She sat down on the toilet and looked at the stick.
‘‘Maybe I should wait. I’m only a week or so late… Those stupid fuckers,’’ she said angrily thinking of which of those four immature junkies could be the father. It couldn’t be Alexandros. He always ejaculated outside of her. She wished he didn’t as she would have loved to be able to lie to him that the child was his.
‘‘Guess I’ll just have an abortion,’’ she whispered and paused.
‘‘Get a grip, Katie!’’ she cried to herself.
‘‘You haven’t even pissed on the damn stick yet,’’ she said with anger. She then took a deep breath and placed the stick between her legs. She had never felt so nervous in her whole life. She stood up, placed the stick on a piece of toilet paper she had previously left on the bathroom sink and sat back down. It took a couple minutes and a lot of courage before she stood back up and peeked at the stick.
‘‘One line,’’ she sighed with relief and exhaled deeply. She picked up the stick and stepped on the bathroom bin. As she was about to throw away all her worries, she noticed a faint second red line appear. Soon, two fully visible lines were staring back at her and Katie felt the world disappear from under her feet. Her knees felt like jelly as she sat down on the floor in the middle of the room. Everything was spinning around her, sucking up her dreams and her planned future like a vicious, strong twister. She closed her eyes and allowed her watery eyes to shed a few lonely tears.
Katie could not figure out if it was her fear of hospitals and surgeries or something from her Catholic past, but the idea of keeping this baby was swirling inside her inner thoughts. She gently placed her hands over her tummy and rubbed it with a warm smile. A life was growing inside her. She could become the loving mother she never had.
Very slowly, she lifted herself up from the hard, cold bathroom floor, took one determined look at herself in the mirror and wiped away her tears. She had work to do.
She walked into her little colourful kitchen, opened the second drawer, took out a pencil and a piece of paper and began to write.
My dearest father,
Words cannot describe how much I have missed you.
I cannot believe I let the devil get the best of me.
I am in New York and I want to come home.
I took out a loan from a pawn shop to buy a car and if I leave N.Y. without paying them back, they will find us and hurt us.
Please send me $1500 to pay them off and we can sell the car (which is worth much more) when I get home.
Send the money ASAP. to Bronx Main Post Office, locker 314.
As soon as I pay them off and with The Lord by my side, I will journey home where I belong.
Yours always,
Katie xxx
‘‘Yep, that should do it!’’ she said and thought she better remember to warn Matthew that he would be receiving an envelope for her. She took one more look at her letter before folding it and placing it in a small brown envelope. She carefully licked the two stamps and placed them in the right hand corner of the envelope. She wrote down her former address back in Dayton, picked up her coat and envelope and left her apartment with the mailbox down the street as her destination.
After she had posted her letter, she walked over to the phone box and first called Mathew who as always was puzzled by this young, strange, slightly crazy girl and then Alexandros to invite him over for dinner.
‘‘Don’t bother cooking, my little Aphrodite,’’ Alexandros joked. ‘‘I’ll pick up that pizza you love and rent a movie. A good thriller, maybe? Have you seen The Clockwork Orange or The Andromeda Strain? Both new releases.”
‘‘Nope,’’ Katie replied, thinking of the weird titles Alexandros always came up with. Even dwarfs started small was the last movie he had brought over for them to view.
‘‘I’ll bring both. I’ve heard that they are really good,’’ he commented.
‘‘Anything to sit back and curl up in your arms,’’ she replied, horrified of what she had to admit to him.
As she walked home, she rehearsed in her head the scene of her uttering the words ‘‘Alexander, I’m pregnant!’’ to him.
‘‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’’ she pictured him saying as he lifted her up and kissed her lovingly.
‘‘You’re what? It sure is not mine. You little, filthy, cock-loving slut. Been sleeping around much, huh?’’ he would yell and slap her across the face. ‘‘Get out now!’’ he would then shout angrily.
Katie fought hard to hold back the many gathered tears, in her sad looking eyes, from falling. She could not know how he was going to react. She had to come up with a story. However, as many stories she came up with, the truth of what happened was always the most believable story and the only story that would gain her Alexandros’s sympathy.
