Page 74 of Strangers She Knows

“What is it about some people? Why do they hurt the ones they should love?”

Great. The big interrogation, and of course Max was gone. Wouldn’t you know when the questions got tough, he’d be flying in the opposite direction? Kellen tried to dig down to the basics, and didn’t try to pretend she knew the answers. “Some say people are all the same. But they’re not. There’s a big fight called, ‘Nature versus nurture,’ and that means, ‘Are we born the way we are, or does the way we’re raised form us?’”

“And?” Rae had crossed from torment into belligerence.

That was fair; Kellen was pretty peeved herself. “There’s no answer, but I know what I think.”

Rae trudged along, pushing her bicycle. “What?”

“I think it’s a little of both.” Kellen stopped outside the garage door. “‘The flame that melts the butter, tempers the steel.’ Can you figure out what that means?”

“No!”

“If you want to melt butter, you put it over a fire. If you want to temper iron, make it hard, like the steel on the body of that pickup—” Kellen gestured into the garage “—you put it over a fire. It’s the same fire, but completely different reactions because the material you start with is different.”

“So everything depends on how we are when we’re born?”

“And how we’re treated as we grow and live. Some people have an easy life. Some people walk through hellfire to get where they’re going. None of us ever knows what goes on in another person’s head and heart and life.” Kellen went inside, got her bike, came back out into the sun and found Rae standing mulishly still.

“Mommy, you didn’t answer my question.”

No, she supposed she hadn’t. “I guess I don’t know the answer.”

Rae shouted, “That’s not funny!”

Overwhelmed with a surge of love and empathy, Kellen caught Rae in a sudden fierce hug.

Rae resisted, then hugged her back, her face pushed hard into Kellen’s chest. “I don’t want to see it anymore—Dylan and all that blood.” Her voice was muffled. “Every time I let my mind drift, it’s there. I don’t want to see it. I want to know why it happened. I want Jamie to be alive. I want to be safe.”

Kellen understood that, all right. “You want it to be last year.”

“Yes!”

She stroked her daughter’s tangled hair. “Yes. Things were simpler last year. Except they weren’t. I was in rehab and I used to wonder if I could ever fight enough to get better. Your dad was working too hard and being too good, acting as both parents to you and providing all the support you needed. You were being brave for me; you never allowed yourself to have problems because I had so many. Even with all the challenges we have now, I still like today better, where I can be your mother and you can be the child. Right?” She shook Rae a little. “Right?”

Rae took three deep breaths and lifted her head. “If this is what growing up is, I don’t like it!”

Almost comical—but so not. “Growing up isn’t always bad. Sometimes it’s finding a good man like your father. Sometimes it’s seeing your little girl be brave and kind even though she’s scared.”

“Iamscared.” Admitting it seemed to help her. “What if we find Jamie and she is dead?”

“Then we’ll treat her remains with respect and when your daddy returns, we’ll take her to the mainland to be buried.”

“If she’s dead, she should be buried on the island. She loved it here.”

This smart girl was Kellen’s reward for years of trouble and pain. “You’re right. There’s the Morgade family cemetery. We’ll see that she’s placed there.” Kellen took Rae by the shoulders and stepped away. “Let’s go look for her.”

31

The Conkles’ house looked small, neat, surrounded by herbs, yet closed up, an enigma. In other words, exactly as it always had.

Kellen leaned her bike against the oak in the yard. She pressed her hand on Rae’s shoulder. “Let me go in first.”

“Take Luna,” Rae instructed. “She’ll protect you.”

“I don’t think there’s anything in there that will hurt me,” Kellen said.

“Have you never seenDead Like Me?” Rae asked in exasperation.

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