by Gemma Hart
It took nearly fifteen minutes but finally, they reached the cool night air. Bursting free, Jason took in a deep, refreshing breath as the girl wrenched free from his arms. This time, he let her go.
The girl wrenched free and whirled around, turning her back towards him. She wrapped her arms around herself, taking in deep breaths of the fresh air.
Jason took in another breath and leaned against the outer brick wall of the bar. Crossing his arms, he leaned his head back.
“I don’t know who you are,” Jason said, looking at the turned back, “but you’re a damn idiot to be here. It’s too fucking dangerous.”
The slender mint green shoulders heaved up and down as if the girl was trying to regain her composure. He waited, not in any hurry to return to the mess inside. Perhaps it was just as well. Maybe the universe was telling him he’d had enough beers for the night.
Just when Jason was about to give up on the silent girl and call it a night, she turned around. Her long caramel hair flying behind her in a cascading waterfall. Luminous almond eyes looked up at him, delicately shining through a sheen of tears. Her fair skin glowed in the evening light.
Jason felt his heart stop and his limbs go numb. He felt like he couldn't distinguish whether this was a dream world or the real world.
“You,” he breathed, feeling the cool night air blow across him.
The almond eyes widened in surprise. The tears that had been so carefully held in check suddenly fell with the shock of the sight before her.
“You,” she echoed, her voice just as shocked.
He hadn’t thought he’d ever be able to see her again. At least not in the waking world. He had dreamt of her often. She was the only clean thing left in his memories—the beautiful angel that had stopped to give him a moment of humanity and pie. She was the shining beacon of hope from home that wrote him constantly and made him remember that not everything in the world was covered with blood and rage.
And here she stood before him.
And of all places.
Katrina. Kat.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jason demanded, his voice stronger by the sudden fear in realizing it was actually Kat that had been in danger rather than some stranger. He imagined Kat being caught up in that brawl, taking a stray punch or elbow to her face. His blood rushed in delayed panic and fear.
He reached forward to grab her arm, to demand an answer, to reassure himself that she was indeed safe.
But she took a step back, putting herself out of reach.
She looked up at him with a look of confusion but also coolness. There was a wall up around her and he could tell she was being careful to keep it there. “I’m looking for Reggie,” she said defensively.
Jason stared at her, mindboggled. So Al had heard right after all. A stranger had been looking for Reggie. No, not a stranger. Kat.
“What do you want with Reggie?” Jason asked, unable to help himself from looking over Kat from head to toe. It had been two years since he had seen her but even he could tell she had lost some weight. There was a hollowness in her cheeks that hadn’t been there before. And he could dark smudges underneath her eyes that spoke of her lack of sleep.
Something was wrong. Something was causing her too much and stress to allow her to get a proper night’s sleep.
Kat pressed her lips in clear hurry and frustration. “It’s none of your—” she started and then just shook her head. “I need to speak with him. He knows my uncle.”
Uncle Doughy! It brought back a sudden jolt of warmth to hear such familiar names again. Jason almost felt as if he was hearing about family.
“Then he should’ve come down instead of you. Why would he send you to a place like Reggie’s on your own?” Jason demanded. He was sure Uncle Doughy would know what kind of place this is.
Kat angrily brushed a hand through her tousled hair, unconsciously making Jason’s heart skip a beat. “Are you going to take me to Reggie or not?” she demanded.
There was a high note of desperation in her voice. Jason’s eyes narrowed, looking her over more carefully.
“Well, I could,” he started.
Kat sighed in relief. She looked at him expectantly.
“But we’d have to drive a few miles west,” he said. Kat squinted in confusion. “The cemetery he’s buried in is a few miles out.”
Kat’s face immediately fell. Her shoulders slumped and her eyes dimmed in despair. “He’s dead?” she asked softly.
Jason nodded. “He died about a year ago,” he said. He waited before asking, “Why were you looking for Reggie?”
Kat shook her head as she looked down at her feet. “He was…he was an old connection of Uncle Do’s. I had been told that if I ever needed anything….If the time came….” Kat sighed and abruptly jerked her head to the side so she could covertly wipe away a tear.
Raising her head, she looked up with strong clear eyes. “Nevermind then,” she said. “I guess it doesn’t matter now.”
There was a pause between them. Each one looking the other over carefully. Jason could only imagine what she was thinking of him. He remembered how it had all ended.
Kat finally shook her head, as if waking herself up from a reverie. She looked up at Jason, the dark smudges underneath her eyes breaking his heart, and gave him a faint smile that was nowhere near reaching her eyes.
“It doesn’t matter now,” she said again before turning around and disappearing down the street.
