Katarina

by Alona Jarden

  "Kate," Officer Swenson’s calm voice stopped Katarina in the middle of her response. "In our investigation, we found that Mr. Briggs is actually your biological father."

  For a moment, I thought I hadn’t heard her correctly, but after she pulled out lab tests from the document folder that appeared to be reliable, I looked quickly at Katarina and shivered with apprehension, thinking that the question marks this would raise would be too many to allow her to think clearly.

  "That's what I was trying to tell you, my pretty girl," Mr. Briggs went back to talking calmly. "I kept telling you that you were my daughter."

  "You told me I was your adopted daughter."

  "You're not his daughter or his adopted daughter." I slammed my fist on the table, getting ready to fight dirty. I was determined to reveal his true temperament. "You wish you had a daughter like Katarina."

  "She's my daughter, Andrew. I don’t know who you're looking for, but Kate is my biological daughter."

  "No chance in hell," I insisted. "She's too good to contain any of your monstrous genes."

  "She's. My. Daughter!" He exhaled and growled as he uttered word by word with a terrifying tone.

  "No. She. Is. Not!" I returned in the same way and continued, "She had a father. A great man. One that you could never live up to."

  "Andrew, stop!" Katarina pleaded, but I couldn’t do as she requested.

  "She had a handsome father," I continued "A wise and sensitive man who loved her and her mother. I knew him well and it wasn’t you!" I saw his lip tremble and knew I had to keep pressing him until he broke. "You, on the other hand, are nothing! You're not her adoptive father and not her biological father. You will never be a father to her, because you killed him. You killed the person who loved her more than you will ever know."

  "You're an ignorant, stupid, little child and I suggest you shut your mouth right now!" Mr. Briggs was exactly where I wanted him to be.

  "Mr. Costa, I'll ask you to calm down." I ignored Officer Swenson’s plea and continued to hit the iron while it was boiling hot.

  "I was a child, Mr. Briggs, but that changed. Do you know what also changed? Thanks to me, Katarina remembers how good she felt when she was with him. She remembers the warmth he gave her and she can already tell for herself that she was better off with him than with you." I breathed a sigh of relief as I stuck the final nail in the monster's coffin and leaned back in my chair to enjoy the fireworks I created.

  "He gave her nothing!" My eyes widened as he dared to acknowledge her real father's existence for the first time.

  "Admit it, Mr. Briggs. You're not Kate's father."

  "But he is, Mr. Costa. We have documents that..."

  "All you have is another fake document. There's no way he's Katarina's father," I insisted, knocking my fists on the table again. "Look at him and see her. Do you really believe that a woman like this can be related to a creature like that? You saw the resemblance between her and her mother, right? Well, let me tell you, from the outside, she may look like her, but if you knew her father, you would realize how similar they are from the inside."

  "You’re lying!" The officers could hardly hold Mr. Briggs in his place as he kicked and punched them, trying to free himself so he could whip the man who reminded him of the man that once claimed to be his daughter's father. "She has no part of him! She's mine. All mine!"

  It didn’t seem to me that he even noticed the words that had just come out of his mouth. The policemen pulled Katarina and myself to a corner further away. From the look on her face, Officer Swenson was astonished to see that maybe, for the first time in his life, Mr. Briggs told the whole truth.

  He shouted out loud about the true love he had shared with Katarina's mother, got wildly angry at all the promises she had made and didn’t keep, shed tears of pain over the love-child whose life he was promised to be a part of only for her to call another man 'Daddy', and then fell helplessly to the floor, undoubtedly coming to realize the implications of his actions.

  "It's not true," he uttered crying. "She can’t remember him at all. She was too small and he was nothing to her. I'm her father. I was always her father and she was always my child." He didn’t look up or speak directly to Katarina, although it was clear to everyone that she was always on his mind, ever since she was born.

