Crimson Snow

by Ina Carter

  It's strange that the word home didn’t mean Liam’s house. I realized that no matter where I lived, home to me had always been Kevin.

  Chapter 12

  I made it back, and it was almost 10 p.m. Kevin’s car was in the driveway, but when I entered, the house was dark, and there was no noise coming from upstairs. I was exhausted, filthy, and needed a shower. This day was an emotional roller-coaster, but at the end of it, I felt some sense of closure and accomplishment. That nightmare was gone, and I hoped that gave Kevin a clean slate. I doubted that he could ever forget the time he lived there, but at least the reminder of those years was gone.

  I quietly made my way through the house, picked up my toiletries and a change of clothes, and went to the bathroom. After a long shower, I scrubbed all of the dirt and, with it, the memories of the day I had.

  I was too tired, and instead of dressing in my sweats and tank top, I wrapped a big towel around my body, thinking I’d just go to my room and put on my pajamas. Jose and his helping crew were nice to feed me some homemade tacos, so I was planning to go straight to bed.

  I was exiting the bathroom when a shadow moved from the kitchen, and Kevin stood in front of me in the dark. The light from the bathroom illuminated his tall frame. He looked like he had just got out of bed, bare-chested and wearing only a pajama bottom.

  “Did you get your answers, Lauren?” he asked quietly.

  “Some,” I admitted.

  I was beat, but with his question, he was giving me an opening, like he wanted to talk. I had seen the conditions he had endured, but there were so many questions remaining. I was still holding the clothes I wore today, so I reached into my jean’s pocket and got out the key to his house. I didn’t leave it back over the porch cover.

  “Here, Kevin.” I handed it to him “The house is clean. All you need is a few repairs and a coat of…”

  “What did you do, Lauren?” He growled. He stepped towards me and towered over me. His body caged me to the wall when he put his hands on both sides of me. His eyes were wild, but he didn’t intimidate me. Now I understood Kevin’s pain and why his reactions were so strong.

  “I did what you should have done long ago. You have to let go, Kevin. Move on,” I said softly. I reached and touched the side of his face, and he looked at me, surprised.

  “You don’t understand…. I wanted it to stay like this.” he sounded pained, but not angry. “It was a reminder, Lauren. Of what a lucky bastard I was to get out of that hellhole. Not that you get it, you lived in a mansion, Princess.”

  I didn’t shout at him, but my words were saturated with all the pain I held inside me for the last twelve years.

  “You think I don’t know evil, Kevin? Evil doesn’t always live in squalor. Sometimes it wraps you in Egyptian cotton sheets and tells you how dirty your body is to touch them. Evil comes in the form of fine china that your white trash hands should never touch. Evil stares at you with the eyes of the people who gave you life, and all you can see in them is how much they hate you. Don’t talk to me about neglect – I went hungry, not because they didn’t feed me, but because they made me choke on every bite. I’d rather have had one pair of hand me down clothes, instead of being dressed as a clown for twelve years. You are right, you got lucky, and got adopted by people who loved you. I never had that luxury. Everything was taken away from me. Every single person I cared for was ripped from me, including you…. Especially you!”

  He was looking at me, a storm of emotions raging in his livid eyes.

  “Then why, Lauren, why did you choose them?” he whispered.

  “What are you talking about, Kevin? I never… You never… You promised me! You said you would come for me and you never did. You were eighteen miles away, and you left me alone in my personal hell.” My despair erupted, and I hit his chest with my fists. He didn’t step back or move, like my words shocked him.

  “You left me Lauren! You didn’t want me!” He cried the accusation like it was ripping from his chest. Then he collapsed, like something inside him crumbled, and he leaned his head on my shoulder. His breath on my neck was laborious, and his whole body was shaking.

  I felt his fingers on my skin when he traced them over my chest. He pulled away, looking down at my tattoo. I was still only covered by the towel, and he saw it. It was his name inked right over my heart.

