by Brenna Lyons
“Katheryn, it was dark.”
“I remember. That’s why the light hurt so badly,” she explained patiently.
“What kind of light? A flashlight?”
She shook her head. “Halogens weren’t popular then, and this was bright, spotlight-dead-in-the-eyes bright.”
Mac shook his head resolutely. “We searched the cliff and below the cliff. Believe me. There wasn’t a light. I was on the search team, Katheryn.”
She growled in frustration. “Dammit, Mac. It’s the only thing I’m absolutely sure of. Don’t tell me it didn’t exist. That’s like telling me I’m crazy when I feel like I might have a chance of finally getting sane.”
“Let me ask you something.”
Katheryn stared at him curiously.
“Is there any chance that there was someone else on that cliff with the two of you?”
She furrowed her brow. “Unfortunately, your guess is as good as mine, Mac. I don’t remember anything that would indicate anyone besides myself and Ty, but that hardly means anything. Why do you ask?”
“If there was a light, where did it go? If there was someone else there, we know where it went.”
Katheryn chewed her lip thoughtfully. “I suppose so,” she answered dubiously, but it didn’t feel right.
Whatever was going on, it was just between Ty and her. It had always been between Ty and her. There was no mysterious third person. She was sure of that.
Chapter Six
“She’s really something, isn’t she? It’s like wrestling a tiger just to get to know her.” Allen Francis Doyle “Angel”
Katheryn grabbed her wallet and keys and locked the door on the way out. Fighting back the itch of being stir crazy, she looked at the MDX then decided to walk instead. She crossed Johnston Avenue and dog legged onto Mansion Street past the empty playground and the pool, which wouldn’t be filled and opened again for another two months or so.
She always preferred the bigger one in Greenfield, but this one was less crowded most days, so it had its advantages. Katheryn had no urge to head down to the carbarn. It had been fixed up beautifully, as she saw when she walked past it her first day back, but she wanted peace not crowds.
Katheryn stopped at the bar gate at the back of Burgwin and smiled at the kindergartners playing with balls and ride-ons in the chain link play areas. She went to kindergarten there, and what she remembered of it was happy, until Marcus Nichols started the rumors about Ty. That was when she moved on to a new school. Not even legally her father yet, Dad was so upset by her distress that he paid her tuition to St. Stephen’s to get her out of Burgwin.
She sighed and moved away, throwing a smile and a wave at the teacher, who took her eyes off of the ever-present hole in the rear fence to look at Katheryn in concern. The hole in the fence was an ongoing struggle. Every year—or several times a year, it was repaired. It never lasted long. Local teens or preteens took wire cutters to it within a week every time, opening a hole into the woods that separated the playgrounds from the access road, football field, and playground beyond. Katheryn smiled as she considered the possibility that she could still find the old trails through the dense woods surrounding the public areas.
She turned the corner onto Glenwood and took in the flagpole and the manicured lawn within the black painted iron fence. It was a veritable oasis in the poor neighborhood. Aside from the federal school entry regulations posted in the windows of the front doors, little had changed in the six or seven years since she had taken this walk last. She had enjoyed this school until Marcus Nichols started in.
Katheryn had always dreamed of her own kids coming here, but who was she kidding? You didn’t exactly need a husband to have a baby, and she had considered the alternative means of getting pregnant and moving on without telling the man about it. It was a lousy plan, and Katheryn knew it. Not only would her mother and uncles have had a cow, but what was she supposed to tell her baby?
“Gee, Kid. You have a Dad, but I didn’t like him enough to stick around,” sounded pretty horrible. “I wanted you, so I had you, but I never told your father about you, and it wouldn’t be fair to him for you to go looking for him” sounded even worse.
Katheryn didn’t know any men she got along well enough with to try to have a baby in the moderately more mainstream way of two involved but unattached partner-parents. No, it was all or nothing for her. Still, she always wanted a baby.
