~ 22 ~
Katrynn returned to John’s house—no, it was her house, too, now—alone after baby Ren’s party. All three cats sat in a row just inside the door when she let herself in.
Three cats because Lady Catterley lived with them now. After several hundred dollars’ worth of tests, the vet had posited that her shedding was a reaction to stress and suggested that she was lonely. Despite Cat having lived at the shop for years and seeming to be the least stressed-out cat on the planet, Katrynn had folded her into the Big Move. All three cats were fixed, so there was no worry about a population explosion.
There had been some light hissing at first, but they seemed to bond together against the, well, stress of moving. For a few days, all three had hidden under the sofa together. They’d all come out as a group occasionally to eat or use their boxes, and then they’d slunk together back to the dark.
Katrynn had worried that she’d fucked them all up, but then she’d come…home…from work and found John sitting on the sofa, surrounded by purring, stretched out cats. And Cat wasn’t shedding anymore. She’d been lonely.
John was not thrilled that there were three litter boxes in the little house, but there wasn’t much to be done about that. Katrynn had briefly considered moving George and Lennie to Cat at the bookshop instead of the other way around, but she wanted them home with her at night. So two people and three cats were now living in this cute but tiny house on the beach.
“Hey, butts,” she said as she came in and set her bag on the small dining table. George and Lennie did their usual loud greeting until they got some love. Cat was far too dignified to make a fuss, but she was, as always, willing to rub her head on Katrynn’s hand.
As she went to the kitchen and prepared their dinner, Katrynn wondered if she should call John. He’d left so mysteriously, with Nick and some of Nick’s men, and that had her worried. But he’d smiled and told her everything was cool, and Bev had told her to trust that, so she was trying to trust that. Besides, what did she think? That John had randomly run off with Nick to go kill somebody? Right.
Once the cats were feasting, Katrynn went into the little room next to the living room, the room that was the only true bedroom in the house. John had used it as not much more than storage: several guitars hung on a wall, and a few big boxes—some opened and combed through, some still sealed from his own move several years back—were stacked next to the closet door. Other random items had been scattered around, as if John had stuck them in here and closed the door and called it ‘put away.’ Those items were actually put away now, and her bookcases and packed boxes were in here.
John had offered to haul the bookcases upstairs, so that they could leave this room more or less empty until they were ready to make it a nursery, but Katrynn liked the idea of their baby having lots of books in his or her room. So she wanted the cases in here.
She was still in the process of unpacking the books to fill them. It took her a while to move in anywhere; she had to psych herself up to deal with every box. She knew that she’d feel better once the flux was over and she was actually moved in, and yet she could not spend more than an hour or so at a time on the work of unpacking—or packing, for that matter; John had finally done most of the packing up of the apartment himself, because she’d procrastinated more than he could tolerate. She was glad.
Moving was just so damn hard. And now half her things were languishing in a storage locker with half of his things, because all of their things wouldn’t fit into this little house.
She shivered and stopped that train of stress in its tracks. She wouldn’t do any unpacking tonight. Instead, she’d go upstairs and get in bed and read until John got home. It was getting late; he’d be home soon.
“Come on, butts. Let’s go get comfy.”
She fell asleep pinned under the comforter by snuggly cats. Alone.
~oOo~
What woke her up she couldn’t be sure, but it wasn’t John getting into bed. She was still alone. Light glowed up from below the loft, though. She recognized it as the light from the floor lamp in the corner of the living room. That lamp had a mica shade, so the glow had a reddish cast. She hadn’t turned that lamp on.
Then she heard the sound of glass touching glass, like a toast, or the neck of a bottle touching a glass during pouring.
“John?”
No answer. The cats still had her pinned, so she lifted George away and got up. She went to the half-wall of the loft and leaned over. That light was on, but the sofa was empty. “John?”
Still no answer. But someone was in the house. Was it not John? Had she just announced to a thief or someone even worse that she was home?
Her heart pounding, she tiptoed back to the bed and picked her phone up from the nightstand. She dialed John—and heard his phone ring below her.
But he didn’t answer.
Had someone hurt him and taken his phone and then come to the house?
Looking around the loft for a weapon, she found none. She eyed his favorite guitar, leaning against his nightstand, but even now, she couldn’t imagine doing anything that might damage it.
She leaned over the loft wall again. “John! Is that you?!”
“Yeah,” he said. And nothing more.
Her knees weak with relief—and yet some fear—Katrynn wended her way down the spiral staircase.
He stood at the kitchen island, a bottle of Jack Daniels on the granite before him, and a glass in his hand. Finishing what was in his hand, he set the glass down and refilled it, and Katrynn saw that a lot of booze had left that bottle since the last time she’d seen it. Which had been the night before. He drank the refill as if the liquor had no more kick than water.
