Dear Mom and Dad,

We’ve seen a lot a woman and children around the perimeter. Some acknowledge us with cold, robotic eyes while others want to approach us. I want to help these people. They can’t all want to kill me any more than I would want to kill them. I’m sure Sarge will give me another verbal beating for talking to a woman and her daughter. I would have liked to shuttle them onto a helicopter; get them out of this hell hole and away from the garish light of day and the hideous night. Everyone needs help sometimes. We’re all kinds of lost children.

Adam had Seth’s last letter framed—for posterity he said, but it hung in my tiny room in the attic. I decided that it was coming with me when we left. I walked back over to the dresser, took out a change of clothes for the day and laid them on the bed.

“Today has got to be better than yesterday,” I thought to myself.

“You ready, Nikki?” Garrett’s voice called out from the other side of the door.

“In a few minutes,” I replied as I unlocked the door, letting Garrett in before closing the door and locking it.

“No one else’s here, Nikki,” he commented before I rushed into his arms.

“Wherever ever I leave a door unlocked, that’s when the whole world barges in.”

“You dad wants us to come to your brother’s church this afternoon.”

I rolled my eyes at that. I did not care about the history of the building. I wouldn’t care if one man built it out of sticks and spit, it was not where I wanted to go. “Then I guess we will have to go, lest we don’t hear the end of it.”

I walked back to the bed and took off my t-shirt.
“Well, we say we were doing other…things…and…You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Teasing you? Oh yeah,” I replied as I took off the shorts I wore at bed.

“That’s just mean and cruel Nikki. Mean and cruel,” Garrett replied as he turned away for a second but slowly turned his neck back to me as I continued to get dressed.

“You’re going to sleep in here tonight. I will not take no as answer.”

He nodded in agreement.

Several minutes later we walked down the stairs into the foyer. I bit my lip at the size of the entire house. It was too much for a family of four. I could only assume Adam and Karen-Anne were going to have sixteen more kids to fill all the rooms in the house. The dining room table alone felt like it could comfortably seat every member of Congress, unlike the one at home that could barely accommodate the six of us growing up.

We walked out the front door and heard the door electronically lock behind us.

“Looks like we’re locked out until this evening,” Garrett said as he fished his keys out of his pocket.

“I’m good,” I replied.

“Where do you want to go? Just drive around town?”

“Too bad that water slide place isn’t open,” I said as I climbed into the truck.

“We could go to the mall. There’s one across town.” Garret jumped up into the driver’s side, we closed our doors, and he started the engine.

“No, I know where we’re going today,”

“The camping people?” He asked as he looked at me for a few seconds with a questionable expression.

“Yes, I said we would.”

‘Yeah, you did. Okay, we’ll go.”

“Is there a ‘but’ there?” I asked as we drove down the driveway.

“But I plan to park a few streets away.”

I nodded in agreement.

The drive into town took several minutes and I hoped we would not meet up with my family. The feeling of dread passed as we moved into the business area of town and not the historical part. We parked the truck in a parking space on a side street and made our way down the street.

“Why are we doing this again? Garret asked.

“That girl…reminded me of myself.”

“How?”

“Not knowing what will happen, to wonder if the world would be ready to accept me.”

Garrett took my hand as we walked close to the massive number of tents, reminding me of the other letters Seth had written to me. A man in several layers of coats and a dirty face stomped towards us.

“What do you want?” He asked with a threatening glare.

“Nothing,” I replied.

“Then why ya’ here?”

“There was a little girl we met yesterday, she lives here.”

“A lot of little girls live here. You with the state?”

“No sir,” Garrett replied.

The man’s eyes darted back and forth. I squeezed Garrett’s hand with so much force I thought I was crushing it.

“Why are you here?”

“We just want to know what happened to you,” I said, trying to sound brave.

“What happened to me? I’ll tell you what happened to me!”

“Curtis!” A voice called out from behind the man.

We looked past him to see another multi-coat cladded man with a toboggan cap stepped up. His face was obscured by a bushy beard.

“Curtis, Gary needs your help with supper, okay?”

“They want to know what happened to us. I was about to tell them to go to Hell.” Curtis replied as he pointed at us.

“I’ll let them know, Curt. You hurry back to Gary, okay?

Curtis walked back to the tents, stopping every yard or so to glare at us.

“Curtis means well. He wants to be our protector. What brings you to our land?”

“We met this little girl yesterday, and I saw again here.”

“Over at the Whataburger?” The man asked as he pointed down the road.

“Yea,” Garrett replied,

“Kaitlin?” He asked as he intently stared at us.

We nodded in reply and hoped that it would not be the last thing we ever did.

“That’s my daughter.”