Kat looked at her hands. This was worse than seeing Kyle’s face. It was almost worse than thinking you were about to be found out as a murderer or a person lying about not being a murderer. Seeing Orla so lost, and imagining the end of her glass-working business, was almost worse than all the other terrible things.
“I don’t know what we should do with it all.”
“I’ll figure something out,” Orla nearly whispered, unconvinced. “So how have you been holding up?”
“I’m fine. I wanted to know if you’re fine. Orla, is there something I can do for you?”
Orla looked out through a fogged window. “Will you come with me?” It seemed like she’d been waiting to ask.
“To the studio?”
“No, to the beach. Most of the stuff washed away, but I hear some of it is still there.”
Oh God, Kat didn’t want to go back to that shoreline, the site of every recent tragedy in her life. Those waters just kept taking. “Yeah, okay.”
* * *
Minutes later, they were parking Orla’s car on the road and walking down the stairs toward the place where their house had fallen. Normally, Island Glass would be to their right, but today it was just their three-sided garage, still full of their glass-working tools, sitting before a void.
Orla went first. She was surprisingly eager. Why she hadn’t done this on her own, Kat couldn’t say, but there was a certain honor in being asked to accompany her. It was the last place on earth that Kat wanted to be, but she was also grateful for the closeness it intimated.
They walked quietly along the water’s edge, just out of reach of the waves, but close enough for their boots to leave deep impressions in the wet sand. Kat had one of Orla’s scarves wrapped twice around her neck. It kept whipping up into her face with the wind. If only Kyle hadn’t worn a scarf on that night, she thought.
“It’s not what I pictured,” Orla said as they arrived at their heap.
The pile of frozen sand, clay, broken floor planks, glass and domestic flotsam had settled into something semipermanent there on the beach, under a thin coating of fresh snow. Waves lapped at the eastern edge of it, but nothing budged. All the broken parts with their rough edges had fused together into a hideous icicle. It made Kat angry that local authorities hadn’t bothered to give this fallen existence an adequate burial. It was a corpse left to rot. No, it was worse than that, because the frigid weather would preserve it for months. It was a frozen corpse, incapable of degrading and deprived of burial.
Orla tucked a gray lock back into her hat. “It looks small.”
“You think?”
“I thought there’d be more here. There was so much of it when it fell.”
Kat considered this. “Cleaned up. Or washed away, I guess... I wish all of it would wash away.”
“No,” Orla scolded her. “You don’t want that. This is a gift. We can take something from this. And whatever we take can be a proxy for all the things we couldn’t take. Stories need a place to live, Kat. I don’t know how to take the stories with me without something to hold in my hand.”
Kat nodded. She didn’t feel the same way, but she liked the idea of it. And she had nothing left to hold.
They examined the pile. The broken remnant of a ceramic mug peeked up through the snow, the handle still intact. This wasn’t one of the artful pieces from the glass shop. It was a relic of their real life. Kat recognized the pale blue color and the chipped underside. It was a mug that Weeta had given Orla for some holiday many years ago, before Kat was in the picture. Best Grandma—that’s what it used to say. The mug had migrated from Orla’s kitchen to the counter of the shop, and up to Kat’s apartment somehow. It had become invisible, but now Kat could see it again.
Orla reached down and brushed the snow aside, revealing more clay and part of a console table. None of these sad, broken parts seemed worthy of Orla’s stories.
How tiny their life looked, buried in a heap for the world to observe and the vultures to pick at. Kat wondered if others had been there to gawk over the previous three weeks, or worse, if no one had been there at all and the world had already moved on.
Kat hated this pile. She’d owned nothing of value and wouldn’t miss any item in particular, but this stuff was evidence of her existence. She’d been here. And then, she’d been wiped away...everything but her body. Kat had the unnerving realization that if in fact she was going to prison and her body disappeared from the free world, she would be effectively erased. Her glass art was supposed to be her proof of existence. Now that it was gone, she would disappear completely.