  “When did you get this?” he whispered. He looked like he was holding his breath, waiting for the answer, like it meant everything.

  “When I was sixteen,” I uttered. Then I reached for him, brushed the side of his face, and made him look at me “I never forgot you, Kevin. I searched for you so desperately for years, but you disappeared from the face of earth.”

  Like something shattered inside him, his body tensed, his fist clenched, and he hit the wall behind me in anger “God, Lauren, I am such a dumb ass.” He roared like he was in excruciating pain.

  His anger was not directed at me, but watching him like this made me shiver. The exhaustion and the emotional upheaval made me crumble, and my body slouched down the wall.

  Then he caught me, took me in his arms, and carried me away. Without a word, he put me down on my bed, laid next to me, and pulled me into his arms, holding me tight. And I did the same. We were both shaking, desperately grasping at each other, just like in that moment before we were ripped apart.

  Everything was coming full circle, and I finally had my Kevin back.

  We laid for a long time in silence, but I felt his tears on my shoulder and his harsh breaths in the crook of my neck. Maybe I already cried all the tears I had, but at that moment, I felt at peace. Fate had returned Kevin to me, and it was all that mattered.

  “Can you forgive me, Lauren?” he finally spoke.

  I just hugged him tighter, feeling the tension in his muscles, wishing he would let go of what was plaguing his soul.

  “It’s okay, Kevin. I forgive you.” I whispered. “You know, twelve years ago, we were violently separated, so I understand why the reunion was not any different. What matters is now.”

  “It’s not just how I acted in the last two weeks, Lauren. I hope you forgive me that I broke my promise to you. That I was a complete moron, and I believed that man…”

  “Who did you believe, Kevin?” I didn’t understand.

  “I have serious abandonment issues…. It’s not an excuse, but I thought you betrayed me, too. Everyone in my life left me behind, so I believed your father when he told me you didn’t want to see me.”

  I pulled away and looked into his eyes, and they were still wet with tears. “What happened, Kevin?”

  “When I came to California, the first thing I did was try to find you. I searched the yellow pages and found your parents' address…” he swallowed hard like this was difficult to talk about. “I walked to Santa Monica, Lauren. Eighteen miles. I was thirteen, had nothing, not even a few dollars for the bus. I asked people for directions along the way.”

  He paused, but so did my heart. I couldn’t believe what he was saying.

  “When I found your house, I didn’t go ahead and knock on the door, but I hid across the street, trying to get a glimpse of you, to see if you were happy. And you were. I saw you outside, walking with an old man, and laughing joyously. You looked a bit older since it had been three years since we saw each other last, but your smile was still the same. You were riding a horse, something you always wished for when we were kids. At that moment when I saw the huge house, the happiness on your face, something inside me broke. I felt like an imposter, like someone who was intruding on your perfect life.” His voice was cracking, pained.

  “Oh, God, Kevin. You were so wrong….” I whispered. The day he was describing was fresh in my memory too, because it was one of the few bright spots in my memory. How cruel was fate to have him see this sliver of happiness, not the years of pain, “On that day, I met my grandpa. My mother’s father. He lived in Oregon at the time and had a ranch. He was the one person who showed me some affection, Kevin. He
drove all the way to California with a trailer to get me the horse as a welcome gift. If you saw me later that day, you would have seen my heartbreak. My father said he was not going to pay for a stable and made my grandpa take the horse back. What was worse, since then, they rarely let me see him. Like they didn’t want anyone who loved me to be around…”

  “Yes. I was one of those people, I guess…” Kevin said quietly, “After you went inside, I knocked on the door. I wanted to see you. I said I was looking for Julie, but the women who came to the door told me there was no one named “Julie” living there. I tried to push by her, telling her that I saw you, but she told me to wait outside, and closed the door. And I waited. Half an hour later, your father came out. He pulled me aside… and…”

  “What did he say to you?” I asked anxiously, starting to grasp the truth.

