Read Kismet for Free Online Page B

with her and the horses.”
    What. The. Hell?
    Parker, still making eye contact with me, clears his throat. “Yes, sir. Like I said, I can come help mornings and evenings.” Cautiously, he joins us at the table and takes a tuna sandwich, finally breaking eye contact. “Things are slow at the shop right now anyway.”
    Obviously Parker had taken over his father’s mechanic shop, just like he always said he would. Thinking about that shop, I remember how he looked as a teenager, his greasy, white t-shirt hugging his muscles while his coveralls hung around his waist. He drove me insane then, and I would spend countless hours pining away for him. But that was the past. This is the present. I am a widow. A grieving mother. The girl that idolized Parker McKenzie is long gone.
    The kitchen, once the boisterous center of conversation, was filled with yet more uncomfortable silence.
    “It sure is great to see you, Katie,” Parker mumbles as he chews his sandwich.
    More awkward silence.
    The wind had been taken out of their sails. I was the pink elephant in the room.
    Everyone grasps at straws, trying to find some sense of normal conversation. Tommy wasn’t about to give up. “So, I saw Katie checking out that new Friesian, Pop,” he says, subtly redirecting the conversation. I hope he’s feeling guilty for doing this to me, but I seriously doubt it. Tommy never sees fault with anything he does—he is always right, and no one ever puts him in his place when he isn’t.
    “Ahh,” Pop smiles in my direction, “Onyx is a beauty, isn’t she? She’s still a bit wild though, I really need someone to break her in for me.” He looks to me, knowing that I have a weakness for horses that need rehabilitation. He’s hoping that I’ll say I’ll do it. But I won’t.
    Without waiting, I grab another sandwich from the plate and leave. I make it halfway down the hallway before the tears start to fall again, slow at first, then as a steady stream. It’s all too much. The pressure to move on is ludicrous. I throw my back against the wall, unable to help hearing the conversation that continues in my absence.
    “Damn, Tommy,” Parker starts. “You didn’t tell me she was that bad.”
    “We don’t know what to do,” Tommy answers. “I thought seeing you might help her.”
    “But it didn’t,” Parker adds angrily.
    Pop sighs. “She just needs time to heal. Like last time, only this time, it’s her whole world that has gone. It takes time to rebuild from the rubble, but she’ll start putting the pieces back together. We just need to keep surrounding her with love. She’ll get through it.”
    “She’s not the Katie I remember,” Parker mutters.
    Those few words cut me deeper than I expect them to. I don’t want to care what Parker McKenzie thinks, but I do. He might as well have stuck a knife into my heart.
    Thinking that I’m disappointing all of them, my body slides down the wall, the grief taking control again. Disgusted with myself, I realize that not only am I grieving for my family but for myself as well. The Katie they all knew died that day. She might still be here in body, but her soul is gone.
    “She’s in there, man,” Tommy chokes. “I know it.”
    In a heap in the hallway, I cry for him, for me, for them. Because I seem to be the only one who realizes that there is no saving any of us.
    We are broken.

 
     
     
    Under the circumstances, I shouldn’t feel what I feel. But seeing her again… holy hell. Looking at her beautiful face, knowing that she’s back, brings something buried deep within me back to life. The need for the booze and female company gone with a single look into her eyes.
    It scares me, feelings these feelings again, because they are feelings that I spent years trying to forget. But I know that I have to do something. As fucked up as it sounds, this is my chance to try and make things right.
    Without a doubt Katie’s hurting, and that makes me feel it too. My heart hurts knowing