Hammond had said as much, that yeah, she’d had to struggle for the name, but he’d also added, “You remember who she was, Lee. She might look like a sweet, innocent kitten, but that woman’s got the claws of a big cat.” Hammond had said it with pride, but there’d also been a touch of sadness to his words, a sadness Lee had never forgotten.
Lee remained quiet and pensive as the room emptied but for Eagle, himself, and Hammond.
“You finally gonna share, Hammond?” Lee’s voice was measured. He was angry but he was also just so goddamned tired. There was something there, something Hammond had the dirt on—hell, that he seemed to have been a part of, and Lee was done. He was done with the tension between the three of them. Done with playing second to everyone else when it came to Kit. Done with all of it.
Hammond didn’t tense, but he did seem to quiet. His stillness was eerie, but it was the blank expression on his face and the emptiness in his brother’s eyes that truly grabbed at him. Hammond wasn’t empty. He was impetuous and full of emotion. Then again, for all that Lee and Kit had changed, so had his big brother. Maybe to an even greater degree than even Lee had realized. Hammond seemed to snap out of it and grabbed for his helmet before turning back to Lee and exhaling out a long breath. His blue eyes, so much the mirror of Lee’s, pleaded with him. “It’s not me who gets to share this.”
“Bullshit, Ham!” Lee returned. “That’s not going to work this time.” He ran his hands through his hair, but stopped himself when he saw Hammond doing the same. “We’re brothers, and for ten years you’ve kept something from me. Ten years, man. Ten. Fucking. Years. And now, it could show up on our doorstep, and all you’ve got to say for yourself and whatever the fuck Kit’s going through is that it’s not yours to share?”
Hammond didn’t reply with anger. In fact, he seemed just as world-weary as Lee himself was feeling. He nodded once. “I get you, Lee. I do. But we’re at a standstill because I’m telling the truth in this respect. This isn’t for me to say. I’m saying give her time–”
“Ten years isn’t enough?”
Hammond’s sober gaze met his own enraged one. “A lifetime might not be enough.” Hammond paused and exhaled once more. “Look, Lee, I’m going to go visit Ma and Pa, little brother. If you want to join, come on over. I know Meatless Mondays are your favorite.” He added a small smile that went as soon as it came.
Lee nodded, exhausted from yet another argument without answers.
“You’re gonna have to get her to talk about whatever the fuck is eating at you both, Ham.” Lee felt his throat get tight. “You or Casper need to get her to lay that shit out before it takes up anymore of her life. Any idiot can see it’s hurting her.” He looked to his older brother. “And deny it all you want, but that shit’s hurting you too.”
The truth of the matter was he didn’t want Kit to turn to Casper or to Hammond. He wanted her to come to him.
“Yeah…” Hammond gave Lee’s shoulder a hard squeeze and Lee returned the gesture out of habit, but also because Hammond looked destroyed by the turn of events that day. “But getting her to talk to others, Lee…it might break her more if you…” Hammond blew out a breath and gave him a quick hug before breaking away. “It might break everything around us more than it tears us both up on the inside, Lee.”
And then he left.
On a bombshell.
What could possibly break Kit, Hammond, or even Lee himself more than what they were all going through?
“Lee,” Eagle called from his place at the table as he cleaned up the files.
Lee didn’t answer. He just turned and waited for whatever piece of wise fuckery Eagle would try to impart on his currently closed mind. He didn’t need wise. He needed another ‘w’ word entirely: a fucking bottle of whiskey.
Instead of imparting wisdom, though, Eagle smiled broadly at Lee, just smiled like the fucking crazy retired Marine he was and said, “Bring me back some of that fried eggplant shit.”
Lee shook his head in laughter and felt the last of any simmering rage he was holding onto disappear.
“You’re fuckin’ insane, Prez. You know you could just come over and eat some of that fried eggplant shit, right?”
Eagle just smiled even more and his laughed was like a boom, boom, boom throughout the room.