Katie speedily tidied up her always chaotic apartment, relieved herself from her clothes and took a long, hot shower. She only wished the boiling running water could cleanse her soul as well as her body. She dried herself off and stood naked in front of her wooden wardrobe. Besides her work uniform and the crime against fashion as she called the dress she left Dayton in, she had only bought a few more items and only one was good enough for tonight’s occasion. It was a fancy, red, tight dress she had found at the local thrift shop and even bargained successfully the sales lady for a better price.
Putting on make-up had become a ritual with Katie. For too long had she been forbidden to wear any sign of it. Now, liberated from her biological father and her almighty heavenly father, she enjoyed every second she spent in front of the bathroom mirror applying her foundation, choosing from her many lip glosses and then applying her mascara before placing on fake eyelashes. She would sit there with a contented grin as she painted her nails and her toe nails in every colour imaginable. Needless to say that more money was spent on beautifying herself than clothing and feeding herself. Her soul was more starved than her stomach. The result was stunning. Katie stood in front of her bedroom wall mirror, a full grown woman, dressed in her best, ready for the ball.
She could not help but look down upon her tummy. Suddenly, the door bell shook her out of her daydreaming and pulled her back to earth. She walked into the living room slowly as Alexandros only rang the bell out of politeness. He had his own set of keys.
He walked in, carefree as always, pepperoni pizza in one hand and a small red nylon bag with two video cassettes sticking out from the other.
‘‘Geia sou, mwro mou!’’ he winked at Katie and placed the steamy pizza and the movies on the brown coffee-table. She had gotten used to his greeting. It meant hello my baby in Greek. She ran into his arms and kissed him hard on his lips.
‘‘Wow, somebody missed me,’’ he laughed.
‘‘We need to talk,’’ Katie spilled out not being able to control her emotions and let him sit down and relax before ruining his night. Well, at least that was her plan up to the very minute she kissed him.
‘‘What’s up?’’ he asked and did that thing he did with his eyes whenever he was thinking and feeling anxious.
‘‘Sit down,’’ she whispered as she lowered herself into the sofa trying to stop her knees from shaking.
‘‘Come on, you’re scaring me. Spit it out.’’
‘‘I’m pregnant!’’
Silence filled the air and the few seconds between her short announcement and Alexandros’s reply felt like millennia to Katie.
‘‘You sure?’’
‘‘Yeah, peed on one of those sticks and they say they are 95% accurate,’’ Katie answered with a flat tone amazed by his coolness.
‘‘Well, I know it’s not mine… so I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I’m guessing this is why you ran away from home.”
‘‘No… Well… kind of… I did not know I was pregnant when I left… I only found out today… that is why I called you…’’
‘‘So you had a boyfriend? Where is he now?’’
Katie took a deep breath and started performin
g just like she had rehearsed. She shook her head from side to side and started to cry.
‘‘Alexandre, I…I was raped! Gang-raped by four boys at my school.’’
‘‘What?’’ he shouted out with pure fury in his voice. ‘‘Why didn’t you go to the police? Why did you run away? Katie this is serious…’’ he continued yelling.
‘‘Please, listen to me. It’s ok. I wanted to leave my home town. My life was a living hell. My mother locked me in my room every night at nine and my father beat me for no good reason way too often. At school, I was mistreated daily, to put things lightly,’’ she said and noticed the sympathetic look he was giving her. She was winning him over.
‘‘As crazy as it sounds, that rape was the best thing that happened to me,’’ she added and watched his jaw drop to the ground. ‘‘It gave me the strength to get away. Here, I am living the life I have always dreamt of and it is all thanks to you.”
‘‘Katie, a child is a big responsibility and an expensive one too! I don’t mean to sound like an ass, fuck the rent, but… how are you going to raise a child by yourself?’’
‘‘I have arranged through a relative to be sent a significant amount of money, out of which I will pay you rent and buy everything I need. As for work, I am sure I can sort something out with Mr and Mrs Reeve.’’
