Page 32 of Her Property

“James. He passed.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

He looked over at her. She looked genuinely sorry, not awkward like most people got when they’d stumbled on a sadness like this in regular conversation.

“It’s alright. It’s been a few years. Five, actually. But that’s why I’m starting this place up. It’s going to be for boys who were like him.”

“Like him?”

“Ones who might end up like him. Maybe if he’d had a place like this to belong to, he wouldn’t have ended up where he did.”

“Where was that?” she asked gently.

“On the street,” Jake said.

Cat

She shouldn’t have probed. And she sure as hell shouldn’t have told Alfred she’d come over here in the first place. What was she thinking, letting Alfred talk her intoactuallyspying on Jake?

She could see the pain etched across Jake’s face, the sadness and love for his lost brother as brutal and fresh as if it had happened yesterday. Jake told her James was on the street for years, that no matter what they tried, he kept going back to bad habits, bad places, bad choices. When they finally lost him—an overdose, the report said—they didn’t know he’d been gone until a police officer called to tell them he’d been found in an alley. His grandfather had died soon after, Jake said. A few years later, his estranged mother died too, who’d been closer to James, but who still left her boys to be raised by her own parents when she couldn’t handle being a parent anymore.

Jake had wiped a forearm across his brow as he stood there, as if they were talking about how the building was going; how the weather was growing cooler. Not how his mother had abandoned him and his brother had been lost and never returned. He didn’t seem to mind, but she could see it in the hard cut of his jaw; the way he looked out at the lake without really seeing. Five years was nothing for that kind of pain.

Cat had apologized for asking, feeling deep shame not just for poking at his traumatic past, but for how her own past hurts seemed laughable in comparison to his. Her parents and three siblings were alive, albeit not exactly a warm, happy family. She’d never been abandoned by her parents. She’d never run to the other side of the world and jumped off cliffs and swam with sharks to try to avoid the pain of what she’d left behind.

Shehadpoured herself into the law though—first in school and then at work, with a fury deep enough that now, fifteen years after her own trauma, she was beginning to crack.

She’d left Jake with the excuse that she’d been planning a walk. She left out the part that she’d already taken the walk; that she’d reached her destination but hadn’t followed through on her shitty assignment. After they’d parted, she decided to keep going and make it an actual walk. Alfred had told her about a path that wound up the hill separating his property from the hobby farm beyond. She’d laughed when he’d suggested a hike when he’d picked her up at her apartment, but she’d dusted off the unworn boots and thrown them in her bag anyway. She wasn’t one for outdoorsy stuff normally—but after talking to Jake she felt like she might not be able to breathe if she stepped in between four walls right at this moment.

Cat trudged hard up the hill now, until her breath came out in little bursts around her.

She shouldn’t have pushed, she thought again.

She shouldn’t have been there at all.

Cat wiped away at the sweat dampening her forehead. She shouldn’t have worn the big vest and sweater either. The temperature had dropped since yesterday, though it still wasn’t the cold one would expect in early November.

As she continued up the trail, her thoughts returned to Jake. How had two brothers turned out so differently? How Jake had funneled the early pain they’d shared into escapist travel and a business while his brother had gotten inexorably lost?

Cat had wanted to reach out to Jake while he casually passed on this painful history. She’d wanted to wind her arms around his neck and lean into him, bring him close and comfort the stiffness that had worked its way into his posture.

But what the hell was she thinking?

He didn’t need her to make himself feel better. He needed this camp. It was clear now that this camp was an homage to Jake’s brother. A way to make up for not having been there for him. It was likely that Jake could have been halfway across the world when his brother had died. Maybe he thought he could have done something.

Cat’s heart beat hard with the exertion, but also with the sick, clinging guilt at having gone down to Jake’s property with such ulterior motives. How could Alfred be so petty? This was his summer property, the place he spent his leisure time. He could concede whatever piece of land was in question without it having any measurable impact on him or the lake house property.

She’d been numb when she left Jake, unable to process the feelings spinning out from his story, but now, along with the guilt, her heart ached with sadness for Jake. As she made her way up the deceptively high hill, all she could think about was the hole in his heart his brother had left. Maybe that was why the two men were fighting so hard: Jake wanted the camp that badly, and Alfred knew it. If that was true, it was beyond terrible of Alfred. Clinging onto his fingernail of land solely because Jake wanted it badly enough. She had seen Alfred get stubborn in the past, so she wouldn’t put it past him. But it would be low for him. Maybe he didn’t know everything that had happened in the Colson family.

Cat paused, looking through a gap in the trees at Ruby Lake shimmering in the late afternoon sun. She should have pressed Alfred, not Jake. She should have demanded he tell her why he was so hung up on the property. Why he hated Jake for no discernible reason. Maybe he would have listened. But it wasn’t just that. She shouldn’t even be here in the first place. She put herself in this position by messing up so badly. Somehow, after all this time, no matter how hard she worked at making sure everything was taken care of, no matter how much she pushed herself, she still ended up messing up.

Screwing up that case at work was almost inevitable, if she really thought about it. She’d always mess up—it was what she did best.

Cat’s mind filled with the ancient sound of a car revving. Her heart jumped in her throat. She could see the crest of the hill up ahead through the trees and she began moving again, suddenly full of adrenaline.

Not now.

She pushed herself hard, beginning to run up the hill.

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