If I were thinking more clearly, I might try to remind myself that there’s still an active investigation happening that Wes is very much a part of. That I have nowhere to go if Uncle Aaron decides to kick me out. That I’m not supposed to go actively looking for evidence without Morrie or Wes giving me the go-ahead.
At the moment, it’s hard to care. This fury has been building inside of me for years, maybe even since the first time I came to my uncle and aunt’s home and they put me on parade for a bunch of strangers so they could fawn over how charitable they were for taking me in. And it continues to grow as I think about tonight—not just the way Uncle Aaron forced me to read aloud from my romance books, but all of it. I always knew that he and Aunt Hope had access to my phone, but I thought they just received notifications of my activity. I hadn’t realized they could go into my apps, see what was on my screen.
The violation of my privacy makes me feel nauseated, and in no little part because I let it happen. Why? Why did I agree to have a parental control app on my phone like I’m a child? I’m not a child. I’m twenty-five yearsold! I should be able to read smutty books or get on social media or watch dumb YouTube videos or do whatever the hell I want, because it’smyphone. Not theirs. I shouldn’t have to use an FBI burner phone just to text my boyfriend for fear they’ll see the messages and?—
All at once, the truth hits me like a tidal wave, nearly knocking me off my feet. This whole trip, I’ve been wondering why I’ve heard so little from my friends. Then, when Grady visited, he told me he’d been texting me, but I’d never answered. With shaking hands, I pause my righteous quest for a moment to pull out my phone and search through my inbox.
Thereweremessages from my friends, I realize. Lots of messages, that Ihaven’tbeen responding to. Because they’ve all been marked as read, and the notifications must have been cleared from my phone while I was working. I read through some of them now:
Helen: I’m sure you’re busy. Hopefully good things! Just let us know you’re okay when you get a chance.
Matilda: Nina, this is urgent. Are you alive? I’m sending in a SWAT team.
Kimo: She is not sending in a SWAT team. But please let us know you’re OK Peke
Kimo: I didn’t mean for that last part to rhyme
Grady: Nina’s okay. I think. She might just need some time to process some things?
Thad doesn’t say anything—he’s not much of a texter—but I do notice there are some gaps in some of the conversations I’ve missed out on. Almost like ... some messages have been deleted. If I were to guess, it’s because my friends are saying things about my uncle and speculating about if he’s holding me captive. (Matilda, most likely.)
I’ve always laughed off that idea when Matilda has made accusations like that in the past, but now I’m not so sure. How else would you describe this? He monitors my communication. He makes me follow his rules. He makes me work for him, doing all the household chores and extra labor. He controls what I eat, what I wear, how long I get to sleep, what I get to read, where I get to go, what I get to do with my time.
I’m shaking with an odd mix of anger and pent-up energy, a scream building up inside of me that gets caught in my chest and won’t come out. Storming toward the desk in Uncle Aaron and Aunt Hope’s room, I slam doors behind me, knock over chairs, kick aside suitcases. The reckless gestures make me laugh, but in a way that isn’t nice or even happy.Burn it all down. That’s what I want. That’s all I can do to quell this storm that’s brewing inside of me, so it won’t destroy me from the inside out.
This part of my story is done tonight. I refuse to let this be any part of who I am anymore.
Most of the drawers are empty, since it’s a hotel desk, not Aaron’s permanent workstation at home. What I do find is innocuous—a Bible (of course), a pad of paper with some notes scribbled down, some receipts that he’s probably going to file once he gets home.
Then I see a folder, shoved into one of the lower drawers, all the way in the back.
Before I even open it, some part of me instinctively knows it’s going to be important. When I open it, I’m expecting to find a bunch of files about Uncle Aaron, or maybe some church records.
Instead, the folder is all about me.
My birth certificate. My adoption records. My social security card. A detailed list of all of my expenses over the years—food, clothes, dentist appointments, etcetera. My passport?—
My passport?
Cold floods through my body. I couldn’t fly out to see Matilda and Kimo at Thanksgiving because I couldn’t find my passport. That wouldn’t have been a problem if my driver’s license hadn’t also expired earlier that month; I didn’t bother to replace it right away because Uncle Aaron preferred for me to take public transportation to get around in Chicago, and Aunt Hope was keeping me busy preparing the hundreds of Thanksgiving care packages being offered by the church. Long story short, I was planning to renew my license once I got back from Hawai‘i, and thought I would be fine flying with just the passport—until suddenly, the day before my trip, it was nowhere to be found. Uncle Aaron was there when I was frantically searching the entire house, desperate to locate it. And this entire time, he had it hidden away.
Why? Why pretend he was going to let me go, then hide my own passport away from me like I was a naughty child being punished?
Because he wanted to save face. Because he didn’t want me to go, but he didn’t want my friends to know he’d been the one to hold me back. Because even though the trip wouldn’t have cost him any money, he didn’t want to risk the chance that I’d leave and not come back. Because he’d decided long ago that I owed his family, so that meant theyownedme in return.
“Fuck you,” I whisper out loud. It’s the first time I’ve ever, ever used that word, but God, do I mean it.
My resolve intensifies now. I have to find something,something, that can incriminate Uncle Aaron.
This time, when I open his laptop and type in his password, I don’t bother carefully closing each file afterward. I don’t care if he knows I was here, searching through his computer. In fact, Iwanthim to know I’ve looked through all of his personal documents, all of his secret folders. Let him see what that feels like for a change.
Unfortunately, despite more tips from Morrie, I still don’t really know how to make sense of a lot of the financial documents. Oh, well. I just open up Uncle Aaron’s email and send Morrie anything that looks remotely important. I’ll let him sort through all of that later.
We still don’t know what’s on the encrypted folder, so I leave that one alone, but I open other files at random, trying to find anything of interest. After what feels like rifling through hundreds of folders, I come across something interesting.
This particular folder seems to be full of voice memos. I click on one and am surprised to hear a voice I haven’t heard in a long time: William Winthrop. He used to work for my uncle about fifteen years ago. I didn’t interact with him much because he usually just came over to the house to speak to Aaron, but I do remember him having a gentle demeanor. He always smiled and looked into my eyes when he saw me. He remembered my name. That doesn’t sound like much, I know, but so many people who came to visit Uncle Aaron would just follow his lead and pretend I wasn’t there.
Curious, I continue listening.