She sighed and moved along. At the access road, she ducked around the bar gate and started up the dirt track. The old nursery building had been torn down long before. Good riddance. As much as Katheryn loved Burgwin, she hated the nursery school she and Carol went to for a few weeks. Strange… That was the one thing before that night she always remembered clearly. Katheryn curled up her nose at the memories and kept moving. If she had to remember something, why couldn’t it be a pleasant memory?
At the football/baseball field, she ducked behind the dugout and picked out the track through the woods there. It was more overrun than she remembered, but it was still passable, and she came out next to the tennis court fence feeling exhilarated.
Katheryn laughed at the sight of several children practicing tennis with one of the city coaches. She had tried tennis at their age and discovered something about herself. She stunk at it. Still laughing to herself quietly, Katheryn stepped back onto Johnston and turned toward the blue bus stop sign at the playground. She was already nostalgic. Why not go all the way?
Her timing was good. She only waited five minutes before the next 56B came along. Katheryn knew the route like the back of her hand. After all, she took the bus to school every day of high school—up Johnston, down Browns Hill Road and over the Homestead High Level Bridge. As she crossed it, Katheryn tried to ignore the drop and kicked herself for not bringing her car. Nostalgia was one thing, but torturing yourself for it was insanity. She tried to reason herself out of a panic. After all, it wasn’t winter, and even in winter, the busses rerouted over the lower Glenwood Bridge at the first sign of ice.
“Built in 1936 to replace the old bridge,” she muttered under her breath, “with 109.3 feet of vertical clearance and a main span measuring 516.3 feet in length.” Years ago, Katheryn had tried to overcome her fear of bridges by memorizing all their stats. It hadn’t worked, but she still retained the knowledge. In fact, in the case of some bridges, like the monstrous Westinghouse, knowing was worse than not knowing.
The older woman next to her looked at her strangely. “What was that?” she asked.
Katheryn smiled grimly. “Just remembering the bridge,” she replied.
“You know, they say this is the site of the Pinkerton massacre,” the woman offered brightly.
Katheryn’s stomach turned. Oh, yeah. I needed that reminder. Bridges equal pain and death? Thanks a heap for reminding me of that story. “I know,” she managed with a tight smile. “Ah. My stop coming up,” she said apologetically as she headed for the front, sweating and watching the end of the bride approach as it emptied onto Eighth Street.
She got off at the first stop and stared at the boarded-up building that had been Moxley’s, her heart aching. Katheryn heard that it had been closed down not long after it had been used in Silence of the Lambs. Pittsburgh was a big movie industry town. The movie companies seemed to like shooting there.
Katheryn had known it was closed. She hadn’t been prepared for the ramshackle appearance of the building. She, Berta, and Sherry—even Keith had hung out at the soda fountain/grill. Back then, there had been nothing better than a double cheeseburger and a rootbeer float at Moxley’s.
She climbed the hill to Ninth Street with much less exuberance than she started her trip with. The high school was now a community center, and it looked well kept, though different. The post office next door had been relocated when the new one was built on Eighth, and the convenience store across the street was now a family-owned mini-mart. Even the dance studio she had attended next to the fire station, the only remaining landmark
on the block, was long gone. Katheryn sighed and headed back to Eighth Street in a foul mood. Homestead had only one more chance for her, and it blew that one, too. Isly’s was gone.
She stared at the Crossroads store across the street morosely. She could take the 61C to Oakland for some O-fries with gravy and a Goodie’s Peachtree Schnapps cone, but that didn’t even hold appeal for her. She was too depressed for the Cathedral of Learning or the Carnegie Library and Museums. Katheryn sighed. She could go to town or to Century Three, even to Station Square, but they would all be packed with people by the time she got there.
Katheryn looked at Crossroads again and smiled crookedly. “Looks like it’s a meatball sub and home,” she mused. She grabbed a six-pack of Jolt and a Tower sub for later. Then, she got her meatball sub and ate it while she waited for the 56B home. Despite working with that particular chain store while she was in college, when it was still called Sheetz’, Katheryn had gotten addicted to their meatball subs with extra cheese and the Tower subs, a cold concoction made of turkey breast, roast beef, and sliced cheddar cheese.