  “He said he knew who I was, and that you didn’t want to see me. He seemed like he was sad telling me that. He told me you were doing good, but you were really hurt about Connie stealing you from your real family. He said you wanted to forget…. All of it…All of us. He then gave me a letter he said was from you, two hundred bucks, and sent me on my way.”

  “What? I never wrote a letter to you, Kevin. I did write many letters, but I’ve never given any of them to Rob.” I was confused.

  “Now I know it wasn’t from you, Lauren. It was too cruel to be from you. I was just so broken at the time that I believed the lie.”

  “What did it say, Kevin?” I hugged him again like I wanted him to believe me.

  “It said that your name was Lauren now, that it was your real name, and that Julie is dead. It said to never come back because you wanted to live happily with your parents and forget everything.”

  I started shaking, understanding exactly what that monster had done. He likely made Bianca write that cruel letter. He saw this broken boy, looking to reconnect with his lost sister, and he crushed his soul even more. That monster took away everything from me.

  “I am so sorry, Kevin,” I uttered. I kissed the top of his head, wanting him to know I was there.

  “I threw the letter and the money, and for a long time, I was angry at you,” he admitted.

  “Yes, twelve years,” I gathered.

  “It was not the last time I saw you, though.” He said quietly. “I was a sucker for punishment, Lauren. I kept coming back, only so I could watch you from afar. It was not like I stalked you, just after Liam’s parents adopted me, once in a while when the memories resurfaced, and when it got really bad, I came to see you.”

  Oh, God, he had been there, and I never knew. Why didn’t he ever approach me, didn’t he see I was hurting?

  “You looked happy, or at least I thought so,” he answered my unspoken question.

  “Yeah, you probably saw me when I was out of that hell… The only times I felt somewhat free was when I was outside, and they loosened the leash,” I concluded out loud.

  “Oh, God, Kevin, I missed you so much!” I pulled him to me, his closeness was the only thing that really mattered. His admission that he kept his promise and came for me was all that mattered. I hated my father more than ever for the fact that he managed not only to take away Kevin, but to rip us apart over and over again. I remembered the first few years after they took me, I cried so much about Kevin and asked if I could see him or at least call him to hear his voice.

  My parents must have talked to that evil woman who was my therapist then, and she kept telling me that he was not my brother and that I needed a clean start to reconnect with my actual family. Rob and Dana told me the same, that I was unstable, that they didn’t think it was a good idea to talk to him because it was going to set me back. They tried hard to make me ashamed of everything that I was, of every person I met in Texas, including Kevin.

  I didn’t listen and went behind their backs. I wrote him letters, saved pennies, and bought stamps, then I snuck to the post office during lunch at school. I sent them to the farm where John Mason worked since I never knew Kevin’s actual address. He never responded, and now I knew that he never got them.

  “Lauren, you are shaking,” Kevin said in my ear, and then he pulled away, sitting in my bed. I was still wrapped only in a towel, wet from the shower.

  “You dress up; I’ll be right back. I have something for you upstairs.” He jumped out of bed. He was exiting the room, but in the moonlight, I saw his back. It was covered in scars, one long like a snake twisting from one shoulder down to his hip. I wanted to jump after him, wanted to stop him from leaving, ask how he got it. There was still so much unsaid between us. In those twelve years apart, we had both suffered, but if for me the trauma was emotional, it seemed like for Kevin it might have been way worse.

  I dressed in my pajamas quickly and waited for him to return with my heart splintering, heavy with the questions I had. When he came back, he turned on the nightlight, and he smiled. He had put back on a t-shirt like he didn’t want me to see his scars. Maybe he thought we had enough heaviness for one day and should just enjoy the fact that at least some trust was restored between us.

  He sat across from me and handed me a book. I looked down at the cover, and my heart soared. It was another copy of The Little Soul and the Sun.

