by K. M. Ellis
“No,” I lied “I didn’t, it’s all in the past.”
She looked hard at me. “I’m sorry, Shane, okay, I really am about that. I just, someone needed to know. Everyone needed to know.”
“Have you done it since Tom?” I asked her
Her eyes opened wide, “Why? Have you?”
“No, I haven’t,” I answered.
I waited for her to respond, she looked nervous.
“I did…with James”
I let out a breath, “Okay, well I can’t be mad I mean…”
She cut me off, “I was upset, it was comforting, it just happened… it won’t ever again.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“Kat?” I asked
“Hmmm?”
“Let’s get out of here.”
I drove her back to her house; she invited me in where we sat and drank. She told me about everything I had wanted and had not wanted to know.
At the end of the night, I left her, kissing her softly on the lips, and promising to see her again tomorrow.
James
May 2001
I had watched her go off with him. It broke something inside of me. That’s why it had never worked with anyone else, I had loved Kathryn Crowne. I felt like a fool, I had seen so many other men fall under her spell and I had thought myself evasive to it. Perhaps it had always been there or maybe I felt the need to fill some sort of void since my wife had left. All I knew was that I was completely and utterly smitten with her and seeing her with Shane, no, even just knowing that she was with him, made me crumble to pieces.
Kat
June 2001
“Do you want another one?” Shane asked
“Are you trying to get me drunk?”
He raised an eyebrow, “Is that bad?”
I laughed.
We had been “dating” or whatever you want to call it, for about a month now and still yet to have slept together. It didn’t seem to bother him, but I had decided it would happen tonight.
Shane brought me another drink from his “bar” he had made in the basement of our old house.
“Madam,” he said handing me the drink. I put it down on the end table and kissed him. He stopped me, “We don’t have to do anything until you’re ready.”
I kissed him again. My hands shook as I got a hold of his shirt and went to pull it over his head. I ran my hand along his chest where the hair curled down to his belly button. I was nervous, for once in my life; I was terrified to have sex with a man. He didn’t ask about anything, he didn’t question me, he just wanted me. I stood up, removing my pants. Shane stared at me as I began to remove his.
“Do you want to go upstairs?” he asked me, kissing me.
I laid myself down on the couch in response as he watched me.
He knelt down beside me as I spread my legs and helped him enter me. I cried out when he did. My body reacting to what it had missed all these months. I held on to him and he did so to me, like his life depended on it. I felt the waves take me as he exploded.
“Marry me, Kat” he asked so like he had so many years ago.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes.”
Shane
July 2001
It was like starting all over with her, the relationship I had always wanted to have. She was only seeing me, and I her. It would work this time, I knew it would. We had put aside the past and had given way to seeing a better future. She was hesitant at first when we started sleeping together, it had been a long time for her, but soon enough she was the passionate Kat I had known. She was indeed different now. She was sturdy, she knew what she wanted, and what she wanted, was finally just me.
James
June 2001
“I’m getting remarried to him,” Kat told me one afternoon after practice.
I shut my eyes tight, trying to block out her words.
“Did you hear me?” she asked, kneeling down next to me, her hands on my knees.
“I heard you, Kat.”
“Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not,” I responded.
I met her eyes.
“It doesn’t change the way I feel about you, you know I will always hold a dear place for you in my heart,” she said.
“You’re just doing it because of what Thomas said.”
She looked away, “perhaps, but it doesn’t change that fact that I do love Shane, I have always loved Shane,” she faked a smile.
“Whatever, Kat,” I said standing up and walking away from her.
She stayed kneeing where she was, watching me.
I left her there; I couldn’t be around her right now.
Darla
August 2001
My parents remarried a week before my fifteenth birthday. It was the best gift I could have wished for.
Mom moved back in with us, still attempting to sell her and Thomas’ mansion. She had brought so much of him with her, Dad didn’t mind. He had loved Thomas also.
“My dad’s pissed that your dad married her again,” my friend Theresa confessed to me. She was Tammy and Drew’s daughter.
“Why?”
“Well, you know, cause of that interview!”
A lot of them were mad about that, especially dad’s manager, Roy. He resembled a hot air balloon, his face blowing up, red and ugly.
She played it off and eventually, like the charismatic woman she was, got back on his good side.
“Any boys?” my mom would always ask me.
“No” I’d reply. Like I would tell her anyways and she had NO room to talk.
She would smile knowingly, never pressuring me to tell more. I think cause that’s the way she had been raised, she turned a blind eye.
But I was anything but her. I had no desire for sex, not yet anyways.
Eventually she was welcome back into the Arctic Circle family who probably felt she was too old or too damaged to cause much trouble anymore. She would be thirty five in November and where most of the guys of Arctic Circle had traded their wives in for a younger model, my father hadn’t. He was still in love with his first.