Lee shook his head and walked out without saying goodbye and almost stopped at the bar where the BBQ Monday roughhousing was just getting started. Instead, he exited the front and went next door to Tujours, ate some eggplant Parmesan, and let the soothing tones of his ma’s and pa’s Cajun accents calm and settle the weariness in his soul as they worked in the kitchen.
He could get drunk or he could spend time with people who cared.
Life was too short to wallow in the darkness for too long.
He just wished Kit would come to that realization.
He wished she would tell him the truth and open up to him, knowing he’d never leave her no matter what had happened.
He wished he could know this new woman, a woman he’d known as a child but who was so much more now.
Hell, he wished so much for his Kit, no matter that she was that cat with claws her name hinted at.
He’d give her everything.
But he also knew he couldn’t grant his own wishes, or hers, if she didn’t open up to him.
Above all, though, he wished she’d step away from that darkness she clung to and find her Summer once more.
Fate’s Bitch
If Kit could describe her world in one word, it would be Fate: forever at the hands of another’s mercy.
Her hands shook as she took a sip of the sweet tea her mom, Serenity, had made for her. Born and raised in Southern Georgia, her mom was the quintessential mixture of good, Southern breeding and a flower child. Although in her mid-50s, Serenity Markham had a youthful spirit Kit had oftentimes found herself jealous of. Then her mother would say something terribly childish, and the angry fire that stayed forever lit in Kit would spring forward.
Kit would thank the Fates on this one point: that when she’d been their bitch, they’d at least taught her well. She never wanted to be as sweet, kind, and innocent as her mother. It was almost embarrassing.
“I’m just saying, dear,” her mom continued as the family sat outside for their weekly Sunday dinners, “that life is just so beautiful, and you and Lee were always so perfect together. If you’d just open to him, give him a little bit of your heart, you’d see…”
Kit tuned out her mother’s seriously disturbed and mushy ramblings, which was better than the alternative. Yelling.
God, did she want to yell. Yell, “WAKE UP!” at the top of her lungs and never have to hear the stupidity of her mother’s ideas again. Open up to Lee? Fuck that. Give him her heart? Yeah, fuck that twice.
If Lee knew the truth, he wouldn’t fucking want her anyway. She knew what she and Hammond had done. She knew. Hammond knew. Eagle knew. And Casper knew. Only those four. The only four who would go on knowing.
Well, and Rena...
Rena knew, but that didn’t really count, did it? Rena was gone in probably one of the worst ways a person could be gone.
Kit had been ruminating in her own head again, but she realized suddenly that her sisters and parents had gone quiet and were staring at her from their seats at the outside wicker dinner table.
“You were muttering to yourself again,” Winter said, her voice sarcastically dour. If she ever showed anything other than complete boredom and the little bit of chill her name implied, it would be a miracle. It was as though she was a perpetual teenager even in her late twenties, but despite that unique combination, Kit loved the sarcastic and world-weary tone of her younger sister.
“It’s okay, dear,” her mother chimed in, “we understand.”
“Yeah?” Kit asked. She could feel her anger take flight inside and her breaths came like a staccato.
“I think that’s enough for now.” Her father, George, way past his hippie days, was ever the
patriarch.
Her mom liked a caretaker, even as she too loved to take care of others. She was honestly the best mom. Growing up, Autumn, Spring, Kit, and Winter had been the kids with handmade clothes that had eventually looked like the stuff bought in stores, the kids who’d had bagged lunches with pizza or baked chicken made from scratch, the kids that were just a little weird but still liked in their small artsy town.
When not playing ‘mother of the year’, her mom worked at a local artist’s shop, where she sold some of her small oil canvases and other artists’ pieces. Golden Trail was known for its art, its culture and music and creative leanings, and her mother had chosen this place to settle after moving from her beloved Georgia. And in settling, she’d also fallen head over heels in love with her dad.