  “I ordered it on Amazon a few years ago on your eighteenth “Soul birthday.” I don’t know what the plan was, but I guess I knew one day I would get the chance to give it to you.” His voice trembled when he spoke. Now in the light, I could see his eyes, and they were apple-green, the color of childhood happiness, the way I remembered them on that day when he first gave me the book. And of course, he knew exactly what day was today.

  “And you got to give it to me on your “soul birthday” twelve years later,” I whispered. He nodded, a silent acknowledgment of the fact that this was fate that kept giving us signs.

  I turned around, leaned back over the bed, and reached into my nightstand. From there, I pulled out my own copy of the same book, since I had never parted with it. When I placed it next to the one he gave me, his eyes clouded with unspoken emotion.

  “I never lost it, Kevin, but thank you for remembering.” I took his hand and our fingers intertwined.

  My free hand traced the cover of my beloved book, and then over the newer copy, he got me. There were creases on the spine like he had read it too in the last two years. This book was special. I opened the pages and looked at the pictures of the little angel. The book was about a little soul that was the embodiment of the Light. She was part of the Sun and lived in Heaven. But she asked God to make her something else for a while – she wanted to know what it was to feel forgiveness. And God told her that all souls in Heaven are pure, and there is nothing to forgive. But one friendly soul stepped in and promised he would help her. He would come to her in the darkness, in her human life, and would do something bad to her, so she could forgive him.

  “You do understand how foretelling this book is, right?” I looked at Kevin.

  “Yes, Lauren. Especially today, I understood. I hurt you with my silence, with my words, and with the fact that I didn’t believe in you…” he admitted.

  I opened the page of the book and read him a part of it. “And the friendly soul said: …In the moment I strike you and smite you. In the moment I do the worst to you that you could possibly imagine – in that very moment, Remember Who I Really Am,” I looked at him, and Kevin was watching me, unblinking.

  “I remember who you are, Kevin. In this moment, I remember, and I forgive you,” I whispered.

  “God, Laurie, I missed you,” he replied. Kevin’s hand never left mine, but with his free hand, he picked up the books and put them on the nightstand, turning the light back off. Then he took me into his arms and laid me down, wrapping me tighter into his embrace. He pulled the blankets over us and whispered in my hair.

  “You have always been my light in the darkness, Lauren. Always.” Then Kevin kissed the top of my head just like he did the last night before our lives shattered when we were kids. The
silence fell over us, and peace settled. His breathing was slowing down, and I relaxed into his arms.

  “Can you sing me a song?” he asked sleepily.

  And I sang – “The long and winding road.” It took twists and turns, but we found our way home.

  Chapter 13

  When I woke up, Kevin was not in bed, but the clatter coming from the kitchen meant that he was still in the house. Still in my pajamas I ran to see what he was up to. I found him rearranging the cabinets and moving stuff around. He looked at me and smiled.

  “I thought I should solve your little problem with the glasses, so you don’t have to climb on the counter,” he joked.

  It was good to see him smiling at last. I walked to his side and took the glass he was holding in his hand to pour myself a glass of orange juice.

  “Providing accommodations for short people, ha? Don’t you want to be the top-shelf guy for me?” I teased him.

  He turned around and pulled me to him, wrapping one solid arm around my waist. He looked into my eyes, his jades sparkling mischievously.

  “Anything for you, Laurie. Reach the top shelf, smack some ex-boyfriends or evil parents. I got much better with the bat since I was ten.” He winked.

  “I might have to hold you to that. Especially the evil parent’s part,” I murmured. My words made his smile fade. He reached and brushed away my hair, then gently touched the side of my face.

  “I am sorry for leaving you alone to fight those battles, Lauren. I had no idea you were unhappy,” he said softly. I didn’t want to bring the mood down again or make him sad. We had enough of that.

  “You were a bad stalker, I guess.” I tried to turn it into a joke.

  “I guess, I was.” He still sounded somber, guilty.