“Humor me.”
Kate sighed.“They’re always the same.I’m in this room with no windows.There’s a door, but I can’t open it.Sometimes I can hear someone outside.A man.I know who it is, but I never see him.”
“Elijah Cox,” Catherine said quietly.
Kate didn’t answer.
Her mother set down the spoon, wiped her hands, and turned to face her.“You don’t have to pretend with me, sweetheart.I know he still gets into your head.”
Kate hesitated.“It’s been months now.Not a single sighting.No messages, no copycats, no digital trail.It’s like he vanished.”
“Maybe he did,” Catherine said gently.“You said yourself he was quite ill when he escaped.Sepsis, internal bleeding—”
“He had enough strength to fight me.”
“But that last fight could have exhausted him.Fatally.There’s every likelihood that he didn’t make it.”
Kate shook her head.“No.He’s out there.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I know him.He doesn’t disappear.He hides.He plans.”
Catherine poured herself another inch of wine and leaned against the counter.“Or maybe you’ve given him too much power in your mind.You’ve let him become larger than life.”
“That’s the problem,” Kate said, almost under her breath.“Heislarger than life.He’s not just a man.He’s a contagion.People still quote him online.They dissect his philosophy — it doesn’t even deserve that name, but they dissect it, pore over it like it’s scripture.”
“And yet,” Catherine said quietly, “you’re the one who’s been dissecting him the longest.”
Kate met her mother’s eyes.“It’s my job.”
“It’s your burden.”
Silence stretched between them again, broken only by the hiss of oil in the pan.
Catherine crossed to the window, staring out at the narrow garden beyond, bare and bleak.“You know,” she said, “for the first couple of years after Dad —after it… happened, I still thought… some part of me still thought he was coming home.I even kept the porch light on.”
Kate looked up sharply.“That’s not the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.Dad was killed.We buried him.Cox has disappeared.So they’re not comparable.You’re describing your inability to process death.”
Her mother blinked rapidly; a sign that she’d been hurt, or riled.Kate had successfully done both throughout her teens, and it seemed she still had the knack.“Myinability?”
“I didn’t mean it like a criticism.All humans struggle to understand death, especially if it’s sudden.But there’s no evidence Cox has died.Just about the only thing wedoknow about him is that he's very successful at staying in the shadows.Staying in the shadows and manipulating people to help him do that."
“All I know is this, Kitty.”Her mother touched her lightly on the arm.“In the end, I made a conscious effort to recognise that your father was gone.Not even that.Tobehave like he was gone, so that eventually, my brain got the message.You know, like CBT.I had to.”
“I know,” Kate interrupted, wondering why she kept sounding so sharp.She’d been 23 when her father died.And she couldn’t bear to remember how spectacularly she’d fallen apart.She still felt ashamed, not because of the grief, but because she’d been so utterly absorbed in it.At the funeral service, the priest had said she was ‘a tower of strength’ to her mother.But he was lying.She had made everything harder for her mom.And no amount of recognition or apology could change that.
Kate let out a long breath.“You think I’m obsessing.”
“I think you’re human.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
Catherine turned back, eyes soft.“Then what do you think you are?”
