Page 16 of Duplicity

It’s going down tonight then.

Cat frowned. She glanced at the young woman across the circle and listened for a bit about her baby son and how he was teething. She shared a smile with the woman.

Simon bounced his knee up and down. The real guy behind the fake persona seemed distracted. He didn’t want to be here—which admittedly wasn’t so dissimilar to her first time—but this seemed like a protest rather than a general reluctance.

What was his deal?

Rebecca sent Cat a knowing smile.

“Oh, no.” Cat chuckled. Where Rebecca would normally invite a person to share whatever they wanted, her friend knew she could call on Cat to share something specific.

Simon shifted in his seat.

Rebecca pushed back a hank of her purple-tinted brown hair. “Catalina, I seem to recall you visiting us somewhat reluctantly the first time.”

Cat laughed. “That’s putting it mildly.”

She’d squirmed. A lot like Simon had been doing. Along with being on his phone. This was a trauma survivors group, so if he stuck it out, he would find solutions for his need to disassociate by connecting instead with whoever was on his phone. She did it as well with social media and games that passed the time. A way to feel better. But it didn’t solve the underlying problem.

Disassociation never did.

She said, “I’m happy to share something.”

Simon glanced from his phone to her, but she didn’t look back at him.

Rebecca lowered her clipboard to her lap. “Would you like to tell us how the group has helped you or something you might be struggling with at the moment?”

She could talk about Arlo and their conversation at the prison, but it was all a little too raw right now. She’d cried it out at the prison, sitting in her car waiting for the air-conditioning to cool the interior of her car.

The last thing she needed was to drag back up the details of a police investigation. Or speak in a way that let people believe the police had somehow covered up the truth.

That wasn’t the case.

She only believed that enough people had taken the easy way out, the truth that amounted to the lowest common denominator. Figuring that the dangerous person was off the streets. Some kind of street justice. Did the details matter when everything was settled?

That line of thinking wasn’t the way her father had raised her. Cat might not be a beat cop anymore, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t keep working it.

“Cat?”

“Right.” She cleared her throat.

Cat could put herself out there so Simon would be comfortable enough to talk about whatever it was he’d come here to share. A tiny note inside her said it might not be a coincidence that he showed up at her group tonight, of all nights, but the respect she had for this group meant she’d do what she could to help it work for him.

“This group probably saved my life,” Cat said. “I was healed. Physically, anyway. PT was done, but the scar on my leg wouldnever go away. Everyone seemed to expect me to be better, but I was still the rookie cop lying on the floor of that convenience store calling in an ‘officer down.’”

Simon shifted in his seat.

“I’m always going to carry this scar.” Cat touched the front of her hip, where it met her thigh. High on her leg was the visible reminder of her pain. So easy to cover it up with clothes. “But it’s the brokenness on the inside that I’m still figuring out how to heal. Maybe it won’t ever be completely gone.”

She glanced at Simon then and would’ve sworn she saw a sheen of tears in his eyes. He glanced down at his lap.

Rebecca gave her a soft smile. “Some elements of what happened to us, we need to release. Some, we hold on to because it’s what keeps us going and tethering ourselves to the good that we found in the middle of it—or the hope that exists in dark places.”

“What if there’s none of that?” Simon paused, as if he hadn’t intended to say that. “What if there’s no good? No hope?”

Cat turned to him and saw what existed in everyone who needed to be in this group. In him, it surprised her. The depth. The sorrow. Who was this man? He couldn’t be more than twenty-four or twenty-five, about the same age as her. Why did it seem as though he was far older, maybe in experience? Trauma had aged him. Taken him places he never wanted to be.

For a second, it scared her.

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