Fear overtook her relief. Something was very, very wrong. Walking to the island, across from him, she said his name again, forming it into a question. “John?”
Even with her standing right there, he didn’t answer. But he did meet her eyes, and at what she saw in them, Katrynn nearly ran. Misery and guilt. And anger.
He was angry. He was furious.
At her.
“What’s wrong?” Fear had stolen her voice, and the words were barely whispers, but he heard her.
“Where is it?” His voice was almost inaudible as well, but it wasn’t fear that had dampened it.
“Where’s what?”
He made a sound that might have been a kind of laugh. “You knew.”
“I don’t understand, John. What’s wrong? What did I do?”
That chilling, stunted laugh again. He poured more Jack into the glass. This time, Katrynn saw the way the bottle shook in his hand. He was drunk and enraged.
She thought she might be in real trouble. Actual danger. Looking behind her, she considered grabbing her bag, which was still on the dining room table, and running away. She was wearing a pair of boxers and a camisole, but being seen in public in underwear did not seem to be her most pressing concern.
But this was John. He wouldn’t hurt her.
“Please tell me what’s wrong.”
He slammed the empty glass back on the counter, and it broke in his hand, but he didn’t seem to notice. “WHERE IS IT?”
“I don’t know what you’re looking for. Please, John. I’m scared.”
When he punched the counter, his fist landed right in the broken glass, and Katrynn saw it stab into his skin, but he still didn’t notice. “Do you know what I did tonight? What I saw? And you knew. You fucking knew!”
She had no earthly idea what he was talking about, and her brain was now so full of abject terror she couldn’t have made anything like a deductive guess. He came around the island, and Katrynn ran backward, stumbling over a chair, but he wasn’t after her. He stormed around the corner and into the little room that they wanted to be a nursery someday.
Feeling quite sure that she should be leaving the house, and that she absolutely should not get closer to him, she followed and stopped in the doorway.
He was tearing into her boxes, ca
sting aside her treasured books as if they were trash. They thumped and bounced, falling open around him, their corners crushing, their spines breaking, jackets tearing, pages folding.
“John, please. What are you looking for? The boxes are labeled. Let me help.”
He didn’t answer, and, too afraid to come any closer, Katrynn stood witness as he tore apart her books. Then he stopped. Staring into a box, he put his hands in and pulled up a stack of New Yorkers.
That was all it took for the scramble of confused pieces to align in her mind and turn all this horror into sense. She knew what he was looking for. But he wouldn’t find it in that stack. She had shredded that issue.
“John. What happened?”
He finally looked up at her, and she saw that misery was dulling his anger. “Where is it?”
“I don’t have it.”
He tossed the stack of magazines away and fell back on his ass. “You knew.”
Understanding that doing so might reignite that terrifying fury in his eyes, she nodded. “Yes.”
“You didn’t tell me.” He raked his hands through his hair. “You knew and didn’t say. Do you know what I did tonight? What I saw? And you knew.”
Not everything he said made sense yet, but Katrynn’s understanding had deepened and darkened. He knew about Atticus’s story. He had left the party with Nick, and he was now distraught over something he’d done. These facts were related.
Atticus had been hurt. John had been involved.
“Oh, God. John, what did you do? What happened?”
He dropped his head. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She had to break through this loop he was stuck in, and she was fairly certain that his mood had shifted so that he wouldn’t lash out at her, so she dropped to her knees and crawled to his side. Picking up his hand, she saw that a piece of glass was embedded in the side of his palm. She plucked it gently out and set it aside, then kissed the small wound, tasting his blood.
“I’m sorry. I was afraid people would get hurt, and I thought if I didn’t say anything, there was a chance it would fly under the radar and not do any harm.”
He laughed bitterly and pulled his hand away. “You were wrong.”
Katrynn swallowed down the lump of horror in her throat. “What happened to Atticus?”
“He’s dead.”
They sat in silence for a few beats, with those words hanging in the air like a miasma, and then John whipped to the side and puked all over the cast-aside New Yorkers.
“Oh fuck,” he muttered, propped on his hands over his mess. “Oh fuck, oh fuck.”
Her own shock too great to explore, she focused instead on John’s need. She laid a tentative hand on his back. “Did…did you…”
He shook his head and sat back, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “I was there. I brought him there.”
Katrynn felt tons of weight lift away at that shake of his head. John hadn’t killed him. But she didn’t understand why he’d been involved at all. “Why? What did that have to do with you?”
“I owed Nick a debt, and that was my repayment.”
“You owed…why?”
“For tearing up the shop. Because what I did put Calhoun in Nick’s way.”
