Page 14 of Safe With You

A weak smile wobbled on her lips, her chin dipping in a nod.

One memory rose to the forefront of Ethan’s mind. “She always made the best peanut butter cookies.”

“Yeah, she did.” Now, Katie’s voice wavered. She blinked rapidly, but a tear spilled over, and she rubbed it away with the cuff of her sleeve.

It hurt so much to see her suffering when he was powerless to do anything about it. It always had been. If only he could fix it, but death would only be fixed in eternity. “I’m so sorry for your loss. I know how much she meant to you and the shelter she provided.” He drew a deep breath. It was time he told her he wasn’t ignorant of what had happened when they were kids. Maybe it would help. “I know things weren’t good for you at home…and what Grant did.”

Her deep brown eyes widened. “You know?”

“The bruises were hard to miss, even when you tried to hide them.” He clenched his jaw at the memories and caught the way she tugged her sleeves down like she always used to do. Cold stabbed into his chest, freezing his lungs. Was she still being abused? Was Drew hurting her? But he halted the runaway thought. She’d been in short sleeves yesterday, and he hadn’t noticed any bruises or signs of mistreatment. Likely, she still did it instinctively—a habit born from the trauma of her childhood.

She seemed to process the fact that he knew for a long moment. “How did you know it was Grant?”

The memory returned to Ethan all too clearly. “I saw him grab your arm once in the parking lot at church. I guess he thought no one was looking. But I remember how scared you looked, and that’s when I started piecing things together.”

“How old were we?”

“Twelve, I think.”

Katie hunched in on herself, looking painfully small and fragile, and Ethan’s heart squeezed. He regretted so much looking back on that time. So much he felt he should apologize for.

“I should have said something to someone. I didn’t know what to do and was afraid to say anything. I’m sorry. I’ve regretted it all these years.”

Despite how he’d failed her, Katie shook her head, straightening up again. “No, don’t. You were just a kid. I don’t blame you for not saying anything. I’m not sure anyone could have done anything anyway. Grant has this scary ability to act so normally in front of others, and I was too scared to say anything too. Not even Grandma could stop it. She tried and warned him she would turn him in, but he just threatened to get lawyers involved and keep me away from her. Being an attorney, he has a lot of legal aid at his disposal. And once we were out of state, there wasn’t much she could do.”

Ethan stared at the lake for a long moment, the guilt still weighing on him. He hadn’t known what to do either, and when he’d tried, it had only made things worse. Much worse. Finally, he looked at her again. “Did he hurt you often?”

Katie rubbed her right wrist. “Sometimes. It depended on his mood and what I did or if he had a bad day at work. That was the worst. He’d take it out on me if he felt even the slightest bit disrespected or upset about something that happened.”

“Was it just you or your mom and Christopher too?”

“Just me.”

“Your mom didn’t stop it?”

Katie exhaled something like a bitter laugh and shook her head. “She hit me too sometimes. I don’t know if she was just concerned about maintaining her relationship with Grant or if I reminded her too much of my dad. All she did when I would cry to her was tell me I shouldn’t have done whatever I did to make Grant angry, like it was my fault. They always made me feel like I was at fault for what they did.”

Ethan had to fight the bitterness welling inside him. Though he’d had a pretty good idea of what was happening, hearing it from her left his stomach in knots. “I can’t even imagine hurting or allowing someone else to hurt your child.”

“She has always had problems. I don’t know why when Grandma and Grandpa were such good people. I think she has abandonment issues from when my dad dumped her. My guess is that she never opposed Grant because she was afraid he’d leave her too and ended up falling into the same habits.”

“Your dad didn’t just abandon her. He abandoned both of you.”

“Yeah, but she couldn’t take it out on him. That just left me.”

It was an awful situation to be abused by one parent and essentially discarded by the other. “Do you ever hear from him?”

Katie rubbed her thumb over the lid of her coffee mug and breathed out heavily. “I contacted him once a long time ago out of curiosity, but he has a family and didn’t want to mess it up, so he asked me not to contact him again.”

Ethan winced, and Katie gave a sad smile. “I know. When you break it down like that, I come from a wonderful set of parents.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I never really expected anything from him. I’ve never been part of his life. He never even saw me after I was born.”

Ethan couldn’t imagine being the type of man who knew he had a child and never wanting to see them. Neither could he imagine how difficult it would be not to have loving parents.

He looked off in the direction of the cottage again. All he wanted was to give Katie some encouragement or comfort. “Do you want to see the cottage? I have the key.”

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