Kat
August/September 2001
I preformed a few shows with Neptune which had become scare, but I still enjoyed getting us all together. In truth the memory hurt and although I had taken up playing Thomas’ role, he could never be replaced, and so that last album after his death, would be our end. I resorted myself to Shane’s faithful wife. It was new and exciting route for me.
I still wore Thomas’ wedding ring around my neck and Shane’s on my finger. Nothing made me happier than to have Thomas and Shane close to me still. If I could have had them both I would have.
Shane and I began a sort of routine. He slept with me every night and each time we were bolder with each other. It was like we were discovering each other all over again.
“Kat,” he would say, “do it like that.” Or “can I do this?”
We would test ourselves, catching up on the years that we had been apart.
James and I were still at odds, although I felt for him; I knew it could never be.
“I don’t know why you just don’t start fresh; you’re only doing this because of what Tom said!” he voiced loudly after practice one day.
“Don’t get angry at me,” I told him
“You refuse to admit that you still have feelings for me, that’s true isn’t it?”
The words were like déjà vu as I had heard Tom speak them what seemed so long ago.
“Fine, you’re right, I do, I’ll admit it, but it doesn’t change anything,” I admitted to him
“It changes everything, Kat. I want you, I could have made you happy,” he sighed.
“You don’t know that at all.”
“Yeah, I guess I’ll never know now,” he said sadly.
I took his hand and kissed it, “don’t be like this, I need you now more than ever.”
“You’ll always have me, Kat,” he whispered,
his face closes to mine.
I smiled at him; breaking his serious face. He pulled me into a tight hug, “love you, Kitty Kat,” he said into my hair
“Love you too,” I said softly.
He pet me on the back and asked if I wanted to play a little bit.
“Sure,” I responded as I picked up one of Tom’s guitars.
His grey eyes flashed while I strummed and sang his smile wide and warm.
Darla and I became especially close as she was getting ready to begin her freshman year of high school. She was nervous, and I tried to teach her how to wear makeup, but she refused.
“It’s like a mask,” I tried to tell her
“I don’t need a mask, Mom.”
“Well it’s always helped me, on stage you know?’
She wasn’t buying it.
For her fifteenth birthday, we had everyone over. Gary told her if she was good she could have his custom made Aston Martin next year for her birthday. He had driven it to the party to please her. She had a special love for him, not unlike I did at her age. Much more innocent though.
Much more.
I had made peace with Drew and Tammy. They were over quite a bit as Darla was best friends with their girl. I even became friendly with Brian and his new wife. Nick and Alex had welcomed me back into their lives as well and it was as if the past ten years or so never happened. I felt like I was twenty again, just starting out with life. Only Thomas wasn’t there and my little girl was fifteen.
Shane
September 2001
“What do you think?” Kat asked as she showed a spreadsheet to Roy.
She had been helping him out with our newest music video and it turned out she had quite the knack for it.
She had someway been forgiven by everyone. Even my mother welcomed her back into her life. She had that way of making people love her I guess.
I heard her laughing; it was music to my ears.
“Drew, you can’t keep bending that way, we can’t see Alex,” she said.
Drew threw his hands up and gave her a smirk.
She walked over and positioned him correctly, “Bossy now are we?” he said to her.
She raised an eyebrow, smiling widely.
Sometimes it was strange to see them interact after everything that had happened. Especially with Brian, she liked to flirt with him jokingly. I suppose the two of them had a special friendship which I really couldn’t understand.
“You know you have nothing to worry about,” she would say to me.
“I love you more than anything, Kat, you know that right?”
She looked up at me, the light dancing in her eyes, “I love you too.”
Ian
September 2001
“I feel like shit,” Kat said to James and me.
“Do you want to stop?” I asked
“No, I love coming over and playing with you and I haven’t in a couple weeks, I’ve just been so busy with helping Roy, it’s just my head I think, I’ll grab something for it,” she said as she headed to my bathroom.
“You okay?” I asked James
“Yeah, man, why?”
“I dunno, you’ve been through a lot this year, Tom dying, your wife leaving you, the divorce and now Kat got married to Shane again…”
He shrugged, “I think she would have been happy with me,” he said
We all knew that they had a “thing” or at least they did before Tom and apparently after him also.
Kat walked back in the room, “I couldn’t find anything,” she sighed
“I could have sworn…”
“It’s okay, I’ll just go home and rest, sorry,” she said to us both
I kissed her cheek, “see you soon,” I said
She went over and hugged James who pulled her onto his lap, “James,” she shrieked as her foot hit one of the symbols, she started laughing, he threw me a toothy grin.
“I’ll call you later, okay?” I heard him say.
“Yeah,” she breathed out. She met his eyes for a moment before unwrapping his arms from her waist and standing up, readjusting her shirt.
She gave us both a reassuring smile before exiting. Everything seemed so normal.
Kat
September 2001
I began getting bad headaches one afternoon after a Neptune get together. Although we decided we wouldn’t be doing any projects any time soon, we would still get together each Wednesday and fool around with chords and lyrics, like we used to when we were kids.
