Forgiven (Ruined) (13 page)

             
Sisters. 

* * *

             
It's a shock to realize I recognize her.  Can't quite figure out where.  I can't remember seeing her the day I did the interviews with Emmy manning the camera.  I haven't seen her around the station.  Or on campus.

             
Or anywhere near the house?  The benefit of living right off the beach is living right off the beach.  Not such a benefit is having all and sundry people right outside the house.  The beach outside Bruce's house is public. 

             
I'm certain I've seen this woman.  On the beach.

             
Right outside our house. 

             
And then, with a sickening feeling, from the photos in the box she sent Kellan.

* * *

             
So now that I know, what do I do?

             
Find her.  Talk to her.  Try to reason with her.

             
Right.  Because people who leave threatening notes on your doorstep are always reasonable, right?  Of course she'll want to help Kellan overcome his past and go on to make a difference in the world.  I'm sure that's the reason she's "reaching out."

             
Everything going right as planned.

             
Only the more I think about it, the more sarcasm fails me.  Because what she's sent is a threat.  I have no idea if Kellan is taking it seriously.  I tend to think he is, the way he's reacting.

             
The way he's pulling away from me, for one thing.  As if he's protecting me.

             
But for himself?  Will he take precautions?  What precautions do you want him to take, Willow?  He can't very well call the police.  David Reynolds was one of their own.  Not in Charleston, maybe, but police probably don't see municipalities as enough division to stop them from caring for another officer.  They might not actively want Kellan dead, but how invested are they going to be in protecting him from a threat I can't even enunciate? 

             
Find her.  Talk to her.  Or talk to David Reynolds. 

             
That idea flares into life and goes dark instants later.  Mr. Reynolds has been the soul of kindness, but I can't go back to him with this.  I have no proof.  Not to mention I'm asking him to protect someone who did great damage to his life from someone who probably is at least in some way still a part of his life.

             
"Willow!"

             
I jerk out of my thoughts.  Ashley and Zach, the A to Z anchors (and I swear I am going to stop thinking of them that way before anyone starts making a case again for saying it on the air). 
             
"Hey, what are you two doing here?"  Now that's a stupid question, but I'm just out of it enough lately to worry that we had a meeting I managed to forget.

             
"Coffee," Zach says very plainly, as if humoring me.

             
I laugh at myself.  "I hear there's a good coffee shop somewhere near here."

             
Ashley sits down across the table from me.  "Homework?"  She indicates the laptop.

             
Zach liberates a chair from a nearby table, sits next to Ashley and nods at the laptop.  "Porn?" he asks understandingly.

             
I laugh at them both.  "Which will get me more cool points?"

             
The conversation turns from what I was doing on the computer, which I sidestep with a vague social media reference, which I was, after all, looking at.  Not that I have any accounts.  I've kept that part of my life walled off.  Facebook is all about connecting to people from all over the place, including one's past.  My past needs to stay past, no matter how many people know about it.  It's mine to accept or wall off.  Maybe some day I'll try to track down the two girls I was friends with in Seattle in high school before my life and I turned upside down.

             
Sure, I tell myself.  Not believing it for a minute.

             
We talk about the station, and about people we have in common from journalism courses.  We talk about Reed, because Ashley and Zack are still excited about the job Reed was recruited for.  I think Henry Tate Miller's little ploy of "rescuing" his son from the clutches of the evil girl from Seattle has planted the hope in some of these people's minds that eventually they'll be recruited without ever having to go through the job hunt, and hired to jobs farther up the food chain than most people get right out of college.

             
Well, maybe.  But probably only if they're at risk of a relationship with me and have parents who can pay for those jobs.

             
I can't believe Reed's never questioned that, I think, and zap back into the conversation, which is about Tabby and other station matters, before it goes on to the new club Emmy and I visited over the weekend, and then to other clubs and music and fashion.

             
It's like being part of the world again.  I close my laptop unobtrusively, even though I'm back on a Google homepage, and for the next half hour, I just enjoy myself.  This is what college is supposed to be like.  I feel normal. Maybe normal is starting to figure out where I live after all.

             
It's nice.

* * *

             
When Ashley and Zach take off, I've kind of lost my train of thought, but at the same time, the few thoughts I did have are now more clear.  I'll wait and see what happens with Kellan.  He's a big boy.  He survived five years in prison.  Very likely he can figure out what to do about Stacee Jacobs for himself.  I wonder if he knows who it is that's sending him stuff.  He had access to limited online stuff in prison.  He might have done research or he might have done it since he got back.  Maybe he waited until this started.  Maybe he never looked up anything to do with Aimee's family. It bothers me that I don't know what he'd do.

             
If she really means to come after him, there's nothing I can do.  Even the police can't act until a stalker does something other than linger where they're not wanted.  I can't stop someone from shooting Kellan short of chaining him to the bed, a thought that derails all clear thinking for several minutes.

             
All I can think of to do for now is be vigilant.  Watch out for anything weird.  Watch Kellan.  Try to patch things up and if I can, see if he's doing anything

             
Because what worries me more than not being able to do anything myself is wondering whether or not
Kellan
will do anything to protect himself.

