Katarina

by Alona Jarden

"So you did have a serious relationship? You claim you're not a virgin, so…"

  "I'm not claiming, I'm admitting it. But, as I said before, I never had a serious relationship."

  "So, you're a man whore?"

  "No," his smile threatened to melt me. "I'm just a man, Kate. We're built differently than you women."

  "Is ‘differently’ a synonym for 'lower quality'?"

  "It just might be." He loaded rice with some meat on his fork and ate it. "Actually, thinking it over, I have no argument with that claim."

  For a few moments we were quiet, but only for a few moments. The silences I shared with Andrew felt more enlightening than embarrassing, so I didn’t do my very best to avoid them, as I had done most of my life.

  "Can we talk about the elephant in the room?" I decided to draw my two fathers into our discussion.

  "I'd love to."

  "Go ahead," I gestured at him.

  "I thought it would be inappropriate to talk about it when I came back from the balcony, but I'm glad you decided to walk right into adulthood, ask for things to be said."

  "So, come on, Andrew. Speak."

  "Well…it’s a sensitive issue, but I'll attack it gently."

  "And the sooner the better," I raised my eyebrows at him.

  "You called it microscopic, but now that you've realized he's more like an elephant trunk…"

  "No!" I interrupted him, bursting out laughing. "My God. How, of all the people in the world, did I get kidnapped by a complete moron?"

  "I'm kidding, I'm kidding." His eyes glittered mockingly at me and he went on, "If not about my trunk, what do you want to talk about, Kate?"

  "I want to learn more about my drawings."

  "What do you think of them?"

  "I'm not sure if what I think about them is true."

  "Try me and we'll see if I can help."

  "I know one of the men I sketched."

  "That's right. I also know your adoptive father." He frowned when he mentioned him, "But, I wonder if you remember the other face that..."

  "I do... I think I do. Was he my biological father?"

  "Hmm..." He took a deep breath. "Let me have a few minutes to think about a suitable answer for that question, Kate." I noticed the distress he was facing, perhaps for the first time since he had taken off my blindfold, and decided to give him exactly what he asked for.

  I knew what I wanted to get from him, but I also knew that clinging to the stages and the rhythm he’d defined was important to him, so I took a step back.

  I assumed he was afraid I wouldn’t be able to handle certain pieces of information and, to tell the truth, I also started to wonder if I should urge him on the matter.

  "I want to approach the subject from another direction, if that’s okay with you."

  "Okay," I agreed to cooperate with him.

  "What do you think happened to you as a child?"

  "I'm not sure what happened, but I'm starting to think it's not good. I can guess, but..."

  "Answer the question, Kate. What do you think happened to you as a child?"

  "I don’t know, Andrew. I... I really don’t know."

  "You do know," he insisted. "What do you think happened to you in your childhood?"

  "I think I was kidnapped, okay?" I raised my voice in frustration. "From the little pieces of information I’ve managed to extract, I’ve come to understand that I was kidnapped as a child."

  "Kidnapped by whom?"

  "Well… I originally thought I was kidnapped by my father from my mother."

  "But now?"

  "Now I'm suddenly not so sure who my father is," I answered his question and he let out a sigh loose before he filled his mouth with food and returned to silence.

  I looked directly at him. I thought that if I stared at him, he would break down and start talking, but he seemed unafraid of looking right back at me as he shoved more and more food into his mouth.

  "Never mind. Don’t help me." I went out onto the porch and came back with the portrait of the man I claimed I didn’t know. "Surely I know who he is, right?"

  "Yes, I believe you do, Kate. I thought it would take you at least two weeks to recall his features so precisely, but you definitely seem to know everything already."

  "If that's true, you can start telling me everything. Come on, the whole truth, Andrew."

  "The truth is not hidden in me, but in you. You're the one who needs to tell the truth. You're the one who has to admit it aloud. Otherwise, it'll have no meaning. But you are afraid of it."

