Tygers

by Brenna Lyons

  “You think Kyle knows, on some unconscious level, when these things are happening?” she questioned.

  Something in her expression caught his attention. “Would that be a surprise?” he asked suddenly.

  Carol turned to face him with wide eyes. She moved her mouth as if to speak then closed it abruptly. “Test him.”

  “Would it be a surprise, Carol?”

  “Katie told me to allow any tests the doctors wanted. Do the test.”

  “I don’t remember you doing everything your sister orders,” he noted.

  She paused and met his eyes miserably. “Where Kyle is concerned, I take her advice. It’s better that way.”

  “Better how? Carol, if Katie knows something, she should tell Evan or Mac.”

  “She doesn’t know anything,” Carol replied sarcastically. “Trust me, she doesn’t. It’s just—she knows Kyle.”

  “Because they’re alike?” he prodded.

  “They’re two of a kind, all right. It’s hard to explain. Just do the test and let me know what you find.”

  Keith nodded uncertainly and headed up to Kyle’s room. The little boy was playing on the floor, surrounded by his tigers. He waved and smiled as Keith eased in the door past the piles of toys.

  “Want to play a game, Kyle?” he asked.

  “What kind of game?”

  “How about Go Fish?”

  “Okay.” Kyle said it uncertainly, and he seemed to be searching for an explanation in Keith’s face.

  Keith dealt the cards and considered how he would conduct his test. He hadn’t really planned this out in advance. It was several trades into the game before he hit on an idea. “Do you have red?” he asked.

  “Yep.” Kyle reached out a card from his hand, and Keith started to pull a green card from his own hand instead of the red. Kyle giggled. “That’s the wrong card, Uncle Keith,” he noted in a teasing voice.

  “Really? Oh, you’re right. How did you know?” he asked calmly as he pushed the card back into his hand.

  Kyle smiled and pointed over Keith’s shoulder. “Gare can see,” he informed the confused man.

  “Cheating huh? Okay, what color was it?”

  Kyle met Keith’s eyes in shock and blushed slightly. “I don’t know,” he grumbled as he looked back at his cards.

  “You knew it wasn’t red,” he countered lightly.

  Kyle didn’t answer.

  Keith held another card up to the stuffed tiger. “What color is it, Gare old buddy?” he asked comically.

  “She can’t tell you. She can’t see color.”

  “Right. They’re colorblind. Then, how did she know the first card wasn’t red?”

  Kyle darkened again, but he didn’t answer.

  Keith looked at the card in his hand, then moved his thumb to uncover the printed color name on the bottom of the card. He showed it to the tiger again.

  Kyle fidgeted and looked at his cards again. “Are you going to date Aunt Katie when she moves home?” he asked.

  Keith looked at him in surprise. “I don’t think so, Kyle. Your aunt doesn’t like me very much.”

  “Yes, she does,” the child answered simply.

  “She told you that?” he asked in disbelief.

  “No, she says she doesn’t like you.”

  Keith felt his stomach sink at the confirmation.

  “She doesn’t think you love her. She thinks you’re just fas—factinated with her.”

  “Fascinated?” Keith asked quietly.

  “Yes, but you do love her, don’t you?”

  Keith felt his face start to burn. How was he supposed to make a four year old, especially one who had obviously overheard a few too many conversations on the subject, believe him when he denied it? “Kyle, love is a strong word,” he began.

  “She dreams of you. You still dream of her, too. So, you must still love each other,” he decided.

  “How do you know that?”

  Kyle smiled and patted the Siberian tiger next to him. “Ty told me.”

  Keith felt the surge of hope melt into a dull ache. Kyle sighed and handed him two cards.

  “What’s this?” Keith asked in confusion.

  “Look at them,” Kyle answered simply.

  Keith turned over the cards. Red, the card he originally asked for, and orange, the card he showed to the tiger behind him. He swallowed as he tried desperately to reconcile what he was seeing.

