Read Online And Then There Was One by Patricia Gussin - Free Book Online Page B

to St. Mary-of-the-Woods, an all girls academy run by nuns and catering to the rich. She, following in the footsteps of her three sisters, had a scholarship. She was one of three black girls in the class, and since it was a boarding school she’d had little opportunity to meet nice black guys. She’d been so excited when her mother’s friend suggested her son as a prom date. Keith was two years older than Katie and a student at Detroit Community College. He was fun, attractive, with lots of friends.
    They’d started dating exclusively almost immediately after the prom. Shortly thereafter, Keith quit school and got a job with FedEx at the Detroit airport loading and unloading planes. She and Keith were a couple through all four years of her college and into her third year of medical school. Had she been in love with him? She honestly didn’t know. She’d never dated anyone else. She’d had no frame of reference.
    About the time she started med school, Keith started to give her expensive gifts: a Rolex watch, dangling diamond earrings, even a car, not a new one, but a Mustang convertible. He shopped for her at designer shops, always pulling out plenty of cash. But he never made demands of her, understanding when she had to study, taking her to lavish parties only when she was free. They’d never talked of marriage, which suited her just fine as she was preoccupied with medical school.
    Her problem with Keith started abruptly. Keith had been brutally beaten and dumped along the road not far from the airport where he worked. A Good Samaritan had picked him up and taken him to a pay phone. She was the one he called to come get him. It was the night before her pediatric exam, but she went. He asked her to take him to a buddy’s house and to say nothing if anyone asked about him, especially the police. She begged him to let her take him to a hospital, but he refused. She took him to the address on the west side of Detroit, a place where she’d never drive on her own. She’d wanted to tend to his wounds, but he sent her away immediately. He shoved a shopping bag into her arms and told her to take it to her house and hide it in the back section of her closet behind a panel he knew was there.
    When she got home, she inspected the bag, found it full of white powder she suspected to be cocaine. Behind the panel, she found three other such bags.
    “My God, Katie,” Scott’s eyes had widened and his mouth gaped. “A dealer.”
    “I didn’t know, Scott,” she said. “I was home alone that night. I didn’t know what to do.”
    “Go on,” Streeter urged.
    Katie explained that her mom had been out of town visiting Katie’s oldest sister, Stacy. She called, got Stacy, and told her the whole story. Stacy left her mother at her house, took the next plane to Detroit, and together, they decided to call the police. It was the toughest decision she’d ever had to make, betraying Keith.
    She’d testified at Keith’s trial, her mom and Stacy by her side. But Keith’s mother had been devastated, and Katie had never been able to erase the look Keith gave her as they read the verdict, a look, not of hatred, but deep disappointment.
    Katie had been twenty-four, and she hadn’t seen Keith in the intervening twenty-four years. He was sentenced to fifteen years for dealing drugs. His mother stayed in touch with Lucy, but Katie had never seen her since that day in court.
    “Did Franklin keep in touch?” Streeter asked.
    Katie explained that at first Keith wrote her from jail, begged her to visit him, said he’d forgiven her. In letters she’d tried to explain why she could not. How vehemently she was against drug use. Hepromised to turn his life around. That she’d always be the woman for him, and he the man for her. How the thought of her was what got him though each day. She stopped writing back. Shortly thereafter she met Scott and never looked back.
    “How did Franklin react to your marriage to Scott?” Streeter