The Blue Zone

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

There was only one place Kate could go.

Even though she’d been expressly forbidden to.

She stood in front of the white-trimmed blue cape in Hewlett, Long Island, and the WITSEC agent who had spotted her approaching on the street and intercepted her now held her tightly by the arm.

She had remained at the boathouse until after dark. It had taken her two trains and the rest of the afternoon to make up her mind. She knew she wasn’t followed. But she couldn’t chance they’d say no by calling. Where else could she go?

As the front door opened, Aunt Abbie’s eyes went wide. “Kate! Oh, my God, what are you doing here?”

It took barely a second for her mother’s sister to see that something was really wrong.

“It’s okay.” Abbie nodded to the agent, hastily pulling Kate in and throwing her arms around her niece. “Em, Justin, come down quick!”

Kate realized she looked horrible. She’d been huddled on the bank of the river all afternoon. She was cold and wet, her hair windblown and disheveled, her cheeks raw. Only a blind person couldn’t see that she’d been crying.

But the moment her brother and sister barreled down the stairs in a state of happy shock, everything brightened. Em screamed, and they hugged each other joyously, just as they had back at the boathouse in Seattle before everything fell apart. Em and Justin had been staying here since the funeral. Under guard. David and Abbie’s own kids were away at college. The plan was for them to remain here for the rest of the semester and start fresh in the spring.

“I need to stay here,” Kate said to Abbie. “Just for a day or two.”

“Of course you can stay,” Abbie said, hesitating only in trying to decipher the troubled cast on Kate’s face.

“You can sleep in my room!” Emily shouted, gleefully. “I meant Jill’s-”

“That’s okay.” Aunt Abbie smiled. “Jill wouldn’t mind. It is your room now. For as long as you want it. Yours, too, Kate.”

“Thank you.” Kate smiled back in appreciation.

“Why are you here, Kate?” “What’s going on?” The questions from Emily and Justin seemed to shoot at her from all directions. Right now she just felt so exhausted she wanted to collapse. They took her into the living room and let her sink into a chair. “Are you all right? Where’s Greg?”

“He’s working,” she said.

“What’s happened, Kate?” They weren’t crazy. They could read it in her eyes.

“Let Kate alone,” Aunt Abbie told them.

And something did start to revive her. Something Kate had been missing for a long time.

Her sister’s happy grin, her brother’s slightly dumb buzz haircut. Abbie next to her on the arm of her chair with a gentle hand on her shoulder. There was no confusion here, no doubt. They all looked like home to her.

Her Uncle David came home around seven. He worked in the city as sales manager of a fashion jewelry line. They had dinner in the dining room. Pot roast, mashed potatoes, gravy. It was the first solid meal Kate had eaten in days.

Everyone bombarded her with questions. How were things back at the lab? How was Tina coming along? What was going on with Greg?

Kate deflected them as best she could, telling them how he had gotten the position at New York-Presbyterian and how they could stay in New York now, and that was great.

Justin said they would be going to Hewlett High School for the rest of the semester. With a WITSEC escort. “Then, in the spring, maybe this private school, Friends Academy.”

“Jill and Matt went there,” Abbie said. “They’ve agreed to take them in.”

“Friends has the third-ranked squash team in the East,” Emily announced. “I’ll be able to start playing tourneys in the fall.”

“That’s great.” Kate beamed. She looked at Abbie and David. “Thank you for what you’re doing. Mom would be proud.”

“Your mother wouldn’t have hesitated to do the same for us,” Abbie said. She put down her fork and looked away.

And Kate knew she was right.

Later Uncle David helped Aunt Abbie with the dishes, giving Justin and Emily time with Kate.

They all went up to Em’s room on the second floor-their cousin Jill’s room-papered with magazine shots of Beyoncé, Angelina Jolie, and Benjamin McKenzie from The O.C. Kate curled up on the bed with a pillow, Em sitting cross-legged at her feet. Justin spun a desk chair around backward and flopped himself down.

