Kathy

by T. L. Haddix

  Streetlight Graphics Publishing

  A division of Streetlight Graphics

  Kathy

  Copyright © 2016 by Tabatha L. Haddix. All rights reserved.

  First Edition: April 2016

  Visit www.tlhaddix.com for updates, news, bonuses and freebies.

  www.facebook.com/tlhaddix

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Streetlight Graphics Publishing, a division of Streetlight Graphics.

  Also by T. L. Haddix

  The Firefly Hollow Series:

  Firefly Hollow

  Butterfly Lane

  Dragonfly Creek

  Cattail Ridge

  Cricket Cove

  Stormking Road

  Fern Valley

  Snapdragon Way

  Stardust Valley

  Kathy

  The Shadows Collection:

  Secrets in the Shadows

  Under the Moon’s Shadow

  Shadows from the Grave

  Hidden in the Shadows

  In the Heart’s Shadow

  Deception in the Shadows

  Seduction in the Shadows

  Redemption in the Shadows

  Writing as Mallory Love:

  Capturing Colleen (Sunset Motel, Book One)

  Seducing Samantha (Sunset Motel, Book Two)

  You can connect with T.L. on Facebook and her website:

  www.tlhaddix.com

  www.facebook.com/tlhaddix

  If you’d like to receive email notifications about future releases, please subscribe to T.L.’s newsletter at the address below.

  www.tlhaddix.com/newsletter

  Chapter One

  June, 1963

  Charles Huston Kelly dared not take his eyes off the dark-auburn-haired woman walking tentatively toward the waves. If he looked away, he feared she might vanish forever. He’d come to the beach to watch the pounding surf after a long, strenuous estate battle finally drew to a close, needing to be near the elemental pull and push of the ocean so as to clear his head. He’d never expected to encounter the woman who’d been haunting his dreams for months, ever since he’d first laid eyes on her at a dinner held by a friend.

  But there she was, staring out at sea, the wind whipping her hair wildly, plastering the skirt of her dress to her body in a way that revealed her curves without being lewd.

  Since he’d spotted her, she’d edged down toward the sea farther and farther with slow steps. Her shoes lay discarded ten feet behind her, apparently forgotten. That simple clue, as well as her hesitant steps, struck fear in his heart.

  Praying he was wrong, he set off down the sand, battling the gusty wind as he walked as calmly as he could as quickly as he could. Let me get to her in time, God. Please let me stop her before she vanishes into the waves.

  He had no doubt she would vanish, as strong as the surf was this afternoon. She’d go under before he could get to her, and that would be the last anyone ever saw of Kathy Browning—at least alive. After having watched her for what felt like hours but was in fact a fraction of that time, he knew that was her intention.

  Can you blame her? a voice inside his head whispered. After what she’s been through, losing her husband and children, most people would be hard-pressed to find a reason to go on living.

  “Yes, I can blame her,” he ground out as he hurried along. “Damn it, she’s too young to give up. There has to be a better way to stop the pain.”

  He’d been trying to convince himself of that for eleven years, ever since he was nineteen and had been summoned home from school following his father’s death. A gun accident, they’d called it, sugarcoating the truth for his mother’s sake and the sake of his family’s reputation, a treasure more priceless than gold in the society of Savannah.

  The reality had been suicide, Charles knew. A last-ditch effort of a man in tremendous pain, both physically and mentally, to make the hurt go away. Charles still wasn’t sure his father hadn’t been trying to simply blow away the nearly continuous migraines that had crippled him for years, a lingering reminder of a war that had been victorious on paper if not in sheer casualties.

  As he approached Kathy, he swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure what he’d say, what he’d do to stop her if she was determined to carry through with killing herself, but he had to try to save her if he could.

  Chapter Two

  “I can do this. I have to do this. God, please, why can’t I just do this already?” Kathy Browning bit her lip so hard she tasted blood as she pushed her hair out of her stinging eyes for what felt like the thousandth time. She’d been standing on the beach, facing her fate, for hours it seemed, and she was so tired she could barely stay upright.

  Every time the waves came in, she had to battle her desire to run away, back the way she’d come, back to her room at the house she shared with her mother. Back home… No, never that, she thought as pain nearly broke her in half.

  That’s why you’re here, remember? To make all that awfulness go away. Just do it already, Kathy. You’ll feel so much better when you get it over with. The whisper in her head had a distinct voice, a sneering tone she knew well, one she still heard in the nightmares that kept her awake most nights.

  “Randall, why can’t you leave me alone?” she whispered into the wind.

  She knew the voice didn’t really belong to Randall Begley, the man who’d been her husband. Well, most days she was fairly certain it wasn’t really him. Some days… she wondered. The things he whispered made more sense than what the people around her said.

  Thinking about the people in her life brought another jolt of pain. Her sister, her brother, her mother….

  “Oh, God, I can’t think of you. If I do, I’ll never be able to do this.” She choked back a sob and lifted her foot, preparing to take another step into the abyss that beckoned.

