“Get out,” Kat growled.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Eva’s eyes trailed down Kat’s state of undress.
“Eva,” Nana Boo chastised. “That’s enough.”
“Get some clothes on and come downstairs,” Eva insisted through thin lips, ignoring Nana Boo. She shot daggers at Carter, causing Kat to move protectively in front of him. “Alone.”
“I’m not doing a thing—”
“Now, young lady,” Eva interrupted. She whirled like a dervish and marched out of the room, thumping down the stairway.
“What does she want, Nana?” Kat asked, desperate to feel Carter’s arms around her. He didn’t move.
His stillness and silence were terrifying.
“I don’t know,” Nana Boo replied with a despondent shake of her head. “I’m so sorry to both of you. She called asking if I’d spoken to you. I told her you were here together. I had no idea she planned on coming … I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Kat urged. “It’s her, not you.”
Glancing over her shoulder at Carter, Kat’s stomach rolled violently when she saw his face: angry, barricaded, and closed off from everyone around him.
Even her.
“I’ll give you a moment.” Nana Boo sloped out of the room, closing the door behind her.
Kat sniffed and moved toward her suitcase, ignoring the waves of dangerous calm rolling off Carter. When she started talking, the words came out quickly, bumping into one another.
“We’ll go. We’ll get out of here. I don’t want to be here with her. Nana can lend us the car again and I’ll grab my bag; you can grab yours—”
“No,” Carter interrupted.
She stopped, stock-still in the center of the room.
“Go downstairs and see what she has to say.” His voice was intense and direct, but his eyes flitted around the place, searching for a way out.
“But we can leave together,” she insisted.
Carter bent to grab his sweater. “No, you need to speak to her, Kat.”
Hurt gripped Kat’s heart. She folded her arms, holding herself together. “Why? Why do you want me to talk to her?”
“Because it’s time you did.”
She watched him sit and pull on his socks. “You … can’t leave,” she whispered. Her voice broke. “I need you here.”
“Kat.”
“Please, Carter. Don’t listen to her. Everything she says—it’s not true. It’s not. Please.”
Her breathing started to accelerate, as the thought of him walking out of the door grew more vivid in her mind. Unable to move from her spot for fear that she would shatter, she gasped, “Please. I’ll talk to her if you promise you’ll stay.”
They remained silent for an age, staring at each other, neither of them seemingly wanting to speak. The atmosphere around them was charged but uncomfortably different from how it normally was.
“Peaches, I can’t—”
“You can.”
“I’m no good for yo—”
“Don’t you fucking dare say that!” Sadness gave way to anger. “You are good enough! Christ, you have to know that!”
Carter didn’t answer and continued to look down at the floor. Kat’s heart fractured painfully. Jesus, they were back at square one.
Kat took a tentative step toward him. “Promise me you’ll stay. Promise me you won’t leave.”
He scrunched his eyes shut and bit his bottom lip, but she didn’t care. She needed to hear the words. At that moment, it was the most important thing. Nothing else mattered.
“Carter.”
“Okay,” he answered in a lifeless voice. “I promise.”
“Promise that you won’t leave. Say it.”
He lifted his head and looked at her, but something deep in Kat’s heart told her he was seeing straight through her, and it hurt. It hurt so much.
“I promise I won’t leave.”
He was so crushed, so broken, and Kat hated that she was helpless in putting him back together. “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”
Silently, she moved around the room, pulling on a pair of jeans and sneakers. She tied his T-shirt at her right hip and pulled her hair up into a loose ponytail.
“I’ll be right back.” She stood at the doorway with the crumpled brown envelope in her fist. “And then we’re out of here.”
“Kat, I—” She waited for him to continue but, instead, he cracked the knuckles of his right hand and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
With a lead weight in her stomach and a splintering heart, Kat opened the bedroom door. “I’ll be right back.”
* * *
She walked with purpose and dignity into the sitting room, unable to make out any of the words of the obviously heated conversation taking place between Harrison and her mother by a large bay window. The snow had fallen hard overnight, covering the gardens in a winter blanket.
Nana Boo was absent, which pleased Kat. Nana Boo didn’t deserve to see or hear what was about to happen. The fact that her mother had come into Nana Boo’s the way she had, and on Thanksgiving, made Kat’s teeth grind. Seriously, who was the parent here?
Kat stopped with a straight back, arms folded, when Eva caught her eye. “I thought you were at Harrison’s parents’? What are you doing here?”
Eva stared back. “Do not speak to me that way, Katherine.”
“And don’t tell me what to do,” she retorted. “How dare you come into my room, into Nana’s house that way?”
An edge of remorse stole across Eva’s mouth. “Nana is fine. It’s you I’m worried about, furious with, actually.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because my daughter doesn’t speak to me, answer my calls. My daughter, who not only works in a damned prison but is running around town with—with that—”
“Be careful,” Kat warned when Eva waved toward the doorway.
Eva blanched and a flash of hurt lit her eyes. “I am here to put a stop to this.”
Kat scoffed. “Do you know how ridiculous you’re being?”
“What is ridiculous is you’re putting your entire career, your reputation, and maybe even your life on the line for some delinquent waste of space—”
Kat flew toward her mother, stopping only inches away from her. “You do not speak about him that way!”
Kat’s proximity and the ferocity emanating from her every pore made Eva pause.
“Calm down,” Harrison said at her side. He raised his hand toward Kat’s shoulder but dropped it. “Just both of you, please, calm down.”
Eva swallowed. “You may not believe it, but I’m doing this because I love you, Katherine. The prison is no good for you. He’s no good for you.”
“You don’t even know him,” Kat spat. “You never even gave him a chance.”
Eva was incredulous. “And how was I supposed to do that when you carried on behind my back? I had to find out from Beth, from Nana!”
“And it’s such a big mystery why I didn’t tell you!”
“Because you knew it was wrong!” Eva countered. “For God’s sake, you could get into so much trouble.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
Eva’s face grimaced in puzzlement. “Then why are you—?”
“You have done nothing but make me feel like a disappointment ever since I started working at Arthur Kill. Nothing I’ve done since I took that job has been good enough for you; even the man I love is a disappointment in your eyes.”
Eva scoffed. “Oh, please, you don’t love him.”
“With everything that I am,” Kat said imploringly. “You have no idea what I’ve been through these past few months, Mom. How hard it was to face my biggest fears at Kill, to confront what has kept me awake for the past sixteen years.”
Eva’s face pinched.
“But Carter’s been there for me, with me, helping me and caring for me when no one else would.” Kat turned her face toward the ceiling, furious that her mother would even dare to cry. “When I left here that night, it was Carter who took care of me, and never once has he said or done anything to me that warrants such narrow-mindedness from you.”