Jason wanted to stop her and to tell her how much she still mattered. How much every single letter, every word had mattered and still mattered to him. But he remembered his nightmares. He remembered his bloodsoaked hands. And he wouldn’t dare sully her like that.
Chapter Six
Kat took a deep breath as she stepped towards her front door. She held her keys tightly in one hand so they wouldn’t jingle, alerting the boys she was home. She needed a moment to compose herself.
Steeling herself, she opened the door. Immediately, her brothers’ loud and eager voices assaulted her.
“Well? Well?” Malcolm asked, rushing into the entryway, all arms and legs. “Did you meet him? Did you get to speak to him?”
Dillon, a few steps slower, looked towards his sister with reserved hope. “Was he there?” he asked, his voice breathless.
Kat first put her purse and keys down on the entry table and quickly ushered Dillon back into the living room and onto the couch. “First, you need to sit down,” she said with as much authority as she could muster. He looked too pale for comfort.
But then again, he was constantly pale now. Having had a relapse, he was going in regularly as an outpatient for chemo treatments. The scant amount of weight she had managed to force onto his body had melted away, leaving him nearly skeletal.
Dillon sighed as he sat. He rolled his eyes at her mothering but she could see the lines of his face ease as he leaned back onto the cushions.
“Well?” Malcolm persisted. “Did you meet Reggie? What was he like?”
Dillon’s eyes perked up, clearly dying of curiosity as much as his brother.
Kat sighed as she ran a hand through her hair. “I didn’t get to meet him,” she said finally, unable to hide the disappointment in her voice.
Malcolm frowned. “Was he not working that night?” he asked. “Are you going back tomorrow? If you go back, can I—”
“He’s dead,” Kat interrupted, wanting to cut Malcolm off before he got too carried away.
There was a moment of frozen silence between the three of them.
“He’s dead?” Malcolm said, echoing the same words Kat had whispered just a few hours ago.
Kat nodded, feeling a sudden overwhelming wave of nauseating panic take hold. She took in a deep breath to calm herself.
“He died about a year ago,” she said. She purposely left out the other surprise of the night.
Jason’s dark green eyes flashed across her mind.
Malcolm shook his head. “He can’t be,” he
murmured as if to himself. “He can’t be dead.”
Dillon stared off as he slumped against the couch cushions. “So what does that mean?” he asked. “What are we going to do now?”
Kat sighed. She looked towards the fireplace where on the mantle stood several photographs. She looked at the center one. It was the three of them, the Ryans siblings, all crowded around Uncle Doughy. Uncle Do is crossing his arms, looking a little annoyed by the antics of his grown nephews and niece but anyone could clearly see the glimmer of amusement and quiet love in his hooded and rough eyes.
Oh Uncle Do, Kat thought with a longing sigh.
He had died nearly two years ago. A sudden and powerful heart attack had stolen him right from their grasps. He had died almost instantaneously on the kitchen floor of Doughy Pop’s.
It had devastated Kat and her brothers. Uncle Doughy had been everything to them. Having lost both parents at such a young age, they had looked to Uncle Do as their parent, their guardian, their teacher, their protector.
And now he was gone.
The town had mourned with the Ryans siblings. After all, Doughy had been a local character for decades in Peytonville. People had at first been scared by his rough demeanor and gravelly voice but over the years, they had learned to love him as their own gruff uncle.
“The bank’ll be calling again tomorrow,” Malcolm said quietly, sitting on the edge of the couch, his shoulders slumped forward in defeat.
Uncle Do had been a shrewd businessman and had saved up quite a bit of money that he had willed to his niece and nephews, who had become the children he had never had.
The money was to cover Malcolm and Dillon’s college expenses and to give Kat a cushion as she ran the diner. It had always been understood Kat would be taking over for Uncle Do when he retired.
But then a horrible surprise had greeted them a month after Uncle Do’s passing.
A letter had been sent to the house from a New York law firm offering the Ryans $40,000 to buy Doughy Pop’s.
Kat had been confused. After all, how would a New York law firm even know about Doughy Pop’s, let alone want to buy it? And she also felt insulted. $40,000? They wanted to buy an entire diner for the price of a car?
She had immediately dismissed the letter as some kind of odd hoax.
But then the bank had called a week later, asking what Kat intended to do about their diner.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Well, the lease is up,” Mr. Rilkes, their personal business banker for over a decade, said matter-of-factly.
“We don’t have a lease,” Kat said slowly, as if speaking to someone who was hard of hearing. “We own Doughy Pop’s.”
“I know, dear,” Mr. Rilkes said, using the same tone of voice. “But what about the land it sits on?”
Doughy Pop’s sat on what used to be a vacant lot. Over the years, it had grown a charming little array of old knick knacks out in front with a little pathway up to the diner door made up of tiles from old soda pop bottles.