He looked at her proudly; admiring her bravery. He leaned over and kissed her gently right in the middle of her forehead and wrapped his arms around her.
‘‘Katie, this is your house… and it will be your baby’s home too! I can’t say I’m the fathering type, but as much as I can help I will.’’
“Alexandre, I cannot believe you are being so supportive. I am lost for words…” she managed to fight back tears and say with a brittle voice.
‘‘After all, I am your boyfriend,’’ he said with a tender smile that ran from ear to ear.
‘‘Boyfriend!’’ Katie cried out with joyful shock. She looked deeply into his eyes, whispered ‘‘I love you,’’ and fell upon his chest.
‘‘Now that I have proven I am a good boy, can I eat some pizza? I’m starving!’’
Katie started laughing and soon Alexandros joined her. As they dug into the delicious pizza and The Andromeda Strain started to play, Katie thought about how unbelievably lucky she was and wondered if in fact God truly does work in mysterious ways.
*****
Chapter 16
New York, 1984
Katie leaned on the newly installed, tinted glass counter and smiled as she watched the new girl take her first order. She remembered fondly how scared she was at just seventeen when she walked through the diner’s doors. The new girl, also known to the rest of the world as Mary, was young too. Mary Williams was fresh at NYU, studying to be a primary teacher and spread knowledge and love to the children, as she stated. Katie, as a mother of an eleven year old boy, knew and valued good teachers. That was the main reason she had chosen Mary as the new girl and none of the other nine applicants for the vacancy. After ten years of working at Reeve’s diner, Katie had developed an eye for good waitresses and had been promoted to manager. A position she held for the last two years. Since losing Mr Reeve to a heart attack on Thanksgiving Day 1982, Mrs Reeve decided to take it easy. Not that it stopped her from being at the shop every day checking up on everyone and everything.
It was a slow evening and Katie stayed in the same position for quite a while; thinking of her life and how lucky she had been. Her son had turned eleven just last month and she was so proud of him. Top of his class, tall, strong, handsome. Though her relationship with God never found its former glory, she still thanked The Lord everyday for her son and for Alexandros. Nothing would have been possible without Alexandros. He stood by her during her pregnancy and helped out with all the bills and new found expenses. Shortly after she gave birth, he moved in with her and rented out his apartment down in Queens. Two years ago, he got an offer for the convenience store that he owned and ran for the last fifteen years and he decided to sell. He took great pride in the fact that he had retired before even turning fifty. He mostly spent his days between the Greek coffee shop in Astoria and home writing a book about an American who gets lost in time and travels back to ancient Greece where he meets heroes and Gods from Greek mythology. More importantly, especially to Katie, he spent time with her boy while she was at work working long shifts. She wondered what the two were up to when Mrs Reeve’s voice was heard.
‘‘Earth to Katie, earth to Katie. Girl, where are you travelling?’’ she asked and continued rambling like always without expecting an answer. ‘‘Come see these books. The deliveries are all wrong. Told you Steward was not good for the job. Adrian, now there’s a bookkeeper!’’
‘‘Bet they are having more fun than me,’’ she thought, smiling as she followed Mrs Reeve to the office in the back.
Alexandros had just finished writing how Hercules had helped his protagonist fight off Ares in a bloody and ferocious fight. He walked into the kitchen to grab an ice cold beer from the fridge.
‘‘Hey Cricket! Finishing your homework?’’
The young boy looked up from his math’s book and replied ‘‘I have a name you know!’’
‘‘Yeah, I know. But I prefer Cricket. It suits you well.’’
‘‘Whatever,’’ the boy muttered as he looked back down into his school book.
‘‘What was that?’’ Alexandros asked strictly, raising his voice.
‘‘Nothing, sir,’’ he managed to squeeze out from behind locked teeth. He didn’t want another pointless confrontation. Alexandros was too generous with handing out discipline whenever his mother was away. He had grown used to being shouted at and even being smacked every now and then, but yesterday Alexandros’ disciplinary ideas were taken to another level.
