the wrong spot, it was yesterday.

Still, it makes me uneasy. Last night when I woke up in the middle of the night, I was certain I heard a car engine right outside my window. And now my keys are in a different place than where I left them.

I wish I had checked my car last night. If somebody had been using my car, there would’ve been snow on it. But now it’s too late. Any snow would have melted.

The front door swings open and Shane bursts into the house, his gloves caked with snow. He rests the shovel in the corner by the door where he found it and smiles at me. “You got everything we need?”

This is silly. I must’ve just put the keys in the wrong place. I have a lot on my mind. I shouldn’t drive myself crazy over-analyzing this. And anyway, what if Shane did take the car somewhere last night? Would that really be the worst thing that ever was? Maybe he just wanted to know what it was like to be behind the wheel again after all that time. I couldn’t blame him.

“Yes,” I say. “I got it all.”

Fifteen minutes later, we have loaded up the Toyota with the cleaning supplies, and I get on the road with Shane in the passenger seat and Josh in the back. I have this awful sick feeling as I pull onto the road, but I promised Shane I would do this. I can’t back out.

“You know how to get there?” he asks.

“Yes,” I snap.

He’s quiet for a moment. “Are you okay?”

No, I’m not okay. We are driving out to the house where I was almost murdered eleven years ago. There’s nothing about this that is okay. But I can’t exactly say all that in front of my son. “I’m fine.”

“I appreciate you doing this.”

“Yep.”

Shane seems to realize that I don’t want to talk about this anymore, so he shuts up and leans back in his seat. The roads have been mostly cleared out in the morning, so even though I don’t have all-wheel drive, it’s not too bad navigating around Raker. It isn’t until I turn onto the smaller road to get to the farmhouse that it gets a little slippery. The road has been plowed, but not very well, and because it’s below freezing temperature, a lot of the remaining snow has turned into ice.