Katrynn sat back, her hand over her mouth. In a way, then, everything that had happened was about her. John’s enmity for Atticus, the reason he’d punched him and started that fight, was her. And everything else fell from that. Atticus was dead because of her. John was racked with guilt because of her.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh, God.”
They sat on the floor together in the ransacked room, in total silence, for Katrynn had no idea how long. She wasn’t even sure what her brain had been doing in that time. The next thing she was aware of was a clear, strong, loud voice in her head. It said one word, one syllable. It said it once, and then it, and all the horror that had been whirlpooling in her mind, was silent. She had perfect clarity.
The word her mind-voice had said was NO.
“No,” she said aloud.
“What?” John asked, his voice hoarse and weak.
“No. Don’t carry this guilt. Atticus made his choices. He obviously knew exactly what Nick was capable of, and he woke the dragon anyway. You started a fight, yes, but he was right in there with you, and that fight didn’t kill him. Did you hurt him tonight?”
“I brought him to his death, Katrynn. Yeah, I’d say I hurt him.”
She disagreed. “Did you knock him out and wrestle him into a parcel van or something?”
“No. I asked him to have a drink with me and took him to Nick instead of a pub.”
“So he went willingly.”
John nodded.
“You say you owed Nick. Did you have a choice?”
“We always have a choice.”
“Would Nick have hurt you if you’d said no?”
John didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. Katrynn loved Nick. He had been nothing but a good friend to her. She thought he was a good man in his heart, and she knew he was a good and loving husband and father. But she was under no delusions about what Don Pagano did. She’d seen all the movies, and she read the news. People did what Nick wanted because they knew he wouldn’t balk at making them regret it if they didn’t. Whoever they were.
She picked up John’s hand and wove their fingers together. “Don’t take this on, John. Atticus knew what he was doing when he wrote that story. I knew when I read it that it would get him hurt or worse. I didn’t want to be a party to it, which is why I didn’t tell anyone. But it didn’t occur to me to do anything more to try to stop it, because I guess a part of me agrees with Nick. Atticus made his bed. I’m sorry you had to be involved, but you didn’t kill him. Atticus killed himself when he put that story in the world. Suicide by mobster.”
John blew out a breath that might have been part of a laugh. “How can you be so calm about this?”
“Because I love you. I love your family—our family. I know you, and I know Nick, and understand the way things work. I’m not happy it went down like this, but I won’t miss Atticus Calhoun, and part of me is glad you’re so upset. You’re the man I know you to be. You would never hurt anyone intentionally without good cause. And you feel the things you do. What you do, what it means, matters to you. That’s the man I love. That’s the man I know will be here for me, and for our children.”
John stared at her, and she watched his eyes. She saw the calm ease into them, like a buffer over the guilt and pain. She scooted closer, rose up onto her knees, and folded him into her arms. He held her in that vise-like grip that meant he needed her.
“I love you,” he whispered against her neck.
“I know,” she answered. “I believe you.”
~oOo~
Bev came in the front door of the shop, and Katrynn excused herself from her customer and went to give her friend a hug.
“You look fantastic,” Katrynn said as they stepped back. “Seriously great.” She did—she looked fresh and healthy and happy, and she’d lost weight—a healthy loss, not a too-depressed-to-eat loss.
Bev smiled brightly. “Thanks. I feel pretty good. I swear, Ren was a Buddhist monk in a past life, because he is so completely calm. He slept ten hours last night. He’s nine weeks old! I kept going in to make sure he was breathing. Nick was about to lock me out of the nursery.”
“You deserve a Zen baby after Lia and Carina. I’m going to start calling him Zen Ren now, you know.” Katrynn gestured for Bev to follow, and they headed toward the door to the staff suite. “Greg! I’m about to get moving. Grace will be here in about forty minutes.”
“No problem. Have fun!” Greg called from somewhere in the stacks.
She and Bev went to the back. They had a few minutes before they were meeting everybody else, so they sat at the table, and Katrynn made them tea. “How’s everybody else?”
“Good. Everybody’s good. In fact, I want to talk to you about something. I want to get back in
to the shop a little.”
Katrynn brought their cups over and sat down. “Yeah? That’s great!”
“Nick and I had…I guess it was a fight. We don’t do that very much, and there wasn’t yelling, but he was mad. Or worried, I guess. Anyway, I needed him to calm down. Before, I needed him to take care of me. I really did. I needed to give up and let him do everything for a while. But he got used to it, and when I started feeling better, he didn’t know how to back off. My therapist says that strong men need to be managed as much as weak ones do. She didn’t say it exactly like that, but that’s what I took from it. Who Nick is, his will is so strong that if you don’t stand up and face him head-on, he rolls right over you and doesn’t even feel the bump. From the beginning of us, that’s been true. But I could stand up until recently.”
Prayer (The Pagano Family Book 5) Page 32