  "I'm not afraid of anything."

  "You want me to be the one that says the words for you."

  "I really don’t. I just want you to stop playing games with me."

  "Once again, you're asking me to be the one who says things explicitly."

  "Things such as?"

  "Do you want me to tell you what you're afraid of?"

  "I'm not afraid of anything." I stamped my feet and my heart sped up in fear that he could guess my greatest fear.

  "You're afraid to admit that you no longer believe that your biological father kidnapped you, and if that's true, who did? Who is that man who raised you, Kate?" He finished, and my breath escaped me.

  I lost all feeling in my feet, as he uttered aloud what had been playing in my head since the moment I’d looked into the eyes of the two men I’d drawn, and fell sharply to the floor.

  "I want to go home," I cried out.

  "You don’t know where your home is, Kate." He sat on his knees beside me and wrapped me in his arms.

  "I know it's not here, in this cabin. I know I don’t want to be here anymore."

  "And do you remember that the door is open? The last time I checked, there was no cover over your eyes or ties that bound you. Yet, you still choose to stay and find out more about yourself."

  "Only it doesn’t feel like that at all, Andrew. Is that really what I'm doing? Am I finding out more about myself, or am I struggling very hard with what you're willing to reveal?"

  "You know that everything I do is done to protect you." His palms rested softly on my cheek and seemed to mark the quickest path for his lips to reach mine.

  "Andrew..." I breathed passionately.

  "Do you want me to stop?" I wished he'd never given me that choice to make.

  "If I said yes..." I tilted my head back. "Would you really be able to do that?"

  "No." He smiled and bit my earlobe lightly.

  "Then don’t ask me questions…and don’t stop." I closed my eyes and let myself go without looking back.

  I knew it would be a mistake. One that would cloud the rest of my stay there at the cabin.

  I was afraid that we would no longer be able talk and learn about my past or his after crossing this border, but it seemed that this border had been created just for us to cross it.

  His one hand was placed behind my back and the other remained holding my face. His soft lips stroked mine, his body leaned more and more above me, and just as he gently laid me on my back, I opened my mouth and let our tongues ravish in a freestyle dance of desire.

  It was the most correct mistake I’d ever made and I could feel in every part of my body that we belonged to each other. I couldn’t explain why I felt that, certainly not when I’d spent my life rolling my eyes and showing disdain for people who were swept away by irrational love. But when I opened my eyes and saw his gaze fixed on me with longing, I knew I was exactly where I wanted to be. I chose to be there. I chose to stay wrapped in Andrew's arms, even if it turned out to be a terrible mistake.

  Chapter 22

  Mr. Briggs

  I think I spent hours in that interrogation room without anyone asking me anything. From the second I demanded to meet with my lawyer, all the police officers backed away and left me waiting in front of that huge mirror in silence.

  I must admit, at first, after Officer's Swenson's harsh blaming's, I enjoyed the peace and quiet. But, soon enough, I was on the verge of going crazy.

 
; I always knew the day would come when I'd have to explain exactly how Kate came to be in my possession, but I never believed it would be under those circumstances. I assumed that one day I would have to legally prove that I had every right to be her guardian.

  I even planned how I would share the truth with her and tell her all about her childhood, but I’d thought it would be on my deathbed. I had carefully planned to reveal to her the evidence of the deep bond between us, which I had kept to myself for so long.

  I’d never imagined that I would be in such a delusional situation. A situation in which I'd have to explain my actions in order to prove my innocence for her abduction.

  "Mr. Briggs?" a young man with a suitcase stormed into the interrogation room. "My name is Tom Hale and I am the attorney assigned to you by the Public Defender's Office."

  "Pleasure to meet you." I was so very sorry that I had invested all my capital in Kate and her studies, and that I couldn’t afford better representation than a guy who seemed even younger than she was.