Back at home, she stashed her midnight snack in the fridge and went to work. It was strange, she decided. The things she thought would make her happiest were gone, but the simple things were still there. Maybe there really was such a thing as coming home, but she wasn’t ready to tell Carol that. She furrowed her brow at the thought that Kyle might have already told her. How could home be synonymous with happiness and hell at the same time?
* * *
Katheryn stacked another box of junk for trash pick-up by the curb. She had five boxes on the porch for Salvation Army and another fifteen full of moth-eaten clothes and moldy paperwork, which she had dutifully—unhappily—searched for important papers, for the garbage men. Katheryn decided the crib from the attic had seen better days, so she put it in the pile at the curb.
Carol requested a few boxes of old toys, books, and records for Kyle. That left the toys and books she decided to keep in case she ever decided to have kids of her own. Okay, I know I’ve argued that already. I argue it every once in awhile. But, it seemed she was arguing it more and more lately. Maybe her biological clock had decided to start ticking. Katheryn sighed.
The attic was done. It was time to move on to the cellar. Katheryn spent half an hour separating out the tools that had corroded or rusted for the trash. She and her father shared a love of doing and fixing that her mother never had. She’d have need of the tools. The house wasn’t in bad shape, but it did need work.
In the last toolbox, she found a photo box that sounded like it had pictures in it. Katheryn looked at it in confusion. All the rest of the photos were in the office. Why would this one box be stored down here? The damp air alone would be horrible for pictures.
She carried the box to the kitchen table for better light and removed the lid. The picture on the top was obviously one of her parents’ wedding—her biological father and her mother. She had no memories of Gary Adams, only a handful of pictures that she was shown over and over again and told they were her father. He died when she was two, died in the line of duty. Katheryn could barely remember a time when she wasn’t an O’Hanlon.
Still, she had seen pictures. Her mother even kept one on the mantle. It was still there, right next to the one of Katheryn with her Dad. James O’Hanlon wasn’t jealous. Gary was dead. He wasn’t coming home to steal back his wife and daughters. He wasn’t even a shadow on the bedroom wall. Gary’s family had moved on, all of them.
So, why would her mother put this picture away and leave others out? Surely, she didn’t do it out of some warped idea of being disloyal to Gary by marrying Dad. Her mother was too down-to-earth for something that ridiculous. Then, why did she do it?
Katheryn picked up the picture, and a folded portion fell away from her fingers. Folded? She folded it flat and sucked in her breath. Ty. That was why. Her mother probably couldn’t bear to destroy them, but she wouldn’t chance Dad or Katheryn finding them, so she hid them somewhere she figured Katheryn would never look.
She walked to the fridge and got out a Jolt. As she gulped down a mouthful, Katheryn considered simply having a bonfire without examining the contents of the box. She rejected that idea almost immediately. If there was a clue in there, she had to find it.
Smiling, she got down a cast iron skillet and lit a candle. Katheryn dumped the pictures out onto the table and went through them, placing some in the box top for further study; burning some outright; and carefully cutting some in a straight line, separating Ty from the rest of the people in the picture and burning his half. The other half of the picture, she set in the bottom of the box to be saved.
Left with the small group in the box top, Katheryn examined them. There wasn’t much she was getting out of them, but she was getting a pretty clear picture of Ty. He wasn’t happy when her mother married Gary. As far as she could tell, he never held Katheryn, but it wasn’t disdain for children that stopped him. He had Carol on his lap or in his arms for almost every picture they were in together. In group shots, Ty was almost always central with Carol close to him and Katheryn as far away as the other adult bodies could place her. Unlike the pictures Mama Toni and Dad displayed of her, Katheryn never smiled in the pictures with Ty.