  “Kathy? That is you! What in the world are you doing down here today? It’s a little blustery for beachcombing.”

  The words jerked her attention away from the ocean, making her jump. She’d been so intent on her task she’d not realized she wasn’t alone. It took her a few seconds to focus on the man’s face, to recall his words and process them. To recognize him.

  “Charles. Hello. I…” Her voice faded into nothing. She just didn’t have the strength within her to speak to another human being. Dismissing him, she turned her eyes back to the sea.

  “It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. How are you? Roy said you’ve been under the weather.”

  Roy Morris was her uncle by marriage through her aunt Nancy. He was a senior manager at a large, well-known area department store, and he was an associate of Charles’s somehow, though the exact connection escaped her at the moment.

  “I’m fine,” she managed stonily. Anger crept up inside her with surprising speed, and it took almost more strength than she could muster not to bite his head off at the mention of her recent “illness.” She’d not been sick; she’d had surgery. A hysterectomy, to be precise, and the impetus for her latest dive into despair.

  “Good, good. That’s… good,” he said. An awkward silence spread between them. “I saw your mother this past Monday. I stopped in to buy my sister a birthday gift. S
he helped me pick something out. Your mother, that is. Not Daphne. A lovely lady, your mother. Very nice, very kind.”

  Kathy closed her eyes as her throat tightened with guilt and grief. Her mother was nice and kind.

  “She doesn’t deserve to lose you like this.”

  The words were delivered quietly but in a stern voice that had her opening her eyes to stare at him.

  “What did you say?” she asked hoarsely. “What did you just say to me?”

  Charles met her gaze head-on, though he did lift a hand to the bridge of his glasses to push them back up on his face. “I said your mother doesn’t deserve to lose you like this. They might never find your body, and if they do find you, with the way this surf is pounding? What do you think will remain? You don’t want to leave that for her.”

  An image of grotesquely disfigured humanity flashed in her mind, making her flinch. She knew all too well what a battered body could look like. “You heartless… why did you have to show up here today?”

  He shrugged, and even though the question had been rhetorical, he answered. “I had court—the conclusion of a long case we fought very hard to win. I needed some fresh air.”

  He was a lawyer, she remembered then. Angry more with herself than with him, she lashed out. “You lost, boohoo. Isn’t that just too bad? You should’ve gone to a bar, had some pretty little thing stroke your ego. Or does your type run more to debutantes?”

  Though his jaw tightened a fraction, he showed no other sign that her words had landed blows. “I didn’t lose. I won. I do that quite frequently.” He leaned in as though confiding a secret. “I’m very good at my job. Why don’t you let me take you home? It’s getting late.”

  Bitterly disappointed and feeling foolish—and to her horror, foolishly relieved—Kathy growled. “You don’t give up, do you?”

  To her amazement, he smiled, though he was still watching her like a hawk. “It’s part of my charm. Come on. Where’s your purse?” He held his arm out toward the parking lot on the other side of the sandy dunes.

  After a full minute, Kathy gave in and went to pick up her shoes. “I didn’t bring it. I left it at home.” She’d made a small pocket on the inside of her slip, and she’d tucked her driver’s license, along with a personal memento or two she’d wanted to take with her, into it.

  “Then it’s a very good thing I happened along,” he said as he walked behind her. “This is one of my favorite beaches. I live not far from here, just a couple of miles down the road.”

  Kathy didn’t respond. She was even spared having to give him directions, as he’d once driven her and Eliza home from a Sunday dinner with Roy and Nancy. In fact, she crossed her arms and didn’t say another word until they were a few blocks away from her house.

  “If you don’t mind letting me off at the corner, I can walk from there,” she told him when he stopped at a red light.

  “Oh, I think I’ll drop you off at the door if it’s all the same to you.” There was that implacable tone again.

  “I guess I don’t have a choice, do I?” She snorted. “Of course I don’t. When did I ever? The story of my life.”

  “We always have choices. The right ones are just hard to see sometimes.” He pulled into the small driveway right behind her mother’s car as Eliza was getting out. “And just in time.”

  Kathy’s heart started racing as soon as she saw her mother. There were letters on her bed that she needed to get to before Eliza saw them. Grabbing her sand-coated shoes, she fumbled for the doorknob. “If you mention a word of this to anyone… promise me you won’t.”

  Charles’s smile wasn’t unsympathetic. “I can’t make that promise.”

  “Damn you. Thanks for nothing.” Ashamed of her behavior even as she spoke, she couldn’t bring herself to apologize. She hurried out of the car and, with a waved hello for her mother, into the house, pleading under her breath the whole time. “Please don’t tell her. Please, please, don’t break my mother’s heart.”

  No, that job would be hers and hers alone. And given how much Eliza had already lost, it was a job Kathy should never, ever aim to complete. With any luck, today wouldn’t be the day she devastated the only person who’d held her together after the worst days of Kathy’s life. But Kathy was plain out of luck. She had been for most of her life, it seemed. She’d been born out of luck, and she’d never been able to catch up.

