Page 93 of Last Chorus

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

evangeline

The call comes at a few minutes past seven that evening. Wilder and I are on the couch, where we’ve been trying to distract ourselves with a cooking show. The second his phone starts vibrating on the coffee table, I fumble for the remote and mute the television. He sits up, takes a deep breath, and answers.

“Hey, Kendra.” He listens for an excruciating thirty seconds, his impassive expression never changing. Then he says, “Yep,” and offers me the phone.

My heart skips a beat, my thoughts freezing. I stare blankly at his lifted hand until he lowers it and mutes the call.

“She wants to talk to you, but if you don’t want to…”

His gentle tone restarts my brain. “No, no. It’s okay.” I take the phone and unmute it. “Hello?”

“Hi, Eva. Thanks for speaking with me. I won’t keep you long.”

Kendra sounds shockingly different, her voice mellow and mature. Thrown, I stammer out, “H-hi. How’s it going? I mean, how are you? Besides… everything.” I grimace, embarrassment flooding my body. Wilder grunts in amusement, his hand squeezing my knee but retreating before I can slap it.

Kendra’s laugh is breathy with relief. “Oh, good. I thought I was the only one with sweaty armpits right now.”

My shoulders relax a fraction, a smile twitching my lips. “Definitely not.”

“I’ll get right to it, then. I know you’ve been through hell, and this weekend was probably torture because Wilder hasn’t told you what my role is in all this. I didn’t want him to give you false hope. But now that it’s happening, I wanted you to hear it from me first.”

I glance at Wilder, confused, but he merely nods encouragingly.

“I’m listening.”

“Wilder told you some of what I went through as a teenager, but what he didn’t tell you was what happened right before I left Seattle. That day you found me screaming at him in his bedroom? It ended up being rock bottom for me, too. I went straight to my parents’house afterward. I was out of my mind, out of money, and was planning on stealing some of my mom’s jewelry. But when I snuck past my stepfather’s office, I heard him and Clay talking inside.”

She takes a deep breath, and I hear a woman’s soft murmur on the other side of the line. Her voice firms. “My stepfather has always had a short fuse. He once threw a paperweight at a wall in his office and put a hole right through the plaster. He never fixed it, just hung a photo of himself and some politician over it. On the other side of that wall, there’s a small closet. I don’t honestly know what possessed me, but I remembered that hole and hid in the closet to listen to them.

“I’d always known they were shady, but the things they were talking about… it was another level. Blackmail and extortion, exploiting witnesses and minors, the list goes on. They dropped names. Talked about a ‘black book.’ Basically incriminated the fuck out of themselves and their buddies.”

I gasp in understanding. “You recorded them.”

“Sure did,” she says with grim amusement. “I stayed in that tiny closet for over an hour, listening to them jack each other off over how smart they were. They eventually left to go golfing. When I was positive they were gone, I went into the office and straight to the wall safe. My mom had let the code slip once when she was drunkoff her ass. I opened the safe and stole everything in it. Jewelry, a few watches, some serious stacks of cash, and that black book.”

Chills drip over my scalp and down my body.

“I went straight to a seedy pawn shop and sold what I could. A few hours later, it finally occurred to me how much shit I was in. But I also felt this sense of freedom and… rightness, I guess. I packed a bag, ditched my car, and caught a bus out of town. By the time I reached Idaho, I was dopesick as hell. I also knew it was only a matter of time before those assholes started looking for me, and I wasn’t about to be outsmarted by them. So I holed up in a motel and detoxed, and I’ve been clean ever since.”

She pauses, then continues mutedly, “You’re probably wondering why I’ve kept everything to myself all these years. Honestly, I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me for it. If I’d handed the book over to the police, you never would have gone through what you did with my stepbrother. He’d be behind bars where he should be.”

My throat tightens, cutting off a protest before I can voice it. Because she’s right. Even now, resentment prickles over my skin. But it’s also not black and white, my emotions complex. I feel sympathy and sadness for her, too.

When I don’t say anything, Kendra adds, “I know it’sa weak excuse, but the simple reason I never came forward is fear.”

Compassion for her drowns out everything else. “Of course you were afraid. You’d been abused and traumatized by them for a decade!”

There’s a small, teary laugh. “Yeah, that played a role for sure. Plus, their goons almost caught me twice. After the second near miss, it was obvious they just wanted their dirty secrets back. When I realized my actual life was in danger, I stopped making amateur mistakes. After running for close to six months, I landed in a tiny town on the other side of the country. I met my wife, Kelly, at my first job here. We have two kids now, twin four-year-old girls.”

She pauses, and the woman in the background murmurs something I can’t hear, her tone comforting. Kendra takes another deep breath.

“I guess as time went on, it became easier to convince myself the past was just the past. I had a new life—I just wanted to forget it all, you know? Then I saw a photo of you and Clay online, and I’ve been wracked with guilt ever since. I wanted to reach out to you, but all that fear came right back and paralyzed me. I’m sorry, Eva. I’m so sorry I didn’t stop him. I’m sorry for putting you in his path in the first place and for how I treatedyou back then.” Her following sob is barely muffled by her hand.

Sympathetic tears prick my eyes. “Kendra, listen to me.” I wait for her to sniff and go silent, then soften my voice. “As far as I’m concerned, you don’t owe me an apology. Not to compare trauma here, but Clay never threatened my life. I’m sickened by what you went through and don’t blame you for wanting to keep yourself and your family safe.”

“I’m not sure I deserve that, but thank you,” she says tremulously. “When Wilder called me on Friday, I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do something. I already had a basic plan—a failsafe I put together when I was on the run in case something happened to me. Kelly helped me fine-tune and execute it.”

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