  "Well, let's get started." He sat down and took out a yellow sheet of paper from his briefcase. "Please, tell me everything I need to know."

  "My daughter, Kate, was kidnapped four days ago."

  "Okay, and you know you're under arrest for kidnapping her?"

  "Of course I'm aware of that. That's why I've called for you." My forehead wrinkled in response to his ridiculous question.

  "I have to ask, sir, do you have a hand in this?"

  "No. I didn’t kidnap her, I didn’t conspire to kidnap her, and there is no one in this world who wants to see her whole and alive again more than me."

  "That's excellent, sir. That's a very good answer." He made some notes in his notebook and looked back at me. "So our line of defense is that you're innocent."

  "I haven’t been charged with anything yet, lawyer Tom Hale. I'm just here as a criminal suspect. I'm here for interrogation, so let's keep the defense line for the unlikely event of an indictment against me."

  "Oh, sure, right." He erased whatever he had written before and continued, "Do you know what turned the police suspicion toward you?"

  "Yes." I knew I shouldn’t be rude to him, considering he was the only person who could get me out of the situation. "I know why I'm here and I know how you can get me out of here."

  "Are you going to share that with me?" His question made me want to hit him across his face with the back of my hand, but instead, I stared at him and counted to ten in my mind, trying to stop myself from doing just that. Second after second, I managed to overcome the rage caused by my helplessness.

  "Tom, do you know if there are ears to our conversation?"

  "I'm sorry, what?" He didn’t seem to understand what I meant and started looking around.

  "We're in a police interrogation room. Just a few days ago, I was sitting on the other side of this big mirror, so I'm asking if we're talking privately or not."

  "Uh...uh...I...I guess we..."

  "You're not," Officer Swenson's voice echoed from the speakers, interrupting the unprofessional stammer of my young lawyer. "You are in a surveilled room with several policemen watching you right now."

  "And what about the confidentiality of lawyer and client?" I looked at the mirror and asked her directly.

  "Exactly!" Suddenly my lawyer rose to his feet and stood with his arms in front of the big mirror, trying to show determination, but in reality, he actually looked a little pathetic. "I demand to talk privately with my client!"

  It took about fifteen minutes for the police to transfer me to a room used for meetings between suspects and their lawyers. A room with no mirror, no window, no camera, and we were assured that there was no one listening to our conversation.

  "Now we're alone, Mr. Briggs." He sat down in front of me and took his notepad out again. "Now, can you expand and explain why you're here?"

  "Before I do that, I want to make sure that everything I say will be protected by the confidentiality you swore on."

  "Apart from a confession of murder or a statement of intent to commit murder," he quoted the law I hoped he had learned a few years ago, even though he looked like he’d completed his studies in recent months.

  "Mr. Hale, I'm not going to murder anyone and I'm not going to confess to any murders I've performed in the past."

  "Excellent."

  "At least not at this stage," I added, smiling, and immediately retracted my not so funny joke. "I'm kidding, you understand that, don’t you?"

  "Oh, yes, yes." He smiled back at me. "Very funny," he added, and opened his notepad pages again. "Mr. Briggs, tell me why you were brought here if you have nothing to do with your daughter's kidnapping."

  "That's because I gave the cops the adoption documents with which I brought Kate into the states."

  "What's the problem with those documents?"

  "Other than the fact that they're fake?"

  "Oh... Okay..." He tried not to appear surprised. "I...that is... okay..."

  "I didn’t think Kate’s adoption would be relevant to her disappearance, certainly not when the adoption took place decades ago."

  "I also don’t really understand how it relates to her disappearance."

  "Officer Swenson asked me to prove my relationship with Kate. I never thought she would dig so deep as to find out about me. I was foolish enough to think she was looking for her, not me."

  "So you handed over the documents?"

  "Yes," I breathed in frustration, remembering what a huge mistake it had been. "And she immediately recognized the forgery and came to my house to confront me about it."