When I got home, I had begun to bleed with heavy cramping. It was a bit early for my period, but I was never regular anyways. Not after the miscarriage, so I grabbed a pad and a handful of ibuprofen like usual and went about my day.
“Kat, can you help me with some of this paperwork?” Shane asked when I walked through the door.
“Yeah” I began to walk over to him. “Fuck,” I said clutching my side.
“You okay?” he shouted back
“Yeah just some cramping, just that time of the month…”
“Right, take something.”
I went to help him, the cramp started again. “I did, I think I just need to lie down,” I told him.
He helped me into bed and wrapped me up.
“Need anything? He asked.
I kissed him. “Come get me in an hour, I have to call Gary I forgot to yesterday.”
Shane smiled at me as he got up and left the room, shutting the door behind him.
Darla
September 2001
“How was your first day of high school?” Dad asked as I walked through the door.
“It was alright, where’s mom? I have something I need to tell her.”
“You can’t tell me?”
“Its girl stuff.”
“Ew” he said with a face playfully. “She’s lying down, I was supposed to wake her up like an hour ago but I was letting her sleep”
“Can I go wake her up?” I asked.
“Sure, she’s probably gonna be mad I let her sleep this long!”
I walked upstairs to her bedroom and opened the door. She was lying on her side. I got closer to her, she wasn’t moving.
“Mom?” I said touching her. She was cold.
“Mom,” I said again frantic now.
“Mom” I screamed.
Dad appeared in the doorway. “What’s wrong?” he said catching his breath.
“She’s…” I started to cry.
He came over to her and felt her.
“No, no, no, Kat.”
He pulled back the covers.
Blood. Blood everywhere coming from in between her thighs, I had ever seen so much. I let out a scream. My father covered her back up and sat on the bed. He put his hands in his hands as he began to weep.
I grabbed her cell phone.
“We need to call 911!” I shouted.
He nodded his head slowly.
When the ambulance arrived, Dad and I could only point and stare. Dad went in the ambulance with her leaving me home alone for the first time in my life. I had never felt so lost.
Shane
September 2001
She had been pregnant and it had become ectopic. Her right tube had exploded resulting in her losing six and a half pints of blood. There was no way she could have survived. She had thought it was her period and taking the ibuprofen had only sped up the process. I couldn’t believe it. She had been so alive hours before, now she was… gone. I didn’t know who to call, what to do. My whole self seemed to collapse into uncertainty. Kat.
Drew
September 2001
I didn’t believe it when I first heard it. None of us did. It seemed impossible…
James
September 2001
I dropped the phone.
“Kats dead,” I told Ian.
His mouth dropped open. “Our Kat?”
I nodded.
“Oh my god, how?”
“Shane didn’t say, he just said she was gone.”
&
nbsp; “Not Kat,” he whispered.
I stared at her microphone with the gold and black scarf around it that Thomas had given her one year for her birthday, blinking away tears. She would never use it again.
Darla
September 2001
“Are you ready, Dar?” Dad asked softly.
I nodded looking at the window of the limousine. There were crowds of people outside the church. Some holding signs, others flowers, photos, all honoring my mother.
Today, she would be buried; today she would be gone forever six feet under, leaving only memories. I had worn lipstick today, when Dad told me to wipe it off I had started to cry like a baby. Mom always complained I never wore makeup. He seemed to understand then and let me keep it on. My mother had loved this color.
Dad got out of the car first and then I followed him, taking a deep breath. We got inside the church where I saw everyone from Neptune and Arctic Circle come together again for yet another funeral in less than a year. Gary was there also with his latest wife. Dad and I took our seats at the front. I didn’t even blink when I saw my mother’s body in the coffin; it affected my father much different as tears ran down his cheeks.
I watched as those who had loved and hated my mother grieved for her. When we went to the cemetery, Dad told me he had a surprise. Getting out of the limo and standing next to her gravesite, I realized I had been here before.
He had laid her next to Thomas.
I shot him a look, “What about you?” I asked like a child.
“She was always him,” he confessed. “Plus,” he pointed, “There’s always room for me next to her of that’s where you want to put me.” He kissed my cheek.
Brian
October 2001
“You sure you’re up to this, man?” I asked Shane
He nodded. “Yeah, Kat would have wanted it.”
We stepped out on stage as Shane smiled and waved at the crowd.
I looked at him in awe as I began the first song.
Maybe he was stronger than all of us put together.
Darla
November 2001
Kids treated me differently after that at school; they said that my mother had killed herself like her father. They said other horrible things to, but I tried not to let it affect me. I knew her and had seen it all, well most of it.
She and Thomas’ house sold after her death. With two major music markers gone, it made it very valuable. I remember walking through the gardens one last time which she had worked so hard on, going to ruin. I wondered if the new owners would revive them.