Page 75 of Kingmakers, Year Three

We look at each other for a long time.

This is the most honest Cat and I have ever been.

So when she asks her next question, I feel compelled to answer, even though I never talk about this, ever.

“What about your mother?” she says.

“She left me, when I was ten years old.” I take a breath, wanting to stop, but compelled to tell her what I’ve never told anyone before. “My father was drinking. He was becoming more and more angry, and violent. Breaking things in the house. Throwing things at her. I don’t think he’d struck her yet, but he shoved her down and she hit her head on the dining room table. He regretted it afterward. He tried to pick her up, tried to apologize, but she ran and locked herself in her room and didn’t come out for hours.”

“I’m so sorry,” Cat says, her big dark eyes fixed on mine.

“They were happy once. They loved each other, and they loved me. But he was in pain. He was bitter. He drove her away. And she left. Just packed up and disappeared while he was out. She didn’t warn me. I came home from school and the house was dark and quiet . . . I knew. I just knew.”

Cat’s eyes glitter with tears. She blinks, and they run down her cheeks in parallel tracks.

“Dean . . .” she says.

“I don’t care!” I say, suddenly embarrassed that I laid open this wound for her to see.

Cat knows I’m lying.

“Can I ask you one last thing?” she says.

I don’t know if I can take any more questions. But she interprets my silence as assent.

“Why were you so sad the day that Ozzy’s mother died?”

I can tell she’s afraid to ask that question, but it must have been eating at her all this time.

I have to really consider it.

I know why I was angry—I had never allowed anyone to see me cry. I had never lost control like that.

But why was I crying in the first place?

I take a deep breath, trying to still the miserable pounding of my heart.

“I just . . . I just realized that no one would do that for me,” I tell her quietly. “Ozzy’s mother laid down her life for him. My mother left, and she didn’t even take me with her.”

I tried so hard to keep my voice steady, but it cracks at the very end.

I’m grateful that Cat puts her arms around me so I can hide my face against her neck.

“I’m sure she didn’t want to leave,” Cat says. “She must have been frightened.”

“I know,” I say hollowly. “I think he found her and killed her after. She hasn’t called or written in years.”

“Zoe says our father killed our mother, too,” Cat murmurs. “She says he let her bleed to death after her last baby.”

Cat holds me tight, squeezing me with all her might.

She’s small, but strong. It’s a good hug.

She draws back and looks at me.

“Your father was drinking . . . because of what Leo’s father did to him. Because of the burns.”

“Yes.”

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