  "You are wrong, Dad. I do remember him." Her voice was soft and gentle as she walked and squatted down against his broken body on the floor. "I know it's strange, but I remember him and I remember you."

  Mr. Briggs calmed down the second her hand landed on his cheek and, suddenly, something in her seemed different to me.

  She wasn’t as confused as when I left her, she wasn’t angry or offended. She seemed to remember not only what had happened, but also how she felt about it. A big lump of tears built in my throat as I realized that she had gone on exploring without me being there for her.

  "Don’t cry, Dad. I really do remember everything."

  "You... You... You probably remember what he said to you." He gestured at me with his finger, "but... but... Do you remember me, too?" He looked up at her.

  "Of course I remember you," she gave him an addictive smile. "I remember how you picked me up every time I fell and how you taught me to ride my bike, and I remember that you kissed my pain away."

  "That’s right. It was me! It was me and not him." His voice grew stronger and my heart weakened.

  "I remember you preparing meals for me late at night, when I insisted on continuing to study until morning."

  "Because you're my daughter, Kate. I’d do anything for you." He pushed himself to a more upright, sitting position on the floor opposite her and my knees betrayed me, sending me perplexed to the floor.

  "I remember everything, Dad, and I know you'd do anything for me."

  "That's all I ask of you, my girl. Remember who raised you and who you had for a father. That's all I want you to remember."

  "I do. I remember, Father, but I also remember your bloodied hands when you took me away from my parents' house." My eyes widened. I knew that she hadn’t remembered this experience during one of the sessions we had. "I remember how you were always there for me before you reinvented me, and I suddenly remember you, as my Uncle Christian."

  "It's been years since you called me that, Kate."

  There was silence.

  "It's been years since I thought about myself again, Dad, but I’m awake now. I woke up and now I want to go back to sleep, because when I close my eyes, I see them again. I see my parents lying in a pool of their own blood."

  "That... it... It was just a bad movie you saw, Kate," he stuttered.

  "I agree, Dad. It was a terrible horror scene. The kind that a little girl shouldn’t see, but I did. You tried to cover my eyes with the palm of your hand, but the script you wrote was too intriguing so I peeked and, now… When I look in the mirror, I see my mother's face, who probably cheated on my father and bore me into a life of lies."

  "And what do you see when you look at me?"

  "I see my father, who killed my father."

  Chapter 33

  Kate

  It all happened so fast.

  The harsh words Andrew slammed at my father should have been said, but when I heard them and saw the expression on his face, every part of my body ached.

  The tears running down his cheeks stung my soul with a terrible sense of guilt. I felt that my betrayal of faith was the main cause of his breakdown. Yet, still, the big question I had been grappling with over the last few days remained unanswered.

  "Come with me," Officer Swenson took my hand and pulled me out of the commotion in the interrogation room just in time.

  "I'm sorry... I... I don’t really know what to say right now."

  "You don’t have to say anything, Kate, or would you actually rather I called you Katarina?" she asked me, and I hesitated.

  It was clear that her intentions were good, but when she said aloud the question that had become the question of my life, all I
wanted to do was kill her.

  Who the hell was I?

  I didn’t answer her and, actually, I didn’t speak to anyone for quite a while after that. She hugged me while we sat on the bench, outside the interrogation room, and prepared me for what was about to happen.

  "In a few moments your father will come out. I suppose he will try to come to you and I believe it will be a difficult and an unpleasant sight, but I insist that you do not make any contact with him." She completed her request just as the officers took him out, calling my name in a broken voice, and dragged him down a long corridor until they disappeared behind an opaque, iron door.

  "Kate? Kate?" Andrew stormed out of the interrogation room and quickly sat down at my feet. "Are you all right? Let me see you... Are you all right?"

  "I suppose it'll take some time before I can answer that question in the affirmative, Andrew." I gasped for air. "How is it that every time I manage to reveal more details about my past, I feel that I know less than I did before?"

