Page 428 of Lodestar

I didn’t mind being poked fun at, not when it made Kat chuckle. When I started tickling her and she shrieked in joy, I declared, “I’m not a cheapskate! Say it, Kat, say it!”

“Conor’s a cheapskate, Star!” She cackled when I made a mock growl and dangled her by her calves.

Star, staring at the pair of us, shook her head. “If she’s sick, you get to clean it up.”

“I’m not going to be sick!” Kat screeched then whooped when I hovered her gently above the floor.

“You gonna do a handstand for us?”

She pressed her hands to the floor. “Okay, let go, Conor!”

When she walked a few paces on her hands then did some flip thing, Star and I shared a smile—she was back.

For the moment.

That was how I ended up on the Staten Island Ferry just so I could glance at the statue I’d seen almost every day I’d been alive up close and personal.

On the walk to the terminal, Kat was her usual bustling self, oversharing about school and her fellow classmates. She bitched about her math teacher and jabbered away in Italian when Star prompted her to, earning an impressed look from a hot dog vendor who stopped trying to sell us pretzels long enough to chatter with her.

When we approached the waterside, her conversation faded, however. She was quiet as we stepped on board the vessel, quieter still as we rode to Staten Island and back again because the return journey had the best views of the statue.

When we approached Lady Liberty, that was the first time she let out a shaky sigh. “She’s so pretty. She’s what you fought for, isn’t she, Star?”

“I can’t say that I had her in my mind when I was in the sandbox, kiddo, but what she stands for? Sure. Liberty. Been fighting for that and justice my whole life.”

Kat swallowed. “The bad people who hurt you, they’ve gone away, haven’t they?”

“They’re in the process of going away,” she corrected.

Kat fell silent, her eyes big and round as she peered at the statue. A hat was tugged over her forehead and her scarf covered her from the nose down, so they were all that was visible. Then, she whispered, “My daddy’s name was Bogdan, wasn’t it?”

I stilled. It wasn’t exactly quiet on board, but the whisper had been so faint I could have misheard.

“You remembered that?” Star questioned, twisting on the faux-wood bench to study Kat.

She swallowed. “I did.”

Floating a theory, I asked, “You know when you go away, Kat, is that when you remember something?”

The little girl bit her bottom lip. “Yes.”

“Is that what you remembered today? Your dad’s name?”

She nodded.

“What else have you remembered?”

“My daddy used to make my mommy cry.” Her voice was so small, so fucking small that it made me want to break something. “He used to hurt her. Why did he do that, Conor?”

Christ.

“Because some men are very weak, Kat. They think it makes them ‘strong’ to scare someone, to hurt them, but it just makes them smaller.” Those big eyes of hers peered at me and I knew what she was asking. “I’ll never hurt Star, sweetheart. Or you. I promise.”

Slowly, she nodded, and her gloved hand reached for mine. As she knotted our fingers together, I didn’t think I’d ever been shown such a sign of faith, of trust, than I had at that moment.

I stared at Star over Kat’s head and saw the gratitude and the love beaming back at me and returned it with a smile.

Though it was a total tourist move, I let Star take a picture of us with NYC’s most famous lady in the background, mostly because I knew that shot would end up on my desk…

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