  In the house, she made a beeline for her bedroom and shut the door with a sigh of relief when she saw the letters still intact on the pillow. She grabbed them so tightly the paper crinkled in her hands, and then she dashed to the closet to stow them away until she could come up with a proper use for them.

  Charles had known. He’d known what she had planned from the instant he walked up to her, though Kathy couldn’t figure out how exactly. And he didn’t strike her as the sort of man who wasn’t thorough, which meant at some moment in the very near future, someone would be knocking on her door and asking questions to which she didn’t have the answers.

  “You blew it, Kathy. This time, you’ve really done it,” she whispered as she sank onto the bed, tired to her bones.

  Even if she’d had a means of killing herself at hand, at that moment, she didn’t have the energy to do it. It had taken every bit of her courage to go to the beach in the first place, and she’d pondered that decision for days. All she could do was wait and hope she could somehow manage to find the strength to go on one more day. As it was, all she wanted to do was rest.

  “I could sleep forever,” she said around a yawn as she lay down, pulling her daughter’s favorite doll from where it had been sitting on her pillow. She wrapped her arms around the raggedy little cloth toy, unaware of the tears that tracked down her cheeks, and let herself embrace sleep’s oblivion.

  Chapter Three

  As soon as she’d seen Kathy’s face, Eliza knew something was drastically wrong. She hesitated on the driveway, looking after her daughter, then faced the man getting out of the low-slung, expensive car. As much as she wanted to check on Kathy, she needed answers first.

  “Charles. What in the world is going on?”

  “Mrs. Browning.” Charles’s face was somber. “I ran into Kathy at the beach, and… she’s upset. She’s tremendously upset. I think you need to keep a close eye on her. I think she’s all right for now as she’s pretty mad at me, and that’s replaced… but for later, I’m not so sure.” He looked at her intently, as though trying to convey a message he didn’t want to speak aloud.

  Eliza very much feared she understood, but perversely, she needed to hear the words. “What was she doing at the beach?”

  He looked away briefly, toward the street. “I can only guess based on what I saw.”

  “Then make a guess. This is my daughter’s life we’re talking about, isn’t it?” She clenched her purse tightly to her chest, bracing for the blow.

  “Yes. She might never speak to me again, but I don’t care. You need to know. I realize she’s been through a hard time over the last few years, but surely… well. Surely there’s another way. She just needs to find it.”

  There was something in his eyes, his voice, Eliza thought as her heart sank. “Unless I miss my guess, this is not your first encounter with someone who carries a load that’s too heavy. Is it?”

  He shook his head. “My father, unfortunately.”

  Eliza closed her eyes briefly. “I’m so sorry. Just how certain are you that she… that Kathy was trying to kill herself?” she asked softly. “I have to be sure.”

  “I’m one hundred percent certain. She was working up the courage to walk into the waves. I watched her for a while before I stopped her. I needed to be sure myself.”

  She could tell it pained him to say the words. What surprised her, however, was her own reaction. Hearing the truth was almost a relief. She knew the pain would come later, when she was alone and able to grieve. Fo
r now…

  “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you happened along. Charles, I’ll be in your debt forever. I’ll see that she gets the help she needs. This has been coming for a long while now. In the back of my mind, I suspected what she was thinking of doing. I should have done something sooner, but I didn’t want to believe what was in front of me.”

  “Don’t blame yourself.” His voice was low, full of emotion. “That’s a road you can’t let yourself go down. If there’s one thing I’ve learned through the last eleven years, it’s that the what-ifs will destroy you if you let them. If there’s anything I can do, please don’t hesitate to ask. I think a lot of Roy, you know. I’d like to help if I can.”

  Eliza reached out to him. “I appreciate that. Like I said, I’ll never be able to repay you for what you’ve already done. I’d best go in and check on her.”

  “Of course. Good luck.”

  She hurried inside, her head reeling. Kathy’s door was closed, and after a brief hesitation to gird herself, Eliza opened it without knocking. Her breath escaped in a rush when she saw Kathy curled up on the bed, sound asleep. Moira’s old doll was held tightly in her arms. Even if she’d not seen how upset Kathy was or talked to Charles, Eliza would have known something was drastically wrong just from seeing the doll. It was usually kept in a box in the back of Kathy’s closet.

  “Oh, my baby, what in the world are we going to do?” She approached the bed quietly, almost timidly, and brushed a dark curl off Kathy’s tearstained cheek. Traces of sand lingered on her arm, her knee, her dirty feet.

  For a moment, Eliza wondered if Kathy had taken something, but her breathing was soft and regular. Eliza saw no evidence of pills or a bottle or a glass nearby, and she was fairly confident there were no medications in the house her daughter could have used.

  After they’d first come to Georgia three years earlier, Kathy had turned to sleep to help get her through those days. Eliza imagined that was what she was doing now, shutting out the world in an effort not to face the hellish demons that haunted her.