“We own that land, Mr. Rilkes,” Kat said. “We own everything Doughy Pop’s sits on.”
There was a pause. Kat felt her heart thumping. She could tell the other shoe was about to drop.
“No, you don’t,” Mr. Rilkes said softly.
He then explained how several years before he had become Doughy’s personal business banker, the previous banker had failed to explain the new lease contract for the diner.
Doughy had wanted to buy the land for a long time and had finally saved enough money to do so. He had put his trust in his then banker to put the proceedings through. Except there had been a failure of communication and instead, the banker had handed him a lease giving him unlimited usage of the land until if and when the owners of the land decided to sell.
Doughy, usually quite meticulous about business matters, had signed without reading the fine print. Unlimited usage sounds very much like unlimited ownership.
Kat wondered how he could’ve made such a huge mistake. But then it hit her. A little over a decade ago was right around the time she and her family had first taken up residence at Doughy’s.
It had been a huge adjustment for everyone involved and no doubt Uncle Do had been a little frazzled. He might not have been in his right mind when he had signed the contract. He had assumed his banker had done his job.
Kat gripped the phone tightly.
“Someone’s buying the land?” she asked in a tight voice.
“Not just your land but nearly everything around Peytonville,” Mr. Rilkes said. “There’s talk of it being turned into a planned community. You know, condos and apartments.”
“But they can’t do that!” Kat protested. Fear gripped her. Not only could she potentially lose Doughy Pop’s, she would lose her home, her town!
“Oh they can,” Mr. Rilkes confirmed sadly. “You know how the town has been lately. Business has been declining rapidly for most everyone. More families are moving away. It might be a mercy for the town to be bought out.”
But she could hear the note of heartbreak in Mr. Rilkes voice. He had been born and raised in Peytonville and then had moved to Chicago for college. But he had returned almost immediately to his hometown, missing the trees and the clean, sweet air.
“Then what do I do?” Kat asked in defeat.
Mr. Rilkes’ sigh crackled across the phone line. “Try to get them to raise up their offer for as high as you can and then take the money and go,” he advised.
Kat shook her head. Go where?
But Mr. Rilkes had been right. Offers began cropping up overnight throughout the town for their buildings and businesses. Some gave in and took the money and left. But many didn’t. Many were proud of their small town and wanted to stick it out. They believed if just given the right opportunity, they could turn Peytonville around.
So many came to Kat for small loans to keep their businesses afloat while they tried to ward off the big city buyers. Banks wouldn’t give them any money when they could see the looming shadows of their new owners coming in. And they knew Kat had some money after Uncle Doughy’s death.
And Kat, who loved the town as much as her family, could turn away no one. So the small fortune Doughy had amassed for them slowly dwindled over the two years as they worked to keep the town afloat.
Malcolm refused to think more about college when their livelihood was on the line. It broke Kat’s heart to see Malcolm push back his education even further but she was secretly grateful to have his support.
And then Dillon relapsed.
It was as if the universe wanted to see just how sturdy Kat’s back really was. Would one more crisis finally break it?
Dillon, the baby of the family, was immediately rushed to the hospital where he received treatment as an inpatient for three months before being moved up as an outpatient.
Sick and thin, he took one class a week at the local college just to give him something to do besides sitting at home all day. He was bright and independent but Kat could see even his stalwart will slowly breaking down as he endured another round of chemotherapy.
Kat looked up at the wall. It was four in the morning. “Guys, we really should get some sleep,” she said, trying to avoid all the tough questions for the night. “You guys shouldn’t have even been up. Especially Dill.”
Malcolm put out a hand to help his brother off the couch. Kat’s heart ached to see the twenty year old’s knees quake as he tried to gain his balance.
“Dill was the one putting up a racket the whole night to wait for you,” Malcolm said, putting an arm around his brother. “He finally wrestled me downstairs to wait up.” He grinned and knuckled Dill on the head.
Dillon snorted, his thin frame not enough to wrestle a feather. But he grinned up at his big brother, clearly glad to have him for company.
The two marched upstairs. Once Kat heard their door shut, she headed over to the kitchen to pour herself a healthy glass of wine, which she carried upstairs to her room. For months now,
she’d needed a good glass or three of wine before she could fall into a fitful sleep. During the day, she could hide the stress of fighting every day but at night, it all unraveled like yarn.
Once inside, she took a long gulp before sitting down at her small vanity desk. Pulling open the tiny drawer beneath it, she pulled out an old manila envelope.
Taking in a deep breath, she opened it and dumped the contents out. Well worn and well read letters from another lifetime ago poured out across the small desk.
Kat picked the first one up. Some of the ink from the front of the envelope had smeared off over the years.
