The force of the red door swinging open blows my hair back, and it’s her. She’s standing there, eyes wide, with a knife in her hand.
Flinching is instinctual, as is crossing my arms in front of my face, until…
“Katelyn!”
The blunt side of the knife presses into my spine as she surges forward and wraps her arms around me, only to jerk back just as quickly, leaving the hand with the knife on my shoulder. Her eyes, if possible, go even wider, and she shakes me once.
“You can’t be here. Not now.” She pulls me into the room with the same strength she used to scale our neighbor’s fence, then slams the door shut behind me. She opens her mouth, then closes it, hugs me again, softer this time, and almost buries her words in my hair. “You’re supposed to be so far away.”
I hold her, soaking up her body heat and ignoring the slight sour scent of sweat on her skin. For all my confidence with everyone else, I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to do this again: See her and hug her. Feel safe.
But that feeling is fleeting and wholly insufficient in the face of so much deception. I pull her to sit on the edge of the bed with me. “I found my grandfather,” I say.
I don’t ask why she didn’t tell me he was still alive. Everything is tangled up together. Revealing one piece would have involved divulging the whole. I might not agree with her decision to keep all this from me, but I understand her reasoning.
“I saw the sonogram picture, and I know Derek Abbott is my father.”
Mom goes stiff at this.
“And then I went to see Laura.”
Her back snaps tight.
“I also met my half sister. She doesn’t know who I am, but I talked to her. She has a cat named Elvis.” My voice turns harsh. “And youkept herfrom me.”
Mom stands and takes two deliberate steps away, her back to me. “I know.”
“That’s it?” A dizziness begins to buzz in my head, making me grateful that I’m sitting. I see her shoulders start to tremble, matching my voice. “You lied about my entire life. My grandfather, my sister. Who my father was, and the fact that you’re accused of killing him!”
Mom looks at me from over her shoulder, her eyes brimming with tears, but she says nothing.
“Say something!”
Her voice is a whisper. “I can’t.”
“You can, but you won’t. You don’t know what I’ve been through these past few days, what I’ve had to do.” My voice chokes on the last word.
She starts to turn her body toward me, pauses in the act to breathe through her nose, then turns the rest of the way. “You were supposed to stay at the motel, where you were safe. I could have explained everything once it was over.”
“Safe? No, Mom, there is no safe.” I suck in a deep breath. “They found me at the motel.”
I tell her about the bounty hunter chasing me through the woods, how I hid from him under a bed, disguised myself, ran from a cop, and found my grandfather, only to end up locked in a pitch-dark room waiting for a painful interrogation that I didn’t stick around for.
“You did good.” She takes my face firmly in her hands. “You did the exact right thing.”
I pull away. “I had no choice, because you left me alone.” Still standing close to her, I take in her wan appearance: the limp and unwashed hair, the scrape along her jaw, the dark smudges under her eyes. She looks like she’s been through at least as much as I have. But then my eyes drop lower. She’s not standing right, even though she’s trying to hide it.
“Mom?”
She doesn’t answer, but her eyes shift away so deliberately that I feel compelled to look in the opposite direction.
At first, all I see is the unmade bed, which in and of itself would raise warning flags. Mom would make her bed while sick with the flu, even if she had to take puke breaks while doing it. That’s not hyperbole; she’s literally done that before. But then I see the crumpled-up coverlet hastily thrown over the mattress, nearly but not completely hiding the stains underneath. Some are red, others rust brown. As I pull back the sheet, larger splotches come into view.
When I turn back to her, the pretense is gone. She’s got one arm braced on her knee, and she’s leaning heavily against the dresser with the other.
“It’s not bad,” she says, her taut lips belying her words. “I thought I had time when I left you and went somewhere I shouldn’t have. Someone was watching, and I sliced my thigh open getting away.”
I’m at her side in half a heartbeat, helping her to the edge of the bed; she can’t hide her grimace when she sits. It’s worse when I roll up her loose pant leg to expose the makeshift bandage she’d applied and secured with duct tape.