Ty, on the other hand, was always smiling—except in the wedding picture, she reminded herself. Of course, he’s smiling. He’s in control. She startled at the thought. In control—That rang true to her. How was he in control? Of whom? Everyone.
“No. Not everyone. Not me,” she mused. “I was his wildcard.” She looked at the wedding picture again and started to laugh at just how out of control he obviously was over the situation.
She stifled her laughter as a knock sounded at the door. Expecting Mac, she sighed and headed for the front door, but it was Carol on the other side instead.
“Hi, Katie. I got a sitter and played hookie. You wanted help, right?”
“Um. Actually, I’m fairly played out tonight. I did the attic and the cellar today already.”
“Good,” Carol answered flamboyantly. “I didn’t really want to work, anyway. What do you say we order a pizza and hang out?”
Katheryn hesitated. “Well—” Those pictures probably wouldn’t upset Carol as much as they upset her, but her sister would definitely think she’d cracked for her little pyromaniac fantasy life.
Carol’s eyes widened, and she tried to look over Katheryn’s shoulder. “Do you have other plans? Do you have a man in there?” she gushed, looking all of sixteen and giddy, a role Carol could still play very well.
“God, no. Dressed like this and all grimy?” She sighed. “Look, why don’t you let me clean up while you take your boxes from the living room. Then we’ll order that pizza.”
Carol looked at her suspiciously as Katheryn let her pass. She waited until Carol was out the door with the first load before she sprinted to the kitchen and started sweeping the pictures into a pile.
“I knew you were up to something,” Carol’s voice boomed out in amusement from the doorway.
Katheryn wheeled around to face her. She groaned and tried to cover the pile of pictures with the box behind her, but Carol was already in motion.
She took in the candle and the pan full of ashes. “What the hell are you doing?” she breathed.
“Having a baby bonfire,” Katheryn admitted.
“With pictures? Are you nuts?” She sat in the chair and started fingering through the ones in the box. “These are precious.”
“Those are being saved,” she countered.
“Why are they cut?” She looked to Katheryn for an answer, and her eyes widened at the sour look on her older sister’s face. She dropped the picture she was holding back in the box. “He was in them, wasn’t he?”
Katheryn dropped into the chair at her hip. “Can I show you something?” she asked.
“Like what?” Carol answered warily.
“Look at these. It was no secret that he never liked me.” Katheryn pulled out
several pictures from the hidden stack. “See how I was always far from him? I was never next to him, and I was never happy about being in the same place with him. I think that means something.”
Carol shuddered. “Yeah, it means you were smart. Do you want these?”
Katheryn sighed in understanding and grabbed one of the pictures to cut off the edge with herself on her mother’s hip. She dropped that part into the box and handed the rest back to Carol. “All yours,” she invited.
“Good.” Carol snatched one up and lit it in the flame of the candle before pitching it in the skillet.
The ash doused it, and Katheryn retrieved it. She lowered it over the flame again and held it up until it was burning cheerily. “Like this, so it won’t go out,” she instructed. “Therapeutic, isn’t it?”
Carol scowled and started burning another picture. “Seeing him holding me makes my skin crawl,” she complained.
“Want a shower? I plan on taking one,” Katheryn offered as she dropped the picture in the ashes to burn the rest of the way.
“Where did you find those?” Carol demanded.
“In the cellar where Mom hid them so none of us would find them.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I think I figured out at least part of the reason he hated me so badly.”
Carol pitched the picture she was holding into the skillet and lit another. “Go on.”
“He didn’t want Mom to marry Gary, but he didn’t have a choice. I daresay that was a new experience for him.”
“Why would he? She was an adult,” Carol snapped.
“Uh. Ditch that before you get burned, okay?”
Carol startled and tossed the picture away.
“Look at this, but you’re not allowed to burn it. Don’t worry. You’re not in it.”
Carol stared at the wedding picture in confusion. “Oh. He’s happy, isn’t he? Who pissed in his Cheerios?” she asked sarcastically.
“Look at the embossed date.”