Emily looked at her, concerned. “Something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong.” Kate shook her head. She knew her voice didn’t sound convincing.

“C’mon, Kate. Look at you. You’re pale as a ghost. Your eyes are totally bloodshot. When was the last time you took your medicine?”

Kate thought back. Yesterday, maybe the day before…What suddenly scared her was that she couldn’t recall.

“We’re not exactly idiots, Kate,” Justin said, “we all know the agreement.”

It was a condition of their aunt and uncle’s taking them in that Kate agreed not to come here without prior notice until things cooled down.

“Is it Greg? Has something happened? Kate, why are you here?”

Kate nodded. She realized when she walked through that door and saw their faces that they had a right to know.

“All right.” She sat up. “I don’t know how you’re going to react when you hear this. But Dad’s alive.”

They both just sat there staring at her for a second.

Emily’s jaw slackened. “He’s alive?”

“Yeah.” Kate nodded. “I spoke with him. He’s alive.”

Justin almost toppled over in his chair. “Jesus, Kate, you were just gonna throw that in?”

How much could she tell them? Without telling them everything. Margaret Seymour. Mercado. The picture she’d found. The truth about their grandmother and where their father had come from. How could she just tell them these things? How could she destroy their world, the way hers had been destroyed? Wasn’t it right to protect them? If not from harm, then at least from knowing too much.

“Where is he?” Emily asked, dumbfounded.

“I don’t know. He said he would contact me. The police want to find him, in connection with some stuff that’s been going on. But he’s okay. I just wanted you to know. He’s alive.”

A blush of excitement, then confusion, rushed into Emily’s face. “Doesn’t he want to see us? Does he even know about Mom? Where, Kate? Where on earth has he been all this time?”

Kate didn’t answer. She just kept looking at them. She knew exactly what was in her sister’s mind. Something between shock and anger.

“There’s something you’re not telling us, Kate, isn’t there? About why you’re here. Mom’s dead. We’re in the goddamn Witness Protection Program! You can tell us. We’re not children anymore.”

Justin stared. “Dad’s done something really bad, hasn’t he?” Kate didn’t reply, but it was as if the question had already been silently answered. As if he understood. “We’re not just hiding here from Mercado, are we?”

Kate’s eyes glistened, and she slowly shook her head. “No.”

“Oh, God…”

Kate had made up her mind. Before she even came here tonight. What she had to do. She just needed to see them first.

Because they could still be protected, couldn’t they? They could still go to school. They could laugh, play squash, hang out on weekends, take the SATs. Live out their lives. They could still feel hope and trust. They didn’t fucking have to know.

A pall came over Emily’s face. “Are you in danger, Kate? Is that why you’re here?”

“Sshhh…” Kate put a finger to her sister’s lips. She reached out, and Em just leaned into her. Even Justin didn’t resist and joined them. They put their heads against her shoulders. Stared up at the ceiling. She drew them close.

“Remember when we used to sit in your room, like this?” Kate said. “You had those stars. And we’d talk about when you were gonna get that first kiss… Or how you told me about the night you snuck out and took Mom’s Range Rover after Mom and Dad were asleep-and picked up your friend Ally?”

“You took out the car?” Justin asked.

“Duh!” Em snapped. “If you weren’t stuck to your computer all the time like some stupid cybergeek, you might have a clue!”

“I never told.” Kate squeezed her shoulder.

“Of course you never told. What are you, some kind of Mom-and-Dad spy?”

For a while no one said anything. They just lay there, looking at the ceiling.

Then Emily asked, “What’s more important, Kate, knowing that your family loved you, even if they might not be the people you once thought? Or seeing them as they really are and feeling totally betrayed?”

“I don’t know,” Kate answered. But for the first time, she actually felt she did. Her father. Greg. She’d made up her mind. She locked her fingers tightly around theirs. “How can you really love something that’s not the truth?”