Read Online Curiosity Killed the Kat by Elizabeth Nelson - Free Book Online Page A

her to explain further.
    “Oh honey, come sit down.” She gently took my hand and led me into her comfortable living room, depositing me on her couch.
    “Katherine, your mother passed away this afternoon.” She looked at me anxiously, afraid of my reaction to this horrible news.
    I just looked at her. I could feel my grip on sanity loosen. My mother could not be dead. She was my mother; the one person that was always there. Even though we’d never been close and there had been many times that we had gone months or even a year without speaking, I always thought she’d be there in case I needed her. And I’d never needed her cold logic and straight speaking more than I did tonight.
    “How?” It was all I could think to ask.
    “Well, we don’t know exactly. The doctors think it might have been an aneurysm. It was very sudden. She didn’t suffer honey,” she assured me. “ I was on the patio in back having a glass of ice tea and I saw her in her garden tending to her roses, you kno w how she loved her roses, and then suddenly she just dropped, right to the ground!”
    I couldn’t speak. It was as if this was happening to someone else. I could hear the words she was saying, but I felt numb and couldn’t think of how to react. She peered at me anxiously, but went on.
    “ Well of course I knew something was wrong so I ran over to see if she’d fainted or fallen.”
    She paused, choked up with emotion.
    “When I got to her honey. She was already gone.” She started to weep again at the memory.
    “I called 911 and they took her to the hospital, but there was nothing they could do. I’ve been trying to reach you ever since.”
    She pulled my head onto her shoulder and held me. I hadn’t checked my cell phone all day. I had turned it off because I was afraid of Steven’s call. That was why she hadn’t been able to reach me and I never heard her messages. I was silent. I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t scream, I didn’t feel anything. I wasn’t in my body, I felt like I was watching a program on television, that’s how removed I was from what was happening. It just couldn’t be real. If I didn’t react then it wouldn’t be real, I remember thinking.
    “She loved you so much Katherine,” she said as she gently patted my back. “I know she didn’t show it often, and god knows she could have been more loving to you when you were growing up, but Frank and I knew that she was doing her best and we tried to p ick up the slack when we could.”
    Her kindness pulled me back into reality and the weight of her news hit me like a train. At once I started to cry, great shuddering sobs that rolled through me and drew sorrow up and out of me from the depths of my soul. I cried so hard that I didn’t make a sound. Just tears and gasps of pain. I laid on her couch and gave myself up to my grief and fear. All of it, my mother’s sudden death, the discovery of Steven’s crimes, and my sudden escape from the only life I’d ever wanted pressed down on me and I cried like my world had exploded.
    Cecelia kindly left me alone with my grief. I could hear her in the kitchen filling a pot with water to boil for tea and pulling out saucepans to make me something to eat. The sounds were familiar and comforting and slowly my sobs eased and I came back to myself reluctantly.
    Self pity was an emotion I couldn’t afford right now. I had to grieve for my mother later, when the issue with Steven and Charlie and Sandra had been resolved. Right now I ha d to think clearly. The last thing my mother had told me when we spoke on the phone that morning had been how proud she was that I was finally reclaiming my independence from Steven. I couldn’t let her down and give up now. She would have wanted me to save this girl, and who knew how many other girls, from the horrible fate Steven and Charlie had been planning for them. Sandra was counting on me.
    “Mrs. Foote,” I called.
    At the sound of my voice, she poked her head out of the