  “You should date Aunt Katie,” Kyle decided suddenly. “It’s still your turn, Uncle Keith. You got a match.”

  * * *

  Keith stared at his beer morosely. He ate dinner with Carol and Kyle—or pushed it around his plate a lot. He really wasn’t sure about which he actually did.

  He didn’t answer Carol when she asked what the test showed. Keith didn’t know how to answer it. What was he supposed to tell her? Was he supposed to tell her that Kyle exceeded any puny concept he had of potential? Was he supposed to demand that Carol play it straight with him? He was sure that she hadn’t done that earlier.

  And what about Katie? Was Kyle right about her? Did she still fantasize about him the same way he did about her? Whether or not she did, Keith’s dreams were about to get a lot more uncomfortable with the possibility that she did. Carol said that Kyle and Katie were two of a kind. Did Katie share Kyle’s talents?

  A disquieting thought crossed his mind at about that point. What if Katie didn’t turn from him because of something he did or said? What if his offense was something he thought? He decided that the possibility was enough to drive him crazy very quickly.

  Carol came back into the kitchen and sat across from him. “Kyle’s in bed. Now, tell me what your test showed.”

  Keith took a long pull on the beer and met her eyes resolutely. “How much like Katie is Kyle?” he countered.

  “They react alike and—” She paused and darkened slightly.

  “And?” he prodded.

  “They understand each other. They know what the other needs.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She sighed. “When Peter— When Mom paged Katie, she was already at the airport headed here. Not home, Keith. Not home like she planned—here.”

  “Coincidence? That could just be coincidence,” he suggested hopefully.

  “Remember when Kyle broke his arm?” she continued, looking annoyed with him.

  He nodded. “Last summer. Katie was already in town.”

  “She beat me to the hospital.” He started to speak, but she cut him off. “I didn’t call her Keith. No one called her. She just rolled out of bed, threw on shoes, and drove like a bat out of hell.”

  “What about Kyle?”

  “He told me when she broke up with that guy in New York and when she had pneumonia.” Carol sighed and rubbed her eyes.

  “Can Katie do other people like Kyle can? Or can she only read Kyle’s mind?”

  She hesitated then shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Carol,” he prodded.

  “For a while, I thought she could, but if she could, I don’t think she can anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  She furrowed her brow.

  “Let me guess. You haven’t seen her use it?”

  Carol nodded sheepishly.

  Keith took another drink of his beer while he considered it. “When you thought she could do it— We were in high school, weren’t we?”

  Her eyes widened. “That was years earlier, Keith. You can’t really think—”

  He laughed in relief, cutting her off cleanly. “Carol, your sister never ceases to amaze me.”

  “What exactly does that mean?” she asked nervously.

  “If I’m going to be damned for what I’m thinking, I’m going to have a hell of a good time on the way out.”

  * * *

  Katheryn snapped awake. “Dammit,” she complained, punching her pillow and rolling over. There was just something innately wrong with this torture. Just because she knew she was about to be living in
the same city as Keith Randall again was no reason to have erotic dreams about the man. After fifteen years, you’d think she would be able to control her libido where he was concerned. After learning what he was really like, shouldn’t she be immune to him?

  She groaned at the idiocy of that thought. Of course, she’d never stop dreaming of him. She never had yet, though she hadn’t been plagued with it like this since she was twenty—the last time she saw him in person. Maybe if she slept with him, she could get him out of her head. At least then, she wouldn’t be plagued by so many what-ifs. No, she decided. That probably wouldn’t help either. That would only give her new images to disrupt her sleep. The few she had already propagated like rabbits over the years, becoming a whole myriad of fantasies that attacked her when she wasn’t looking. Like now.

  She should hate him, but reminding herself to be angry, reminding herself of how untrustworthy he was—That was all she could manage most days. Keith was the most dangerous person in her life, more dangerous than Ty and Kyle put together in some respects, because Keith had the ability to make her forget everything else with a simple touch. Reason and common sense would be lost if she allowed him to touch her. They always were. She narrowly escaped that once with him. It wasn’t something she could risk again.

