They sent me to laid back Candy Cane Key, tucked away in the quiet coastal corner of the Florida Keys. Nobody here asked too many questions when I arrived. No one even batted an eye when I started school at Christmas High, telling everyone my parents had uprooted my life to come here because my father was having a midlife crisis.
Liz, and her husband, Frank, became my foster parents. Yet to the rest of the world, they were Mom and Dad. The pair had lived, childless, on the other side of the state until the call came. Then they both sprang into action, moving to take me in as if they’d been waiting for me.
The Witness Protection paperwork called it “relocation for safety.” Liz called it “coming home.” My fresh start.
Liz ushers me through her front door wearing that same harried expression she wore the day I arrived years ago. She looks both ways before closing the door and locking it behind us. I can’t help but notice the similarities to that day so long ago. Feeling nervous and scared, but so grateful to have this amazing woman in my corner.
“Okay,” she says, turning to face me, voice in her usual reassuring tone. “Start from the beginning. Who did you see?”
I open my mouth, but the words stick in my throat. All I can manage is a whisper. “I don’t know. But what if they’ve finally found me?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAR
The words hangin the air.
What if they’ve finally found me?
Before Liz can answer, the sound of rain tapping against the kitchen window pulls me back in time. Back to Virginia and that big white house in Reston.
Geoff had a way of making every room feel safer just by being in it. His good cop to my mother’s bad. Maybe that’s why I never saw what she had. My mother’s perceived threat. That her husband could be seduced by a younger version of her, when he was merely being kind. And oh, how I’d yearned for someone to be kind.
I remember how touched I was when he’d brought home little trinkets for me. Insignificant gifts really, from a business trip or two. Then once, after hearing my mother say I wasn’t presentable enough to attend a charity function with them, he’d brushed off her biting tone, telling me I deserved nice things. I was floored when he’d handed me a stack of dresses and encouraged me to try them on. “You should feel beautiful,” he’d said.
“Youarebeautiful, Kendal.”
And I’d believed him. Someone saw me. Felt I was beautiful and worthy. Someone finally cared.
He was always there to offer kindness when Mom wasn’t. When she snapped cruel words at me, he was the one to soften them. “She doesn’t mean it,” he’d said, voice smooth as honey. “Use this as a lesson. Other girls will be jealous. There’s something special about you.”
And I had believedthattoo.
At first, I’d thought Mom had just hunted him down for his money. But later, I saw the kind and generous man he was and hoped this was what drew her in. It seemed she’d been lucky to marry a man like Geoff. That his money was merely the icing on the cake. But deep down, I knew something was off.I should’ve known better.
Over time, I discovered what he gave wasn’t just generosity, it was control gift-wrapped in affection. Had that been how he lured my mother in? Before he turned his attention on me?
He’d been so attentive. Always there to listen, comfort, buy, or fix. He talked about my future like it was worth something. He pushed me to dream big. Told me I could go to college, that I was smarter than I realized. When I said I wanted to study cosmetology, he didn’t laugh. He’d smiled and told me to get my business degree first, so I could own a first-class salon one day. Encouraged me to build something of my own. He made me believe it was possible.
Mom, of course, rolled her eyes, sneering that my dreams were foolish. “The only way you’ll end up on top is if you trap a guy beneath you,” she’d sniped once, glass of wine sloshing in her hand.
And she should know, right?
But Geoff had just looked at me, that same soft smile curving his lips as he came to reassure me before bed that night. “Don’t listen to her,” he’d whispered. “You’re going to do great things.”
The warmth of that memory used to comfort me.Now it burns.
Because I remember the shift. The day Mom started watching me differently. The way her jaw tightened when she caught him brushing a strand of hair from my face. It’s the day I should’ve run.
The accusations came later, her voice trembling with fury. “You think I don’t see the way you look at him?” she’d hissed. “You little tramp. You think you can take what’s mine?”I’d stood there frozen, trying to understand how everything had become so twisted. I’d looked to Geoff, silently begging him to defend me. To tell her she was wrong.
But he hadn’t.Was it all a game? Knowing what was to come?
Now, all these years later, sitting in Liz’s kitchen with the rain pelting against the glass, I can still feel the ghost of his hand on myshoulder. Can still hear the echo of his voice in my head.“Youarebeautiful, Kendal. There’s something special about you.”
My body tenses, recoiling at the song playing in my memory. The sound of everything that once felt safe collapsing into ashes. Because that was the night I stopped being a child. Believing people who said they loved you, all the while the house was burning down with you in it.
That was the night I learned that evil lurks among us. Sometimes so close, you can’t see the knife until it’s buried in your back.
