Read The Ninth Step for Free Online Page B

Kat said.
    “Married Phillip,” Livie said. “Was dinner terrible?”
    “No, at least I don’t have to go home with her nights anymore, lie awake listening to her headboard thump the wall.”
    “The circus of sex,” Livie said.
    “Starring Irma La Frog,” Kat said.
    The look Kat shared with Livie contained an entire sibling history of such nights, a sticky conglomeration of emotions: dark humor, the glint of derision, a studied forbearance. Kat sighed.
    Livie said, “You won’t believe who I’ve heard from.”
    “Who?” Kat’s brows rose. Her eyes were still swollen and her nose was scuffed and raw looking, but there was some color in her cheeks now.
    Livie took Cotton’s letter from her purse, regretting the impulse even as she slid it over to Kat, watching her, both dying for and not wanting her reaction.
    Kat unfolded the page, began sputtering almost immediately. “What in the--? I don’t believe-- How does he have the nerve?” She glared at Livie as if she were the one to blame.
    “When did you get this?” she demanded.
    “A few days ago.”
    “And you’re just now telling me? Where is he?”
    “Washington, the state,” Livie added.
    “I always figured he went to Mexico.”
      You and everyone else . The thought ran through Livie’s mind. But the only one who’d said it to her face had been that idiot detective, the investigating officer at the time of Cotton’s disappearance, Sergeant Loomis.
    “His buddies tell me your fiancé’s partial to the Yucatan. Margaritaville and all that.” Loomis had made the comment after he’d conducted a few cursory interviews. He’d pocketed his notebook, cracked his trademark moronic grin. “See you don’t hurt him too bad when he shows back up, Miss Saunders, ‘kay? I’d hate to have to run a pretty girl like you in on an assault charge.”
    Livie had wanted to slap the smirk straight off his flat, chinless, cop face.
    “You don’t suppose he’d come here?” Kat’s gaze narrowed. “You haven’t seen him?”
    Livie’s look said get real, while the voice in her head said, Only on every street corner, behind every bush. She’d been jumpy since the letter had come. She was having trouble sleeping. She toyed with her coffee mug. “I wish I knew why he wrote. Why now?”
    “Because he’s a worthless unfeeling jerk? A heartless bastard? It’s bizarre like everything else about him.”
    “Maybe he--”
    “You don’t think this makes up for what he did? You aren’t hoping for--?”
    “What? What would I hope for?”
    “I don’t know, Livie. You took it so hard when he left. It’s like something inside you broke, more than your heart, and if you ask me, it’s never gotten fixed.”
    “Because I don’t understand.” Livie slid off her stool and paced a short path over the heated bars of morning light that slanted across the floor. “Because I never had an explanation.”
    “Closure, you’ve never had closure.”
    “But what does that mean, closure?” Livie looked at Kat. “Everyone spouts off about it, but what is it exactly?”
    “It’s when someone who hurts you says they’re sorry. They explain--”
    “So what then? You tell them fine, it’s okay what you did? What if they murdered someone you love? Would that be okay?”
    “No, that’s not--”
    “How is an apology going to help me? I’m still here, thirty-five-years-old with no husband or children and no prospects. I’m alone, in an entirely different place than I expected--ahh--” Livie caught her lip, surprised to find she was close to tears. “You know what? Forget it. This is stupid.”
    “I told you, you aren’t over him.”
    “I am too. It’s just his letter, it’s opened it all up again. It isn’t fair.”
    “What isn’t fair?” Their mother spoke as she came through the kitchen doorway.
     “Hi, Mom,” Livie said.
     “Hi, darling. Oh, Cookie. I would have been here earlier, but traffic was-- What’s this?” She took the letter Kat thrust