  "Please tell me you said nothing to her concerning that matter."

  "I wish I hadn’t. I somehow confessed and even made it worse."

  "Worse how?"

  "I said I adopted Kate when she was five and a half and not when she was six months old, as the documents claimed."

  "How is that worse? The way I see it, the truth is that you adopted Kate. End of story. So your crime is that you came with a five-and-a-half-year-old girl to the United States with forged documents, and that's why you’ve been arrested on suspicion of kidnapping her?"

  "That’s also not the whole truth," I breathed deeply and, again, glanced around the room to make sure I hadn’t missed a hidden security camera. "I'm here because they probably found out I never adopted Kate in the first place."

  "Mr. Briggs, it'll be very hard for me to help you if you continue to hide bits of information from me."

  "I'm done hiding information. I'm no longer hiding anything from you, kid. You're probably the first person in the world I’ve confessed to about never having adopted Kate."

  "So how did you get possession of a child that wasn’t yours?"

  "Damn it, you don’t understand!" I hit my hand on my forehead. "I didn’t get hold of a girl who wasn’t mine."

  "So Kate is..."

  "How can I say this in simpler terms? Kate is my child."

  "I...I'm trying to understand, but..."

  "Kate is my daughter!" I interrupted him and decided to be painfully clear, using the words I had been reluctant to use for so many years. "Kate is my biological daughter and I am her biological father. I never adopted her because she has always been mine."

  "So why all the secrecy about this? Why don’t you just sound your voice and say that you're raising your daughter?"

  "Because Kate isn’t aware of this yet."

  "Hold on. Does she think you're her adoptive father?"

  "Yes, that's why I couldn’t reveal the truth to the police. But, now it seems I have no choice but to do so."

  Tom frowned. To tell the truth, I felt sorry for him.

  "Mr. Briggs, correct me if I'm wrong."

  "I'm listening," I gave him a supportive smile.

  "You lied to the police about the adoption of your own daughter and in relation to the age in which she was supposedly adopted when, in fact, Kate is your biological daughter, only she wasn’t, and still isn’t, aware
of it?"

  "Correct. She still believes she was adopted from an orphanage at the age of six months."

  "And do you want to keep it that way?"

  "Of course."

  "I just don’t understand why... I'm just trying to understand... I have to see the full picture of..."

  "You cannot understand," I waved at him. "You cannot understand, because you probably grew up in a warm and loving home. At your house, a horror like the one that occurred in front of my daughter's eyes was unthinkable."

  "What happened?" his eyes grew bigger.

  "Kate's mother was brutally murdered and she saw it all. She was only five."

  "Oh, wow."

  "As her father, I chose to cut her off from the country that would forever remind her of that. I decided to write a new story for her."

  "How did you do that?"

  "I took her to the United States, actively erased her memories and built a new reality in her head."

  "She remembers nothing? She doesn’t remember you as her father at all?"

  "I turned her nightmare into a bad dream."

  "I'm sorry, but I have to ask again, how?"

  "I did what I had to do. I did what any father would do. I protected my daughter from being harmed, even if it came at the cost of erasing me from her memory."

  "But why?"

  "I don’t expect you to understand this, but I just need you to believe that I wanted to protect her, Tom. I built new memories for her so that I could build a better life for her."

  Tom wrote down every word I said and occasionally stopped, scratched his forehead, asked for some clarification, then continued after he had received a satisfactory answer from me.

  "So there is no reason why you should be a suspect." A satisfied smile stretched across his face. "Last time I checked the constitution, lying to your daughter wasn’t a criminal offense."

  "If it was so, I suppose the prisons would be full of parents."

  "Indeed," he chuckled slightly. "Our only problem is that in order to prove your claims, we have to collect a DNA sample from both of you and... Kate is missing."

  "That won’t be a problem, Tom. I had a DNA test completed a few days after we arrived in the United States."

  "So we can get a copy of the results?"