a different movie, until she finally told me she just wanted to watch Netflix in peace.
I’d called in to take a few days off of work this week, but I ended up lesson-planning for a few hours anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if Anne viewed me using my legitimate paid time off as yet another sign of my unfitness for teaching.
“Sorry for snapping at you,” Katie said as she lowered herself slowly onto the steps. She moved like someone who was seventy, not seventeen. But I guess broken ribs will do that to you.
“You don’t have to apologize. I was hovering. You’re allowed to tell me when I’m being annoying.”
“You weren’t really. I just feel…” she shrugged. “I don’t even know how I feel. I just know it isn’t good.”
“You have two broken bones. I think that’s reasonable.” I frowned. “Do you need more meds?”
“I’m fine.” She patted my arm like she was the one trying to soothe me. Maybe she was. “I meant emotionally. I feel crappy emotionally.”
“That’s fair too.”
We watched as the yard slipped from the late gold of afternoon to the pale blue of early dusk. The first lightning bugs began to come out, and Gretchen tried, and failed, to catch them.
“I guess I’m just scared of what happens next,” Katie said after a while, taking another bite of ice cream. “Not the lawyer and stuff. I know that that has to happen. But after. I can’t stay in your guest room for the rest of my life.”
“You can stay here as long as you want. You really can.”
“No, I know, but like, I have to go to school eventually, you know? And everyone’s gonna know about Dad. Everyone’s going to see me and think—”
“No one has to know anything unless we tell them,” I said firmly.
“Yeah, but it’s not like people won’t find out. They’ll notice I’m living with you, not with Mom and Dad. And it’s a small town. There’s no way they won’t wonder why.”
“We’ll tell everyone it’s about something else. You’re allergic to Mom and Dad’s house. They’re renovating and turning your room into a shrine for Dad’s bible collection. You’re obsessed with my cat and refuse to leave her alone.”
“That last one has some promise.” Katie laughed, then winced and put a hand to her ribs. “I don’t want to lie anymore. And I don’t want to keep Dad’s secrets. That’s what gives people like him power, you know?” She sighed. “I just wish it didn’t mean people were going to feel sorry for me.”
I stared at her in wonder. Her jaw was set, and for a second, she reminded me of Connor. They looked nothing alike, but they shared a determination. A backbone of steel. Katie’s might be covered with smiles and cheer most of the time, but it was still there.
And her words cut to the quick, exposing everything I’d been doing wrong all these years.
“Shit,” I whispered.
Katie blinked. She’d gotten the same clean language lectures that I had.
“What’s wrong?” she asked around her spoon.
“I owe you an apology,” I said slowly. “A huge one.”
“You don’t—”
“Let me finish,” I said gently. “Before you decide I don’t owe you, okay?”
Katie frowned, but after a moment she nodded. I looked out at the yard, darker blues rapidly staining the sky, making the lightning bugs even brighter. The tiniest sliver of a crescent moon hung above the magnolia tree. This island was so beautiful, and that beauty masked so much pain.
“Dad used to hit me.”
Katie gasped, and I made myself keep going.
“I don’t know when it started, really. I always knew Dad had a temper, but I don’t remember it being bad until third or fourth grade. I don’t know if I blocked it out, or if—”
I broke off. Inhaled. Exhaled. Restarted.
“You don’t know what’s normal or not, you know? When you’re young. I think I was about twelve, when I realized that Dad wasn’t like other parents. That most kids weren’t afraid of their fathers.”
I could still remember looking up at my father the first time he’d really laid into me. How big he’d seemed, from the floor. How dizzy I’d been, and how much everything had hurt.
I’d looked up and felt like I was seeing him for the first time. The mask he wore for other people was gone, completely. The rage painted on his features had terrified me.
“I could never tell what would set him off,” I said. “I used to make this list of things I couldn’t do, you