Thirty-six and a half years later, the two had celebrated their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary the year prior, and had given birth to three girls and adopted Spring after Autumn had been born. But all four were their girls, their everything.
And so, Kit usually let her mom’s innocent remarks go.
But until her father had spoken up, she’d been ready to say something, something that might hurt the woman who’d given her nothing save love since the day she’d been born.
And Kit had done too much already she regretted, so she gave her father a small smile. It was a rare thing only emphasized by the fact that her father’s eyes widened as he stood proudly, walked to Kit’s chair, and kissed her on the forehead before walking over and then leaned down to whisper something in their mother’s ear.
He pulled her mom up, and they walked away, sharing more whispered somethings that made her mom laugh.
“Well, I feel we’ve got a good script going now at least,” Spring said, leaning back. She placed one arm over the back of her chair, her black eyes closed and her features burnished golden brown in the bright, late afternoon summer sun.
Autumn took a bite of her Chicken Française and nibbled on a mushroom as she asked, “Whatd’ya mean?” Her words were slurred slightly by the fact that she hadn’t finished chewing.
“Sunday dinner seems to always end the same,” Winter answered sourly, and they all turned to her. She gave them a ‘come on’ look.
“Exactly,” Spring clipped, her proper tone so in contrast with Kit, but also with the hippie Autumn who was so much like their mother.
No four sisters had ever been so different.
No four sisters had ever loved like these four had either.
For a moment, Kit wanted to unload all of her story on them, to share as they once had the secrets so closely tied to their hearts.
But Autumn, especially, was fragile in a way that Kit had once been, and Kit couldn’t bear to see what the truth of war would turn her eldest sister into—a hardened warrior or a sunken battleship.
And the truth was as much about Autumn as it was about Kit, Hammond, Casper, and even Lee.
She and her sisters instead settled into light conversation, joking back and forth, ribbing each other about their past mistakes, and laughing about the time Spring and Autumn made a birthday cake for their father, but the cake had been hard as a rock.
“What?” Spring said, lifting her chin, her voice measured and exposing the hefty education she was still paying for. “Our Home Ec instructor had said something about how eggs and yeast both assist in the rise. We figured if we didn’t have eggs, more yeast would do.”
Even Kit laughed at the haughty way Spring explained her and Autumn’s childhood mistake. Every time they told the story, Spring just seemed to get more defensive over it. In the end, though, she’d also always smile and laugh with them over her childhood mishap.
“How about that time, after Lee and Hammond had just moved here from Louisiana and their parents were opening Tujours and I told you and Autumn that they’d be serving frogs,” Spring chimed in with another story. Kit’s heart stuttered over Lee’s name, but she still found herself smiling over the memory, and as she met Autumn’s gaze, she saw that her older sister was smiling as well. Their eyes held, and for just a moment, they were twelve and ten again, sitting in a French restaurant, in love with the new neighborhood boys with the dark skin and the Cajun accents who would—as the years passed—become the loves of their youth.
“I was four,” Winter said with just the slightest inflection of humor, “but even I remember that night! I smelled like fried chicken for days because you two thought the chicken tenders they gave me were frogs.”
They had indeed picked up their little sister’s plate, the only one with the chicken tenders since she’d been the youngest, and thrown her chicken tenders everywhere thinking they’d been fried frogs.
Spring had been in the background, laughing, so unlike her educated and pampered way now, but she’d laughed even harder when the “frogs” had splattered fried bits of food all over Winter and the little girl had screamed like the end of the world was happening.
“Dad was so fucking angry, Autumn and I weren’t allowed to see Lee or Hammond for a week.” Kit laughed at the retelling, and then her laughter slowly died.
All of their laughter did.
In the silence, Spring did what she was good at. She took the lead, cleaning up with a reluctant Winter following.
And when they returned for more trips, Autumn got up to help.
But still, Kit sat.
Frozen in time.
Try though she might to absorb some of those old memories and to hold onto them, every week they had Sunday dinner was a slice of time the Fates let her remember Summer, the girl she’d once been.