             
Guilt is hard to overcome.

* * *

             
When I get home from classes on Wednesday there's nobody there at first.  Fine by me.  All I want is to go lie on the beach for a little while, then get my homework out of the way, eat something, go for a run, take a shower, whatever.  Just some normal life for a little while.  The normal life bit at The Coffee Mug was enticing.

             
Entering the echoing, tile and wood and green plants living room I call out a cheerful hello.  Carmelita answers back, her voice singsong and happy as always.  She's adopted me even faster than mom's new husband.  A minute after I step inside she comes out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a dish towel, beaming at me.

             
"There's a pie on the sink," she tell me.  "You have some.  With a glass of milk."

             
Ugh.  Milk.  No, thanks.  Pie, though.

             
"Thanks, Mama Lita."  I've started using Kellan's name for her.  "What kind of pie?"

             
"Peach.  Lots of peaches, very ripe.  Juicy pie.  I'm going to the grocery.  Do you need anything?"

             
Can't think of anything.  The fridge is stocked with Diet Coke.  I'm good.  "Mail here?"

             
"On the table," she calls, disappearing down the hall. 

             
"Anyone else home?"

             
"You're all alone," her voice comes back cheerfully.

             
No reason that should give me a little chill.  Just echoes of my first life, I guess. I walk over to the sofa table by the door and start going through the mail.

             
Bills for Bruce.  Cell phone bill for me and either I'm going to have to make that stipend for DCTV a reality or I'm going to have to somehow add a paying job to the mix of this semester.  That's an exhausting thought, but my savings account, with money my grandmother left me and from the few jobs I had in Seattle before everything went to hell?  It's dwindling fast.  There's a letter from my great-aunt to my mother.  Catalogs, many and varied and some to people who couldn't possibly have lived in this house for at least 10 years.

             
And something to me.  I stop and pull the envelope from the mix of everybody's mail.  There's nothing in particular that's strange about it.  Nothing to signify alarm or explain yet another chill that rolls through me, other than the post mark from Atlanta. 

             
Which shouldn't worry me too much.  It's not like I haven't been there.  I went with Reed not long after school started, for the broadcast conference.  I've gone there a couple times with my mom to shop, and with Bruce and Mom once on a business trip of his. 

             
Doesn't matter.  Despite the heat of the day, I've gone cold.  Maybe it's because the return address is nothing more than a PO Box.  Which could mean nothing.  People who send direct mail often try to make the pieces they send look like
surely this is from someone I know
.  That way you open it.

             
Yeah, Willow, but there's usually something on the envelope.  Something intriguing if nothing else.  Like the way Direct TV makes all their ads look like invitations.

             
I look around for the letter opener.  Bruce probably has one in his office but I don't feel like going all the way across the house to his home office and poking around there.  There's supposed to be one in a basket on the sofa table where the mail goes but it disappears often enough, with everybody claiming innocence, that we all joke about having a poltergeist.  Finally I take the envelope into the kitchen and use one of Mama Lita's knives.

             
Inside the envelope is a single sheet of paper, wrapped around cardboard-hard squares, which scatter onto the kitchen counter when I pull out the paper.

             
Photos.  Someone bothered to print up photos?  And send them.  Anonymously.  No way this was going to turn out good.  The photos lie face down on the counter.  I reach out to flip them over, gritting my teeth, preparing for what I couldn't say.  My old house in Seattle?  Pictures of my father?  My old high school?  Or –

             
It's not actually that much of a surprise when I turn over the first.  The photo is of me and Reed in the lane behind the house, talking while standing beside his car.  I hadn't realized he had touched my arm or the way he leaned into me when he talked.  For a second I'm lost in the attention he was showing me rather than the message inherent in the photos.  There are two others.  The next one I turn over shows me up on tiptoes kissing Reed goodbye.  In the one after that, there's me and Kellan on the beach, lying on our stomachs side by side sharing his blanket, our bodies cocked toward each other, heads together as we kiss.

             
This isn't about Kellan.  This is about me.  This is about Reed.  My mind zips back to Sunday when I stood talking to Reed in the lane behind the house.  There were all those people coming and going, beautiful beach day, all manner of people walking to and from the sand.  And there'd been the guy who watched us so closely from the steps of the apartment building across the street, the guy with the camera strung around his neck and the sound I'd heard before Reed drove away, the sound I'd discounted as part of the ambient noise of the street.

             
The sound of the camera.

             
Henry Tate Miller.  He's not done with me yet.  It offends his delicate sensibilities that a girl like me with my past might get close to his son.  His Son.  Because Reed isn't just Reed.  Reed is a reflection of his father.

             
I had the reverse in Seattle, in a way.  My father had been loved by the community, by the high school where he was a basketball coach.  He held it together every day, and lost it every night, and the students and faculty and neighbors and friends who knew the everyday him loved him and hated me when I killed him.  They saw the daily man, not the nightly monster who emerged after my mother went to work.  The finding of self-defense meant nothing to them.  There was never a trial.  Not in the courts anyway.  So I was judged for my father, the public father that everyone knew and loved.