Page 48 of Everything She Feared

Dr. Mehta removed her glasses, tapped the arms to her chin.

“Tell me about your family again, as far back as you can remember.”

“Well, my dad died when I was little, so I don’t remember him so much. Sometimes Mom shows me videos of him holding me when I was a baby and stuff. Then later my grandpa got sick and died, then my grandma is in a place for old people where we visit her.”

“What about relatives on your dad’s side of the family, your dad’s mom and dad, your other grandparents?”

“We don’t have other relatives. We have friends.”

“And do you see them?”

“Not all of them. I mean, we used to visit, but not so much anymore, especially after—”

Katie stopped herself as if she’d opened a door to a forbidden room.

“Especially after what?”

Katie shook her head.

“Katie, whatever you tell me is private. I’m not allowed to tell anyone. I want to help you, but you have to help me. Okay?”

Katie looked at her.

“It’s okay, Katie.”

Katie swallowed. “Well, I think, it’s because of what happened to that boy I was with.”

“What happened to him?”

Katie blinked several times.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

21

Seattle, Washington

In the scatteredlight of the dawn, the stranger in the vehicle parked far down the street watched Sara Harmon’s North Seattle home through binoculars.

A shadow fell along Sara’s front sidewalk.

The view through the binoculars blurred, shifting and locking onto a woman and a dog, a leashed retriever, approaching the front door. The woman rang the doorbell, the sound carrying softly.

A few seconds later the door opened.

Sara appeared and hugged the woman.

A thread of their indecipherable voices echoed in the still morning air, floating down the street to the vehicle enveloped in the dark shade of maples.

The woman and her dog entered the house.

The windows of other rooms illuminated.

The binoculars raked over the house, the yard, the street and back to the house.

Ten minutes later the front door opened. Sara, bag in hand, appeared and was walking toward her SUV in the driveway when she stopped dead in her tracks.

Did she forget something?

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