I kept track of time. Julia had fallen asleep twenty minutes into the ride towards town. She never felt comfortable flying, especially out of the country. We were roughly five thousand miles overseas from home. The air in Amsterdam is thick and damp. I could still feel the shiver of moist air down my neck, stepping off the plane and into the terminal.

“What a horrible time to be visiting. . .” I thought.

Liam told us to pack for cold weather, reminding us that its mid November.

The canal, parallel to the long private property, was partially frozen over. On a dreary, quite night like this, the city seems untouched by rabble-rousers and deviance. Almost too quiet of an evening.

“Where’s the nearest liquor store in this bougie ass town.”

The Lincoln town car paused as it approached the large iron gates. The driver pressed a small grey button on a pillar’s interface and in just moments the gates opened. Elegance and beauty radiated the image of the three-story manor Uncle Liam called home.

“Does he live here alone?”

“Does he have a maid and butler?”

We pulled up and down toward a circular curved drive way that runs around a large old fountain trickling with clear water.  There were three different forks in the road past the property gate – two of which curl along the outsides of the house and around to the backyard.

I woke Julia with ease.

She’s always been a light sleeper.

As we collected our luggage bags from the trunk, a light from upstairs in the house illuminated the large paneled glass window ; exposing the room in the elevated distance. 

I’m sure he had known we arrived at that moment.

I didn't know it at the time, but I do now. The atrium on the second floor looks down and over, covering a wall with plexiglass instead of a solid foundation. This really made the room stand out and almost too obnoxiously out-in-the-open during the day.

I look over at Julia and she gave me another reassuring lip smile with a hint of a grin. You know, the one where the person is smiling more with their eyes than their face. Julia has a major case of the ‘resting bitch face’ in her normal environment, but we were out of our element here across the country. I don’t get how she was able to sleep at all in the car. She looked very comfortable and unbothered until she was awake. We both were bothered at the series of untimely events this past month.

" How will I rest through the night. "