Page 16

K ate walked into the restaurant, tired and sad. As soon as she saw Simon, her heart lightened immediately and then froze. He stood outside the restaurant, but he was not happy. She stepped up and asked him, “Problems?”

He nodded. “Yeah, this guy is waiting for you all right, but, Kate, nothing is good about him.”

She frowned, then nodded. “He went to jail for child abuse,” she said, “and the fact that he’s out makes it doubly hard.”

“And you might want to double-check his release date too,” Simon suggested, “just in case he may have been the reason your mom was so terrified.”

“Oh, I highly suspect it. Apparently some paperwork has issues with dates.” He rolled his eyes, and she nodded. “Right, not exactly what you want to hear right now.”

He glared at her. “You need to be careful. He looks way too interested in seeing you but in a totally creepy way.”

She hesitated and then nodded. “Thanks for the heads-up.” And, with that, she strode forward to meet the stepfather she hadn’t seen in a very long time. He stood up as soon as she approached the table.

“Ah, Kate,” he muttered, “I would have known you anywhere.”

She studied him and nodded. “You haven’t changed much.”

“Oh, trust me, I have,” he stated.

His tone held none of the bitterness she expected. Nothing revealed that he held anything against her. And yet she also saw what Simon had already prepared her for. Unrest, anger, and maybe just the fact that he was free, yet—because of the way the restrictions on prisoners worked, even those recently freed—he wasn’t free at all. But maybe it was just her imagination. She sat down at the table and introduced Simon carelessly.

“My partner wanted to come,” she stated, with a smile. “This is Simon, and, Simon,… this is Ken Reeves.”

Simon nodded and refused to shake the man’s proffered hand. The insult did not go unnoticed either.

Ken frowned and glared at Simon. “I don’t know anything about you,” he said, trying to mask his anger.

Kate immediately raised an eyebrow. “We don’t know anything about each other,” she declared immediately.

“That’s not quite true though, is it?” Ken countered, looking at her with a smile. “You’re family.”

She stared at him. “I’m not sure that I would call you family.” She then asked, “Why did you call this meeting?”

“I wanted to see you. It’s been a long time.”

“It has been a long time,” she replied, realizing something else was definitely going on here. “I’m still not sure what the purpose of this meeting is for after all this time.”

“You know that you were wrong way back when,” he began, “and I wanted to see if I could get you to recant.”

“My statement?” she asked in astonishment. “And you waited until I was thirty for that?”

“I didn’t realize it was a possibility,” he said, with a shrug. “I’ve only just had a chance to talk to lawyers, and they explained that you could clear my record.”

“No, I couldn’t,” she declared, staring at him. “That was my statement, given a very long time ago.”

“Yes, but I’m sure now that you’ve grown up, you realize that was not the way it all happened.”

She stared at him, shaking her head.

The waitress arrived just then, but Kate wasn’t sure she would stay long enough to eat something. Simon ordered coffee for both of them, and Ken didn’t order anything. He was too busy talking up a storm about what he wanted. It never even occurred to her that he would request this, and it was repugnant to even think that he thought it was doable.

“It’s just your word against mine,” he added, “and I’ve already done the time. However, if I could clear my record, then I could, in theory, start to get my life back together again. I don’t hold it against you, all those years ago.… Obviously you were very affected by everything else going on.”

“Everything else going on?” she repeated and then smiled ferally. “Like what, Ken?”

“Your mother for one.”

“Have you seen her since you’ve gotten out?”

“No,” he snapped. “It’s on my list.”

“Of course it is.” Kate snorted. “Yet you’ve talked to her on the phone, haven’t you?”

“Sure, I did. I asked her for a place to stay, and she told me no.” He gave an ugly laugh. “She’ll change her tone though.”

She stared at him. “She just got out of the hospital.”

He looked at her and frowned. “Oh, that would explain it then. What was she in for?”

“It would be up to her to tell you that,” Kate replied.

“At least you’re still speaking.”

“I don’t know that I would say we are. She basically told me to disappear and to have nothing to do with her again,” Kate murmured, “and that was today.”

He laughed. “Yeah, she’s such a bitch, isn’t she?”

Kate caught a note of anger, and she wasn’t sure what else, but almost a touch of hostility in Ken’s tone. She hadn’t really expected this level of emotion from him, and yet why not? He was now free. He’d served his time. Only the parole restrictions in place would make his life difficult in terms of rebuilding his life.

He repeated, “I need you to retract that statement.”

“So you could have grounds to go after the State for a mistrial?”

“Exactly,” he confirmed, “and that will give me enough money to get myself set back up again. It’s not as if I have a career or a job or anything I can do at this point in time. That was all killed when you put me behind bars.”

She stared at him, sensing that same anger. “ I put you behind bars?” she asked, striving for a mild tone and failing. Instead it came across as accusatory.

“Yes, you did. And you didn’t mean to. I know that. I blame your mother. Selene has always been… weak and easily swayed.”

And that would explain why her mother was now so scared. Kate shook her head. “I told the truth back then.”

“No, you didn’t,” he countered. “You may have told the truth that you thought you saw as the truth, but it wasn’t.”

Staring at him, she replied, “That’s a little confusing.”

“That’s because you were a child. You didn’t understand what you were seeing.”

“Aah. You mean that I didn’t understand the male anatomy in the bed beside me.”

She felt Simon stiffen at that, but her stepfather immediately replied, “Exactly. You were just a child. It’s not as if you could possibly know any of that.”

She stared at him. “So, you came out of prison, and your first stop is to come here asking me to change my statement?”

“Yes,” he confirmed. She shook her head. “There’s no reason for you not to,” he added. “I suffered enough.”

“ You suffered enough?” she murmured. “While you’re worried about how much you’ve suffered, I’m still wondering if you had anything to do with my brother’s disappearance.”

He stared at her in shock. “What? Good God no.… Why would I? Christ, your brother disappearing, that was just messed up, and there’s been absolutely nothing in the papers about it since.”

“Meaning, you’re keeping track?”

“Meaning that, being stuck in prison, there isn’t a whole lot to do but keep track,” he explained, with a wave of his hand. “That’s hardly a criminal offense.”

“Some people… keep track of things because it’s a curiosity.”

“Exactly. Now—” Ken leaned forward, his gaze hardening. “Will you change your statement so I get my life back or not?”

She looked directly at him and, in a flat tone of voice, she declared, “I will not.”

Nobody in that room could have missed the absolute fury that flashed through Ken’s gaze. Though he didn’t say it out loud, Kate could all but hear his voice whispering deep inside about how much she would regret that.

Her stepfather got up and walked to the entrance of the restaurant. Then he turned, looked back, gave her half a smile. “What was the one thing I used to always tell you back then?”

She frowned at him.

“It was a single word,” he said, giving her the smile. He pointed a finger at her. “I don’t think you could forget it. It was the one thing I said whenever you asked me a question or if you did something stupid. I always had that one comment for you.”

Then it hit her.

He smiled the nasty evil smile that she remembered.

“Exactly,” he said, then he turned and walked away.

She looked back at Simon, her mind racing, her heart sinking.

“What is he talking about?” Simon asked, leaning closer to Kate.

“ Think .… That’s what he always said to me,” she whispered. “It never made any sense until now. But no matter what I was trying to do, or had already done, he would tell me how I was being stupid, that I should think for myself. To use my brain. To not rely on anyone else. So that very quickly became a simple refrain,… think .”