The Naked Man — Chapter 13

It took three hours of calling before Linda Mills finally picked up the phone.

“Mom! Mom! Are you okay?”

“Yes, dear. I’m fine. Why are you yelling?”

Kat adjusted her tone. “Mom, Daddy was here.”

“Yes, dear,” her mother said. “He said he was going to stop by on his way — out of town. You sound hysterical. Is everything all right?”

Kat stood in her mini kitchenette, tearing open a box of marble pound cake. She hacked off a slice and set to work. “Oh, I don’t know, Mom. Do you think everything is all right?”

She heard a sigh from the other end of the phone.

“Mom, I don’t understand any of this. When did the house get sold? Where were you when all this was happening?”

“Honey, your father is — going through a change. It’s not something you need to concern yourself with.”

“Where is Daddy really going?” she finally managed.

“I’m not sure, dear,” came her mother’s response. “Someplace exotic, like Algeria or Brunei.”

Her father, the nice man with the vegetable garden was going to Algeria? She didn’t see her father wearing his plaid golf pants and white shoes wandering the streets of Brunei. Her mother had left the realm of reality as well. “Mom, aren’t you angry…shocked… hysterical? Why aren’t you hysterical?”

“Well, dear,” she said. “I never wanted to disturb your fantasy about your father, but he’s an ass. He always was. I just didn’t have the heart to tell you.”

Kat pictured Linda Mills, prim and proper mother, with her shoulder length chestnut hair styled in a perfect bob, wearing her buttoned down dress with a cinched waist, saying the word “ass.”

“Sweetheart, what else did he say to you?”

Kat replayed that last moment in her head, her father standing by the door and kissing her forehead. “I’m very proud of you, Katerina. You’re going to do something big. I know it.”

“Nothing,” she said to her mother.

Finishing off the slab of pound cake, Kat opened the fridge door, grabbed the bottle of chocolate sauce, and gave a generous squirt into her mouth. Something Linda Mills would not approve of.

“Mom, how did he manage to take everything?”

“Well, it was all in his name…”

“So what? You’re his wife. You’re entitled to half.”

The question was met with a small, bitter laugh from Linda Mills. “Oh Katerina, my dear girl, what does it matter now? The less you know about all this . . . unpleasantness, the better for you.”

A feeling of helplessness swept through Katerina. This doesn’t make sense. “Mom, what are you planning to do?”

“I’m moving in with Ethel and Rachel. They have a house together and since I’m destitute, they’ve offered to give me a room. They said it’ll be our little commune, filled with sisterly support and affection.”

“Mom . . . are Ethel and Rachel lesbians?”

“Yes, dear, but they assured me I don’t have to swing that way if I don’t want to. It’s just until I figure out what to do. Dear, I have to go. It’s my turn to prepare dinner. You’ll be okay, won’t you? You’re a smart girl. You always were. Call me Thursday.”

Katerina sat with the phone in her lap for a long while. She scanned her small, shabby living space, settling on the pile of mail on the stand near the door. The top envelope bore the insignia of the university. The tuition bill. She thought she only needed fourteen thousand dollars. She was going to need more than that. A whole lot more.

Or what?

No apartment.

No college.

No law school.

Go big or go home, baby.

Home wasn’t there anymore.

She got up and flipped off the light. The miniscule living room slipped into darkness.

She would go to bed early and get up early to study.

Then she had to go to work.

She had to begin surveillance on Felicia Reynolds tomorrow.

She had to plan a theft.

She had to.

She needed this job.