“You know what I wish?” Orla said, turning toward the ocean. “I wish I’d taken on more apprentices. I think teaching you, and watching you grow, was the most enjoyable part of all this. I should have done it more.”
Kat’s mind stumbled back to reality. “I’m very grateful for it.”
“I know you are, love. You don’t have to keep thanking me. I’m telling you that it was as much for me as it was for you. I’m grateful too.”
Kat had the feeling that Orla was talking about everything now, not just the apprenticeship. She was grateful that Kat had dragged her flailing body away from the house as it fell off a cliff. She didn’t have to say that she was grateful for that, but she was.
“You’re a good teacher.”
Orla looked back at the pile. “Yes, I think I am. I should have taught classes or held workshops.” She pulled the hat from her head and let the chilly wind blow her hair about. “You know, these past weeks, I’ve been doing my best to move on to the next chapter, to accept that this career is behind me. But I don’t feel like an old woman yet. I’m not done. That’s the worst part of all this. If I were old and tired and spent, this would be easier. But I’m not.”
Kat pushed her hands deep into her pockets. “I’m so sorry.”
The ocean waves approached and toppled just a few feet away, unmoved by their loss.
Orla reached down and wrapped her fingers around the edges of a small book about glass-working technique from the 1970s. She jostled it free from the wreckage and inspected it closely. Its pages were frozen shut and its hardcover barely hung on, but it was a real thing that meant something once. “Let’s go,” she said.
They walked back the same way they came, stepping along the same footprints in wet sand.
When they got up to the road, Kat put her arms around Orla and hugged quickly. It was too brief for Orla to reciprocate properly. They didn’t do that often, touch. Restraint was a shared value between them. But Kat had the nagging sense that this might be the last time she’d see Orla—and the last time Orla would see her in this innocent light—and so it was a goodbye hug.
“I’m just gonna walk from here,” Kat said. “I’ll pick up the bike later.”
Orla nodded. “Okay, love. I’ll be in touch about the glass-working equipment in the garage. We’ll figure something out.”
“Okay.”
“And, Kat?”
She turned around.
“Call Sean.”
“Okay.”
Orla got in her car and drove away.
Kat began walking. The sidewalk had recently been salted and each footstep made a grinding sound as the pink granules scraped against cobblestone. She wasn’t going to call Sean, not yet. Their dynamic made her uncomfortable. He’d wanted her to stay with him because he was grateful that she’d saved his mother, and because he pitied her, but he didn’t really want her. She needed him to want her for real. Kat wouldn’t see Sean until he truly forgave her for what she’d done to Kyle. She would have to just wait for him to get there on his own. And if she were arrested for homicide before that happened, well, then it would be a moot point.
One thing was for sure, Kat wasn’t going to beg for anyone’s forgiveness. She’d done what she had to do in the moment. She was beginning to forgi
ve herself for it and she didn’t want to walk that progress back one step.
Kat wondered whether Sean was still in contact with Ashley. There was no way for her to really know. She seemed to have disappeared from their lives after the night in Hyannis, but Kat knew better than that. Ashley was too dogged and too hurt to just fade away. She may have given up on Hunter and Sean, but there was no way she’d given up on revenge. She was out there somewhere, still trying to bring them down.
Three guys walked past Kat on the otherwise empty sidewalk, laughing and smoking along the way.
She inhaled through their cloud. Strange how many people smoked on the island, particularly in the off-season. Kat imagined it was the influence of all the Eastern Europeans who came on work visas, but she didn’t really know. The smoking contributed to the general off-season mood of gritty survivalism and not giving a fuck for the conventions of the mainland. If Kat were a smoker, this would be a good time to have one, she thought.
Kyle was a smoker. She’d seen him with that one cigarette on their walk to the boat. His long, knobby fingers had held it at just the right practiced angle. He’d looked almost cool, but not entirely comfortable. Like all the mannerisms she’d observed on him that night, there’d been a self-consciousness to it.