  She knew why it was like that with Keith. No one but Kyle ever connected with her like that. She could read him like no other, and his feelings were always on the surface pulling her in with them until she wasn’t sure where one began and the other ended. They were always on the surface for her to see clearly, until she saw what she didn’t want to see and stopped looking. Under any other circumstances, knowing how badly he wanted her would have sent her into his arms to make it a reality. But in conjunction with what she had just overheard— No matter how much she wanted him, if all Keith wanted was a glory roll, he picked the wrong woman for his companion. All that was left was to remember that when Carol invariably pushed them together.

  * * *

  Dianna sighed in relief when she finally got Carol out the door. Tasha was sick, and Dianna had offered to watch Kyle so her daughter could attend an important meeting at work, but Carol seemed reluctant to leave.

  “It’s not like I’ve never taken care of a child,” she had reassured her daughter in amusement. “I don’t get to spend enough time with my grandson to suit myself, actually.”

  Finally, Carol left for work, and Dianna set about cleaning up from breakfast.

  At first, she hummed to herself. Katheryn would be arriving tonight unless she stopped and slept over somewhere. It would be nice to have the whole family together again, and maybe Katheryn would realize after spending the night with her mother that it wouldn’t kill her to stay instead of getting her own apartment. Sure, she’d like to see Katheryn go on a few dates, but she could stifle that if it meant keeping her older daughter with her for a little while. It was worth a shot anyway, she reasoned.

  Resolved, her mind turned to Carol’s strange behavior. Perhaps, it was all the recent stress that had her daughter nervous to leave Kyle. Maybe, she acted like that every morning with Tasha, but Dianna worried that it was something else.

  It had been twenty-seven years, and Katheryn hadn’t forgiven her yet. God knows that Dianna had never forgiven herself. She left her children with a madman, but how could she have known? What mother expects to return from a date to find one child sleeping in the midst of a swarm of police officers and the other traumatized beyond speech or comprehension of speech?

  The loss of her child’s trust was her penance. Her child’s screams were her punishment. That was the only thing that frightened her about asking Katheryn to stay with her. What if she still had nightmares? Thirteen years of her daughter’s soul-chilling screams had scarred Dianna as effectively as the knife that left the scar Jamie acquired in the line of duty years before he ever met them. At least Jamie had the comfort of being able to calm Katheryn, the comfort of having gained the trust Dianna lost.

  She wondered at times if the love she had for her second husband was more gratitude and desperation than love, but she had to admit to herself that not even her first husband could engender such passion in her. Dianna regretted that they hadn’t had children together, but in retrospect, she wasn’t sure they could have handled more than they did.

  But, how could Carol ever be concerned about it? That was the type of mistake you only make once in a lifetime, especially when you pay for it as Dianna had. On top of that, there was no reason for her to leave Kyle with anyone.

  Folding the dishtowel over the drainer, she went in search of Kyle. She stopped outside his door and listened to him playing for several minutes. When he was rushed to Mercy after Peter died, she was worried that he would have endless nights of screaming like Katheryn. It was good to find out she was wrong. It was good to hear him laughing.

  She sighed and went into his room. As usual, it was the tigers that had his attention. Overall, she didn’t have a problem with the tigers. They made Kyle happy, and they made him feel safe and secure. If Katheryn had something like those tigers, her life might have been easier. She did have a comfort object, Dianna reminded herself. She had Jamie. Jamie was her knight in shining armor, her tiger. He chased away the nightmares.

  No, the tigers were a good thing as a general rule. The exception to that rule was Ty. Why Kyle locked on that name was a mystery to everyone. It didn’t bother Peter or his family, because they didn’t know about Ty. Once Jamie adopted the girls, the last easily traceable tie to that life was eradicated. The only ones who knew were family, including the blue-shirt uncles, but none of them ever spoke about it in public. It was family business, and it stayed in the family.

