Pivot (The Jack Harper Trilogy Book 1)
Page 14
Chapter 11
MEND
Years ago, before I ever started college, I visited my sister after I was released. It happened only once. She would have nothing to do with me.
Nothing has ever hurt worse than that. Her condemnation went straight through my side - made my insides cook and glisten.
I had gone to the clean white house in the nice neighborhood with the picket fence, where she still lives, where I had sent her the night of all nights, and I was in awe. What I had imagined had only been a ghost in comparison to the perfection.
She was just twelve when I had sent her off in the car on that deserted road like a kid on a training bike. I had watched her go, fade away, slip beyond the hill, and then I had done what I needed to do.
But Kat had either forgotten or repressed the boiling, horrendous froth of her first twelve years of life. She was sixteen and a bitch with blonde hair, blue eyes - exactly the sort of button nose and red-cheeks girl Cyrus preferred.
She has dimples by her mouth and a few freckles on her face. And she is so blonde. And, yes, a bitch. But she's still my sister bitch, my bitch kid sister, and truly, after I lick the wounds she inflicts by ignoring me, I don't give a damn. She is alive.
Her Father and his current wife don't give a damn about me. I'm not sure I would like them if they did.
The one time that I did visit, before David and Karen would allow me to see Kat, I was brought to David's sparse white office with its four windows looking to the side yard and its overhead fan on so high it seemed it might lose grip of its propellers at any moment. I could see the fan swinging violently over David's head like a sword held up by a string, and David began the conversation as soon as we sat down by telling me, "I want you to know that, though I am in fact Kat's father, I'm not yours. I'm sorry for that, but I can't help you. I have no idea who Alice was with before me. She never would tell me."
So kind of you, I thought, to distance yourself from me as soon as we meet. All I said to him was, "It wouldn't matter if you were my Father. That's not why I'm here."
"I know," he said. "But that needed to be out in the open. So does this. I am both sorry and not sorry for... I mean, she did have a right to visit you, but... considering the reasons for your being committed, I believed it would be best to let you grow, get past what had happened, heal yourself."
"Did she want to visit?"
"In the beginning."
I saw a slight grimace on David's round face, but he hid it well. When he looked out the window, I eyed his comb over, his tiny brown eyes, his plump cheeks, his double chin.
He wore a tie, and the bottom of it lapped like a tongue at his desk whenever he moved. It reminded me that Cyrus had actually worn a tie The Night, and had actually been sitting at a desk as well. It had been thin, though. David's was quite fat.
"I think that Kat has... gracefully moved on from what had unfortunately been done to both of you. She told me some of the things she had remembered... some things she imagined. She talked about them avidly at first. But then, over the years, less and less. Of course, we had read about you. We knew what had happened. But, realities do fade. For Kat, it's good. And..."
"And?"
David looked me dead in the eye. "Nothing should change that. Ever."
I nodded my head slowly. "I agree."
He smiled as though we were on the same page, but the smile melted when I added, "If Kat wants to talk to me, though, or know me again, or see me, you are not the type to be able to stop me."
David drummed his fingers on the desk one time and frowned as he looked at its top. All the nervousness had evaporated from him. "That will not be the case."
He wasn't wrong.