Kat blinked and, when she opened her eyes, Kyle was right there in front of her.
She stopped and looked up into his face. He was clearer than usual. This wasn’t a feeling or a whisper, but a three-dimensional body. He was real.
Kat couldn’t move.
Kyle sucked angrily on the stub of his cigarette and blew a puff of smoke into her face.
She began to cough.
He smirked and blew another puff at her.
She coughed again, lightly at first, and then harder and harder until she was choking. Kat doubled over and put her hands on her knees. She couldn’t catch her breath. She was choking and gasping for air while, somewhere above her head, she heard Kyle laughing maniacally. He was watching her choke—maybe to death—and he was just laughing. She deserved it. As the smoke burned through her lungs, it felt like justice. She would die of ghost smoke inhalation right there on the street, and he would watch, and she would deserve it.
Kyle laughed.
Kat’s throat was closing, tighter and tighter. The more she tried to gasp for air, the harder it became.
Kyle laughed harder still.
You deserve this, Kat thought as she choked.
“Ma’am,” another voice said from afar.
You deserve this.
“Ma’am.”
There was a hand on her back, a real human hand. It barely registered through the panic and delirium, though. She needed oxygen. She would die if she didn’t get oxygen. Kat’s vision had blurred into nothing and a blackness was seeping in.
“Ma’am!”
She coughed and sucked, coughed and sucked, over and over until—finally—air flooded her lungs. Was she dead?
“Ma’am, are you okay?”
The pale pink salt on the cobblestone came back into focus and Kat could suddenly feel the cold ground beneath her knees. Someone was there, calling to her.
She wiped her mouth. For a half second, she thought she was looking up at Hunter’s father, Senator Briggs. He was tall and broad, with skin that had been creased by age, but softened by affluence. He looked happy even through his concern. But it wasn’t the senator. This was just another handsome rich man in an overcoat. He looked genuinely worried for her.
“Are you okay?” He helped Kat to her feet. “Do you want me to call for help? I think you had a panic attack.”
She looked around. There was no one else there. It was just the two of them: Kat and this impossibly well-groomed creature whose life was nothing like hers. She hated him, based on nothing more than what she could see. That was her first impression of this nice person who was trying to help her—that he was a lucky bastard to have been born him and not her.
The nice man stared at Kat.
She stared back as the world came into focus for her. This man had everything and Kat had less than nothing. She had a deep, insurmountable deficit. And that deficit was proof that the world was unfair. But it was also permission to do what survival demanded. Kat deserved to survive.
And then she knew what she would do.
“Ma’am, do you want me to call a doctor?”
“No, thank you. I’m okay now. I’m sorry to freak you out.”
“Please, don’t apologize. I just want to make sure you’re okay. Can I call you a car?” He searched his pockets for a phone.
“Yeah, thanks. A car would be great.”
Kat waited while the man summoned his car service with a few finger strokes. Yes, Kat would be perfectly happy accepting a free ride in a black sedan from a stranger, for goddamn once in her life. She might just ride it around the island for a while. She might sleep in it that night and make it her new apartment until this kind gentleman realized he’d been scammed. But of course, she would not do that because she had other things to do now. She had a plan.
The car arrived less than a minute later, as if it had been hovering just out of sight for whenever it was beckoned.
Kat thanked the man and slid into the dark, leather interior, which looked exactly as she hoped it would.
“Morning,” the driver said. He wore a suit and tie, which struck Kat as totally ridiculous.
“Fourteen Common Street, please.”
The driver looked into his rearview mirror. “That’s three blocks away. You sure?”
“I am, thanks.”
“Yes, ma’am. Water and pretzels are in the armrest.”