  They even changed schools, because the notoriety disconcerted Katheryn so badly. Carol didn’t even know her birth name until she needed her birth certificate to get her social security card for a work permit. Kyle’s use of Ty’s name unnerved everyone who knew who Ty was, but how could they ever explain it to a child?

  “Why don’t you like Ty?” Kyle asked suddenly.

  Dianna looked at him in surprise. “It’s not the tiger I don’t like, Kyle. I don’t care for the name you gave him.”

  The child laughed. “Ty says to blame his parents, not me.”

  She smiled at the joke. “Really? Well, his parents picked an awful name. What do you say we give him a new one?”

  “No. Ty says that everyone knows him by that name now. Why would he want to change it?”

  “If he doesn’t like it—”

  “He does like it. No one else likes it, but he’s okay with that. It’s nice to be remembered.”

  “Remembered?”

  “You remember Ty, don’t you Grandma Dianna? Ty says you do. I know Aunt Katie remembers him. She remembers him more every day. That’s good. The game is more fun that way.”

  A chill ran down Dianna’s spine. “What does your aunt remember, Kyle?”

  Kyle’s eyes got a faraway look to them that made her shudder. “I know you’re up here, Katie-girl. I have all night to find you.” He laughed harshly.

  “Kyle?” She backed away and sank to the bed.

  “He wasn’t trying to kill her, you know. At the end, I mean. He was making her his. She’s always been his, and he’s bringing her home now. He wants her close. He wants her to stay at your house.”

  The room seemed to close in around her. “Katheryn won’t stay with me. I’ve tried,” she managed, ignoring the fact that she had been so resolute to convince her only half an hour ago.

  “She will. She just doesn’t know it yet,” he promised.

  Dianna shook her head. “Okay, let’s pretend that I actually believe everything you’re saying. What was Ty’s nickname for me?”

  “He didn’t have one. Your mother called you Dianna. Your real name is Dionnysia Angelique. That’s what he called you.”

  She felt a sick swirl in her stomach. Kyle couldn’t know that. No one had used that name since—

  “Don
’t try to fool him,” Kyle added. “You can’t.”

  * * *

  Dianna couldn’t remember much of what was said after that. She vaguely registered two things. The first was that Kyle never made mistakes, not where Ty was concerned. The second was that if even half of what Kyle said was true, their entire family was at risk, Katheryn most of all. Surely, Katheryn couldn’t know what would happen when she returned. If she had any clue, she would run screaming in the opposite direction, and Dianna would let her go.

  Would she really run? If Katheryn were the only one in danger, Dianna had no doubts that her daughter would shun this damned house and the city it sat in forever. She’d even pay her family’s way to visit her wherever she hung her hat or isolate herself from them if that’s what it took.

  But, it wasn’t just Katheryn who was in danger, and despite Carol’s doubts, Dianna knew her older daughter would risk far too much for others. Her mother could tell Dianna so little about her daughter’s trauma that it was frustrating, but she asserted one fact over and over. Whatever Katheryn did that night, she did to save them all, and she almost died doing it.

  So, the question that plagued her was simple to ask and near impossible to answer without talking to Katheryn. Did her daughter know what she was walking into? Was she prepared for what was lying in wait for her? For who was waiting for her? This move home was prompted. Of that, Dianna had no doubts, but was Katheryn prompted with full knowledge of the 'game' Ty was playing, or was she tricked into coming?

  There was only one way to learn the answer, she decided. Katheryn had to know what she was facing. Whether or not that would change her plans was immaterial to Dianna. She could not permit Katheryn to walk blithely into an ambush. What choices her daughter made after that were beyond Dianna’s control. Katheryn survived once. If she was as resilient as an adult, and Dianna was sure that she was, Katheryn might have nothing to fear in coming home.

  She moved to the phone to page Katheryn, but she froze with the receiver in her hand. The sound behind her was unmistakably a growl. She turned slowly, taking in the scene behind her in horror.