He had walked out into the living room from his room after a sweet midday nap to find Alexandros lying on the sofa, wearing only his boxers, drinking his third beer and watching some sports’ results.
‘‘I want to watch Sesame Street,’’ he said sleepily and yawned.
‘‘You are demanding to watch it?’’
‘‘Sorry, sir. May I watch Sesame Street, please?’’ he quickly rephrased his request.
‘‘No. Now be a good boy and go make us a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches…’’
‘‘But I always watch Sesame Street at this time. Come on. You’re so unfair!’’ the youth retaliated.
He would have said more if he had not noticed the fury boiling in Alexandros’s eyes. He froze in shock as Alexandros got up and grabbed him by the collar of his pyjamas and forcefully dragged him towards the sofa. Alexandros sat down, furiously pulling him down too.
He found himself lying across Alexandros’s lap when he felt his pants being pulled down to his knees. He felt embarrassed lying there naked and exposed. Alexandros started to smack him hard on his behind while yelling, ‘‘I’ll teach you to talk back, you little shit!’’
The boy resisted crying out, not wanting to give Alexandros any sort of satisfaction from the sight of tears.
He must have smacked him a dozen times before releasing him and throwing him on the floor.
He quickly pulled up his underwear and pyjamas and ran into his room.
Alexandros sat there breathing heavily as he looked down upon his hard on.
He stood up and looked towards the boy’s closed door. He took a hesitant small step towards it before stopping. He stood there for a moment, biting his lips before turning and walking into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
*****
Chapter 17
‘‘Two weeks off work is paradise enough for me! I don’t care where we go. I’m in!’’ Amy had joked last month, back home in Dublin. Her brother, Conor, had sat her and their cousin –and best friend to them both-Patrick on his king size hazel sofa and stood opposite them presenting his August-O’Brien-Holiday Plan as he had titled his pitch.
‘‘This island has it all! Look, clubs, bar
s,’’ he said and started to show them pictures from a two-part brochure he had picked up at his local supermarket. ‘‘Even the beach is called Paradise! Come on… yeah, it costs a lot, but we all work like dogs and even dogs deserve a break! What you say? Paradise is only 1862 miles away.’’
‘‘Cool your horses, Conchobar! Swallowed the encyclopedia of Mykonos have ya? This all sounds expensive. Two whole weeks?’’
‘‘Don’t be a muppet, man. We’ll stay at a decent two-star hotel and fly low cost. Trust me. This trip is one that you will never forget! And talking about forgetting, what better way to forget that Lucy bird for dumping your ass?’’
Amy laughed out loud only to receive a cold look from Patrick to which she replied, ‘‘What? She was such a gowl. I’m glad she’s out of your life. Come on Patrick. It will be fun. I need some tanning. I’m probably the whitest girl in Dublin!’’
The very next day, the three asked for time off work and in the evening they all sat down with Amy’s new Toshiba satellite laptop and booked their tickets.
Conor had even made up their daily program which he photocopied for the two of them.
Wake up and eat breakfast.
Hit the beach.
Eat lunch.
Hit a different beach.
Eat dinner.
Shower.
Clubbing and drinking till falling asleep.
Repeat.
Both had laughed back then at his list, but besides a few hours of sightseeing and an evening of shopping during their first week, they had stuck to the schedule. Today, their 8th day on the alluring island was the day they would really break the rules of Conor’s daily program. No clubbing today was decided unanimously. They had decided on a quiet night of drinking down at the peaceful away-from-it-all beach right in front of their hotel.
Conor, Patrick and Amy were returning from Mykono’s town square just as the sun began to fade, soon the last sun rays were plummeting into the Aegean Sea. They were in high spirits having been on holiday for over a week now and they still had days to go. Amy, wearing pink sandals, a turquoise pareo tied round her thin waist and just her newly bought, ruby red bikini on top walked in front of the boys swinging her hips side to side while singing out of tune that it was raining men. She had accomplished her mission on the island.
Greek Island Mysteries Boxed Set (Books 1-2-3): Gripping, psychological mystery/thrillers destined to shock you! Page 10
