It was two and a half days later, that Jamie and her mother were driving home.
Their weekend was over, and now it was time to return to their home in San Diego.
Jamie was overtired. The whole time since the fire at the hotel, she had been having nightmares. Each night, she scarcely saw an hour of sleep.
Though there was always some differences in each dream, she always saw a fire. Burning a building. People's screams rang out through a crowd of pajama-clad people. There was always panic. Always fear.
Then, at the end, she would see a cloaked figure running away.
Had the figure lit the fire? Was the figure the bad guy? If they did start it, why?
Jamie could never quite see the person. She always just caught a glimpse of them, as they slipped around a corner, and disappeared. Then she would wake up, sweating from the imaginary heat.
Her escape from the dream would keep her awake for the rest of the night, until morning, when she would go to breakfast, then have her daily visit with her uncle. That usually consisted of him squinting at her, and mumbling her name.
Being quite well-off in life, Jamie's Uncle Grant owned a large manor, a huge barn in the backyard, and a profitable vineyard. Though Jamie enjoyed her time there, she couldn't help being glad to go home.
Another result of her long, sleepless nights, was her almost full sketchbook. At the beginning of the trip, it had been completely blank. Now, only a dozen or so pages remained unused.
Jamie pulled out the book. Rather than also retrieving her pencil, she decided to simply look at her drawings.
For the following few hours, the only sound from the backseat was the flipping of pages, and Jamie examined her works.
She flipped past the first one that she'd drawn in the car on the way there, and the one she had worked on at the hotel. She stopped at the next one.
It was a picture of a cloaked figure. The person's garment had a white eye on the sleeve. The way Jamie had drawn in, the cloak was swishing, as if they were moving in a hurry.
Jamie had drawn that particular picture, the first night at her uncle's house. It was after she had had the first of the reoccurring dreams, about fires and cloaked figures.
That first dream, had probably been the worst. She'd dreamt it when the actual fire was fresh in her mind. Also, she hadn't been expecting the nightmare. After a few nightmares, Jamie had began to expect bad dreams. But at first it had scared her.
The next picture, drawn on the second night, was of a flame. It was not plain though, as in close detail, the edges were adorned with tiny eye symbols. They were simple, white circles, with a white eye in the in the middle. They were drawn so small, that if Jamie held the paper an arm's length away from her face, she could barely make them out.
In the middle of the flame, was the outline of a face. It was drawn cleverly, the features woven into the sketch. If Jamie squinted, she could not even distinguish the face among the many lines making up the flame.
The face itself, was the one of the woman Jamie had seen in her memory. The one on the ice cave, with ice blue eyes and blond hair.
The first time Jamie had drawn a portrait of the woman, she had thought that she looked a lot like Ms. Gisela. Her elegant facial bone structure, and fair skin, along with her hair and eye colour, was a lot like that of Jamie's neighbour. But after drawing this picture, Jamie had really noticed all the details.
It was strange. Usually, when Jamie thought of something, the image, and all of its immaculate details, appeared immediately. This was different. Every time she drew the image, she saw more and more little details like that, that she didn't notice before. How the woman's eyes held a comforting softness. How her smile curled up at the edges. How there were tiny braids woven into her shiny blonde locks.
When Jamie had first drawn the picture, the woman looked different. And much like Ms. Gisela. It was to the point that Jamie would have believed them, if someone had told her that the lady from her memories was her neighbour's daughter.
And yet, now, the woman looked like more like someone else.
Someone else that Jamie knew.
Someone she hadn't seen or talked to in years.
Her mother's friend, who used to check in on Jamie every once in awhile. Abby had met her at a event once, and become friends. But the woman had suffered a head injury years before, and being around her had always made Jamie a bit uncomfortable.
Her name, was Caprise Redek.

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