"She's also strong enough to turn you over her knee and paddle your butt for even suggesting such a thing."
He couldn't help smiling. "I reckon she'd enjoy it, too."
Kat's own smile was fleeting. "You'd better believe it."
Ethan sipped his coffee and studied Kat. There was strain around her eyes and shadows beneath them. He'd thought they'd settled all their problems last night, but looking at her now, he had to wonder.
"So, why isn't your mother here helping?"
Her expression tightened. "My mother is dead."
He hesitated but didn't apologize. He could never understand exactly why people did that, though as a cop, he'd certainly done enough of it himself.
"Did she die on the job?"
She snorted. "No. She overdosed."
"Deliberately?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Does any addict overdose deliberately?"
"Yes." And far too often for anyone's liking.
Her gaze slid from his. "I have no idea whether it was deliberate or not. Gwen probably knows, but I've never asked."
"Why not?"
"Because I barely knew her."
"Were you young when she died?"
Her smile was bitter, and her hurt swam around him. "No. I was ten. But she never had much to do with me."
"Why?"
"Because I was a hindrance to her social life. Gran raised me from the time I was born."
And if that hurt was anything to go by, she resented the abandonment, if only on a subconscious level. "And she never tried to help your mother?"
She gave him a long look. "They have to want to be helped before you can help them. You should know that."
"I reckon your grandmother could convince a cat to shower if she wanted to."
"I reckon she probably could. But Mom was her daughter and every bit as strongminded."
"What about your dad?"
She looked away again. "I never knew my dad."
He hesitated. Her stance was still and straight, and the emotions that swam around him thick with pain. Yet he had to ask the question, if only because he sensed this could explain why she was the way she was — strong and independent, yet oddly vulnerable. "Why not?"
She looked at him. Tears touched her green eyes but were quickly blinked away.
"Because my mother sold herself to feed her habit. My father could have been any one of the dozen men she'd had on the day of my conception."
It was a familiar enough story — many addicts fed their habit that way. He took a sip of his coffee, then said, "It sounds as if you know who her clients were that day."
She snorted softly. "I do. I stupidly asked her once. She gave me a very detailed account of the possibilities."