  "Lucky for you, Kate, your whole life is ahead of you and I believe that in time, you'll be in a position to know enough to answer a simple question like if you're okay or not." His smile was the only thing I could rely on and I did, for a long time afterward.

  For the three months that followed, I leaned on Andrew and drew strength from him so that I could go on digging through my past, but I made sure I piously kept myself against further hurt and disappointment.

  "Latte, large, weak, with soy milk, to go, please," I smiled falsely at the new barista standing behind the counter of my regular Starbucks. I didn’t like him. Something about him was... too obvious.

  "It's customary to wish good morning to the people who give you service, Kate." He winked at me.

  "You're right, Steve. Have a good morning." I looked defiantly at him and sat down at my usual table.

  I don’t know what it was about him that caused me to develop such intense feelings of hatred toward him. Perhaps it was what wasn’t in him, which brought out the sarcastic bitch I tried so hard to avoid since I’d left the cabin.

  A month and a half after that day at the police station, I returned to my seat at medical studies. On the surface, my life had seemed to have returned to normal, but the truth was far from it. Nothing was the same as it had been, and the things I had enjoyed in the past had become unenjoyable, if not completely without meaning.

  "You'll never believe what my date from last night agreed to do with me." Aidan, who once again was tardy, opened our regular conversation.

  "You're late."

  "Or are you early?"

  "I'm not having this conversation again, idiot. I came on time and you're late. Again." I smiled at him, realizing that some things never change.

  "If every morning I arrive here ten minutes after you, can’t we decide that that's the time I'm supposed to arrive and that you're actually the one who comes too early?"

  "No, because then you'll be ten more minutes late."

  "I wouldn’t dare, Kate, because if I got here ten more minutes late, I wouldn’t have enough time to tell you about the perverted things I did last night." He refused to sit down and pulled me after him, to our regular walk to school, without even buying a cup of coffee for himself.

  Even though I owned a modest car now, I never gave up on those walks. Perhaps it was my way of holding on to the things I knew were true in my life, and Aidan was certainly one of them.

  "...without even blinking! She just smiled and did it, Kate. I couldn’t believe it. There's a huge chance I'd like to marry this one."

  "Yes, she definitely sounds like marriage material."

  "I have no doubt that my mother would want to know her son is well provided in bed, Kate. I don’t know where you grew up, but where I'm from it's... hmm... sorry," embarrassment immediately colored his face red.

  "You have nothing to apologize for, moron. You're right, I really don’t know where I grew up." I made us both laugh.

  "So to make a long story, short," he returned to updating me on the woman of his dreams after a short pause. "She said that tonight her brother is coming for a visit, so what do you say?"

  "What do I say about what?"

  "Me, you, my future deviant wife and her brother?"

  "Absolutely not!" I sneered.

  "Kate, listen to me. If her brother has the skillful tongue of his sister, I think you can’t afford to miss out on this opportunity."

  "Aidan," I exhaled in disgust. "Although this is a very un-tempting proposal and, in fact, one of the most repulsive ones I have received in my life, I'm going to have to refuse it."

  "Kate!" he raised his voice. "You'll end your life surrounded by thirty cats if you continue like this."

  "No chance of that happening, Aidan. I don’t even like cats." I rolled my eyes at him and put an end to the discussion.

  I don’t believe he expected me to agree to his offer. I assume he’d just found another creative way of telling me about the oral abilities of his date from the night before, because we had talked about my avoidance of relationships many times and each of those times I explained my position clearly and firmly.

  Until I knew for a given fact who I was, until I learned to love myself and be reconciled with my motives and thoughts, I wasn’t going to allow anyone else to do so.

  "Does anyone know how to answer my question?" Professor Thompson asked, frustrated, about two hours later, as my mind wandered to a sketch I had started in my notebook without knowing what would come of it. "Ms. Briggs? Would you be kind enough to save the lost honor of the class with the right answer?"

