Chapter 10: Chapter Ten--Two Orphans
Kalvyn snarled something unintelligible, and I was vaguely aware of people moving farther away. Not that privacy mattered. He’d opened the flood gates. Perhaps I’d had one beer too many. However, for the first time, in a long time, I wanted to talk about it.
“I came home from school one day. I blasted through my chores. Even cleaned up his random messes so my grandmother didn’t have to. I was normally home alone in the afternoons. I didn’t think anything of it. I made myself dinner, just like any other day.” I tipped my head forward, so my bangs fell over my eyes. “I thought I’d burned something. The smell in the house was just so off. It made me sick, and I ended up tossing my dinner. I was anxious, but I had no clue why. I became restless and wandered around the old house. The garage was last on my list. I hated going in there. My dad spent most of his time in there, locked in and alone.”
My breath hitched.
Kalvyn rubbed my back. “It’s okay, baby. What happened?”
“I don’t know what made me try the handle, to find it unlocked. The smell was so strong, I had to breathe through my mouth. I opened the door, then realized the deprave depths life could truly get.
I swallowed the bile, staring into the fire. “Dad took his own life.”
He hissed, then clenched his fists. “Katrina, just how old were you?”
“Nine.”
He growled low his throat, a thunderous sound that stilled the night. That sound spoke to me, stroking the dark place inside of me where my anger lived.
The place that remembered the neighbors busting into our house to find me still screaming. To the state, who tried to pry me away from my grandma, the crazy lady no one in Harbor liked. But she was a tough lady. She fought for me, body, mind and soul, up until the day she died, three days after my eighteenth birthday.
“My grandmother saved me. I still live in her house that she left me, with all her worldly possessions. Lola moved in with me two years later.”
“You are too young, for so much hardship. What do you want from your life?” He asked, voice tight, although something close to neutral.
I stared off into the darkness of the trees. “I haven’t thought that far. Life just sort of runs you over and steals any sense of purpose sometimes. Or, maybe, life just stalls. You sit there, look around yourself, and wonder, where am I at? Where am I going? What’s the reason for all of this?”
“You seek to fill this empty gap you’ve found within.”
“Sometimes. But with what? My practical skills are severely lacking. I like to cook and read. I don’t want to become a chef. Besides, owning more books than anyone knows what to do with isn’t something I can put on a resume or a college application. Although, despite it all, I’m sort of well off. Between my dad and grandma’s wills, I can live the way I want to. I never got to the finding oneself that so many young people do. I had been forced to get to know myself far earlier than any of my classmates
The firelight played over the planes of his face. His green eyes glowed again, absorbing the light, instead of reflecting it. We stared at each other for a long time, as the others partied around us. He never blinked, never moved. I suspected he’d stopped breathing.
I couldn’t look away if the forest burned to cinders.
“Why am I even telling you all of this? You know, psychiatrists get paid hundreds of dollars to listen to crazy people babble.” Something I could relate to by experience.
He laughed without humor. “You aren’t crazy. I doubt you ever were. And I like to listen.”
“Even about this?”
“Like was the incorrect term. I wish to get to know you, and for you to get to know me. Sharing parts of our pasts builds mutual trust. And I very much want you to trust me, Katrina.”
“You’re a strange guy, Kalvyn.”
He kissed my knee. “That I am. Would you care to take a walk with me?”
“To?”
He snorted. “Any direction, there will be trees.”
“True.”
“So, is that a yes, or a no?”
I pursed my lips. “You going to get us lost in the dark?”
He shifted onto his haunches. “My lady, you wound me with your suspicion.”
“It’s a valid concern.”
His fingers encircled my wrists. “I'd never allow you lose your way, Katrina.”
I loved how he said my name. “All right. But not far.”
“Where is your sense of adventure?”
“That implies I had one to begin with,” I replied with a smile.
He grabbed two beers, and we trekked out of our little chunk of civilization. The music and laughter gave way to nature’s quiet peace. Crickets sang to one another. Farther down the incline, the ripple of water against sand and rock was constant, lulling.
Kalvyn’s thumb rubbed a soothing rhythm across the back of my hand. Tiny cracks widened in the fortress I kept around my heart. Years of pain and misery living in a small town, with my flavor of baggage, had caused me to erect barriers higher than the Great Wall of China.
He lifted me over a fallen log, as if I’d weighed no more than a feather.
“I know that look.”
I smirked. “What look?”
“You’re in a dark place. Memories haunt all of us,” he said. “The past is there to help us learn from mistakes. This is how we grow. But, if we constantly rerun them, we will end up in a rut and wallow there.”
“Can you read my mind?”
He drank his beer, seeming to think about that. “I have many abilities, Katrina. That is not among them.”
I worried my bottom lip with my teeth. “How did you get to be so wise, for a guy that’s so young?”
“I’m older than I look.”
“How much?”
“A lot.”
Okaaay.