Half a bottle of Fijian springwater later, Kat was closing the car door behind her and walking up the front stairs to Hunter’s house. As had become the new norm, there were no visible lights on in the house. Hunter seemed to believe that an unlit home rendered him invisible. He apparently likened the police to a group of children in Halloween costumes. As if, upon coming to arrest him, they might find the porch light off and just move along to the next house instead.
She turned the knob and the door cracked open, so Kat helped herself into the shadows of the foyer.
Hunter was there in the dark. “Hey, I was wondering about you.”
“Can we turn some lights on in here? This is ghoulish.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” He led her into the den where he’d apparently been spending all his time. There were no windows in the den. “So? What’s going on?” he asked.
Kat sat at the edge of the couch. Hunter took the chair opposite her. This was the first time they’d seen each other since the morning after their night together, the morning of the landslide. They weren’t ignoring each other; that was understood. But the landslide changed the nature of what had happened between them. Their night together seemed frivolous in the wake of the fallen house. They were already in a morally gray area as far as Kat was concerned. She wasn’t officially with Sean when she slept with Hunter, but she was still trying to patch things up. Sean would have deemed it wrong, and he probably would never have done it himself. Kat felt guilty about it—and the part she felt most terrible about was how incredibly fun it had been. She was almost relieved to busy herself with the ghost of Kyle and her mounting paranoia to not have to consider what great sex with Hunter meant. She had no idea what Hunter thought.
Today, though, Kat was not making any decisions about those things. Today she was fixing other things.
“Hunter, I know we have a bunch of stuff to talk about. And we should get to that stuff—obviously—at some point. But right now, I’m wondering if the money is still on the table.”
“My dad’s money? Yeah, of course.” He was confused.
“Okay, good.” Kat unzipped her coat and set it beside her. “I think I want it now. May I have it quickly?”
&nb
sp; Hunter squinted like he was trying to read illegible handwriting. “Yeah, my father’s been bugging me about it. Of course you can have it. What changed?”
“How much is it again?”
“It’s 1.3 million. He said it was the remainder of an old account that he has offshore, something that he wanted to close anyway. What are you going to do with it?”
“Can I just...have it, for now? I’ll explain everything later. I’m sorry to be rude, but can I just have it?”
Hunter was dumbstruck. “Yeah, sure. I’ll call Lars right now and get it started.” He walked into the kitchen and made a phone call.
Two minutes later, Hunter came back and asked Kat to write down her bank account number while he held the phone to his shoulder. She found the number on her smartphone and scribbled it onto a notepad. He went back into the kitchen for more hushed conversation, and then returned.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You’re rich...for a poor person.”
He seemed irritated.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“The money will be wired to your account. Legally speaking, it’s a gift. If anyone asks, this was a gift from a friend. Do not report it on your tax return and don’t do anything conspicuous with it.”
Kat was surprised by how fluent Hunter sounded in this language of white-collar debauchery. “Okay, I get it.”
“This means that we never speak of that night again. Sean too. If either of you ever feel a stroke of conscience, know that my father will have you convicted of extortion. The money is probably already in your account, so it’s done, and we’re in this together now.”
Kat felt a little sickened by the terms, but excited too. Hunter would understand in the end...if this worked.
She stood up and put her arms around him. “Thank you. I’m going to explain this really soon. I just need to do this on my own first. I promise I’ll tell you everything.”
He nodded and watched her go.
Kat nearly flew out of the house, down the front steps and southward toward town. She felt suddenly warm and excited as she walked along the cobblestone, nothing at all like the harried weakling who’d collapsed in a panic on that very street an hour before. Now she had purpose. Because what she saw in the blurry haze of her fear was the opportunity before her: Ashley was going to lead the police to her, and so her life (and sadly, Hunter’s) was probably over. She could spend every moment leading up to her arrest in terror, or she could live like someone who had nothing to lose and devote her remaining time as a free person to making things right—or more right—for the people who deserved better. She was going to exact her own kind of justice on the world.
Everything That Follows Page 22