  "I'm sorry, Professor Thompson," I smiled at him. "I can’t help you, as I didn’t hear the question."

  "You? Didn’t hear the question?"

  "I wasn’t listening. Sorry. If I'm being honest, I'm afraid you've lost something in your charisma. You're not as amazing as you used to be. Are you eating enough magnesium?" I rudely replied, gaining the laughter of my classmates.

  After my kidnapping, when I first got back to school, I re-looked at everyone and everything. I left the cabin with the decision that I would never take anything for granted again, and as part of that promise to myself, I also reconsidered all the relationships that were part of my life.

  I was sad to discover that, in medical school, I had no relationships that required a re-examination except my true friendship with Aidan and my intellectual friendship with Professor Thompson.

  Step by step, as I shook off the burden of having to be excellent, I found the time and the desire to create more social connections. About three weeks after my return, as my classmates giggled around me from a witty jab I’d made at the Professor, I’d smiled back at them and felt relaxed.

  I no longer hated them for being less intelligent than me. Actually, I made use of their lack of understanding to wander in thought while they asked for clarifications, not feeling I was better or less than them.

  "Ms. Briggs, can I speak to you please?" Professor Thompson asked as soon as the class was over.

  "With pleasure." His official tone and strange choice of words caused me to smile.

  "I feel like you've given up on yourself."

  "On the contrary, Professor Thompson, I'm just beginning to understand the meaning of life. I think that only now have I opened my eyes and..."

  "In regards to school, Ms. Briggs," he looked desperate as he interrupted me. "I understand you've had a difficult experience, but your very answer to my question makes it clear that you're lost. You're not you anymore."

  "I'm not me anymore?" I frowned at him.

  "The Ms. Briggs I know doesn’t waste time on questions like what is the meaning of life. The Ms. Briggs I know puts her studies above everything and..."

  "If so, you're right," I felt comfortable interrupting him right back. "If that's who I was and that's the Kate you know, I guess I'm really not myself anymore."

  "That's why I wanted to call you to order. Wouldn’t you want to go back and walk the pa
th that’s right for you?"

  "There’s nothing I'd like more than that, Professor." I was surprised I wasn’t disappointed by his piercing criticism, and continued, "When I find a path that feels right to me, I'll be happy to walk it, but first, I have to find out who I am, don’t you think?"

  "I'm sorry, but I don’t believe you, Ms. Briggs. Are you saying you're no longer interested in being the top of your class? If I say that you're not the smartest student in my class anymore, will that not bother you?"

  "It won’t," I stood up confidently, took my backpack and walked to the exit, leaving him there alone to grade the other students' work. "Besides," I turned around just before closing the door. "We both know I'll always be the smartest student in your class. It's just that, for the time being, I won’t have the grades to prove it, that's all."

  I managed to hear his laughter roll from the other side of the hall door, before leaving.

  I no longer waited for Aidan to accompany me back to my house, nor did I spend long hours in the library in order to learn the material of the next class.

  I had some place else to be and I hurried to it.

  Every day since I’d left the police station, I made sure to meet with a therapist. At first, she helped me cope with the revelations that continued to emerge in me. Little by little, I restored my grip on reality and developed the ability to identify between the things that had occurred in real life and the dream that my father had created especially for me. Once I felt that I could deal with the existing situation, my real journey began, and I started it with an attempt to trace a life I could hardly remember.

  Chapter 34

  Mr. Briggs

  Six months have passed.

  Officer Swenson said that one of us wouldn’t leave that interrogation room as a free man and, unfortunately, it turned out to be me.

  I’d let the neighbor's son best me in a battle of the minds and he caused me to confess what I had denied doing for many years.

  "All rise. This court is now in session. The honorable Judge Jenkins presiding," the court clerk read at the opening of the most important court hearing in my case. That was the hearing in which I was to be called as a witness and was going to be asked to reveal all my darkest secrets.