She’d sit in quiet after reminiscing with her first friends, her sisters, and they’d clean and leave her to her fucked up mind, until the truth of her situation once again took hold, and she became Kit once more.
Only this time, Autumn pulled one of the chairs up next to Kit, letting her feet rest over the side, her back turned to Kit as her head fell backwards.
Autumn squinted as she looked at Kit, and smiled. “We do have a script, you know?”
“Oh, yeah?” Kit replied absentmindedly, touching the white wicker arm of her own chair and playing with each piece of wicker individually. “And what the fuck is that script, Autumn?”
Her sister tsked, but her smile held as she squinted while looking at Kit before sitting up and facing forward. Her back was still to Kit as if she knew Kit wouldn’t speak seriously if Autumn had faced her head on.
“Well,” she said, too chipper for a moment that held such seriousness. “Dinner...conversation...you getting so angry you almost yell at Mom even though she just loves you and wants the best for you... Then Dad barges in with his big, he-man voice”—Autumn imitated a rough, male voice and even Kit chuckled a bit— “And then you hide again for a bit while Mom and Dad go inside to get a little frisky…” Autumn’s eyebrows went up and down in a silly and suggestive way.
“Ew, gross, Autumn,” Kit said, unable to stop her adolescent, knee-jerk reaction to the thought of their parents having sex.
“It’s completely natural,” Spring added, returning from cleaning and settling in beside them, another glass of tea in hand as she closed her eyes to the sun. Winter sat, journal in hand, her pen moving furiously across the page, and she must have been at it for some time without Kit’s notice because the next thing she knew, Winter was flipping the page again and continuing her writings.
“Writing a tell-all, little sis?” Kit asked.
“Fuck yeah I am.” Winter didn’t even look up from whatever she was scribbling. “Gonna make bank off you losers, sell the salon, and move to the mountains with a stoic computer nerd who’s got a penchant for loving dour and petite light brown-haired buxom beauties…”
Kit laughed and turned to face forward again just as Autumn turned around the other way, now facing Kit.
Too close.
But Kit fought her need to jump up and away.
“So Mom and Dad go at it”—more ewwws were cooed by Winter and Kit, but Spring
just smiled— “while we all talk memories until you gaze off into the distance, making Spring and Winter uncomfortable with the emotion”—both Spring and Winter protested, but Autumn continued. “And then we do the dishes while you pull your walls back up.” Autumn held her hands out in a ‘there you have it’ motion. “Kit, meet our script.”
Spring, who’d sat up straight at the mention of her role in the script, leaned back casually. “As I said,” she added with a prideful tilt of her chin as she closed her eyes once more.
“Yes.” Autumn’s uncharacteristic anger had Spring’s back coming back up and Winter smiling secretly from her seat, but Kit only saw these actions in her purview. She was too agitated by the fact that her sisters already knew her tells so well, that she’d hidden nothing in the over two years of Sunday dinners she’d been to since coming home. “As you said, Spring,” Autumn continued, frustration evident in her usually happy and light voice. Sisters brought out the best and the worst in each other. Autumn turned back to Kit. “You don’t have to hide from us, Summer.” The sentence wasn’t said loudly. Autumn spoke quietly, almost in a whisper, but Winter slid her journal onto the table slowly and Spring’s face softened, so much the older sister now.
“Autumn,” Kit whispered back, shocked that she’d even answered at all to a name that no longer belonged to her.
Kit was quiet for a few moments, but her sisters didn’t push. They never had.
Not after she’d had sex for the first time with Lee at the age of seventeen.
Not when she’d come home from her first tour a different person.
She’d visited only the once, and she’d made sure only her family had known. Not even Lee or Hammond knew. But she’d needed them.
Her sisters knew she’d been captured. She’d been MIA for thirty hours.
But she’d never shared what all had happened.
A Terrible Beauty Page 3