I need Katie.
Can I forgive her for what she did?
Work will take my mind off this... nonsense. Grabbing my phone, I look down at my screen expecting a message from work. There’s a text. But it’s in no way work related.
It’s from... Katie.
Darius. I know you’re hurt. I don’t blame you. I didn’t know what you were referring to when you were upset that night. We need to talk. Call me.
Just seeing a text from her has my heart pounding, my breath holding. I frown at the phone. I don’t want to call her. I’m apt to say something cruel and harsh if I do right now. I shove my phone in my pocket.
When I arrive, the sun’s setting low, casting golden fingers of light on the house, the fields, and the porch. I sigh. Katie would wax eloquent on something so grand but simple.
Katie, Katie, Katie.
She’s in my thoughts and in my dreams. I envision her here on the porch, sitting with a cup of cool lemonade and a plate of Gran’s cookies, telling Gran how delicious carbs are and how picture perfect her home is. I remember our time in the barn, how we acted like sneaky teens whose parents were about to catch them. I remember everything.
Gran meets me at the door, beaming. She holds the door open and lets me in. I drop the bags by the door, my stomach rumbling at the smell of her cooking.
“Is that beef stew?” I ask.
She chuckles. “How’d you know?”
It’s my favorite comfort food of hers, and she knows it.
“…And your biscuits?” I ask hopefully.
She waves a dish towel at me. “Don’t you know it.”
I bend low and kiss her paper-thin cheek. Her mere presence brings a small measure of comfort.
“Now,” she says. “You sit your citified backside at the kitchen table, and while we eat our dinner you tell me what happened.”
So we do. She ladles large bowls of steaming hot stew, laced with her thick-cut potatoes and green beans plucked straight from the garden. I tuck in, feeling better after only a few bites. When was the last time I ate?
She clucks her tongue. “Darius Morrow, I declare you’ve lost your heart for this woman.”
I don’t respond.
She sighs. “You look haggard, like you haven’t slept in days, and when was the last time you ate a decent meal?” I shrug.
The days blend when you’re grieving.
Am I grieving?
I’m absolutely fucking grieving.
Finally, Gran pushes her bowl to the center of the table, leans back, and laces her fingers on her knee.
“Now, Darius. Tell me what happened.”
So I do. I tell her everything. How Katie was writing a book and I thought I was her inspiration, how I actually felt honored that I was. But how the day she sent it to her publisher the news caught wind of every private detail of my personal life.
Gran frowns and holds up her palm to stop me. “Okay, now,” she says thoughtfully. “Let’s backtrack. Was she sending her editor chapter by chapter?”
I shake my head. “Well, no. She said that night it was time to send the completed manuscript.”
She shakes her head. “Well, unless her editor or publisher had a direct line to the press the second that manuscript hit her inbox, that seems sort of far-fetched, doesn’t it?”
It does. I nod slowly.
“She confirmed it, though, Gran. She admitted she did it.”
Gran tips her head to the side. “Did she?”
I think back to our conversation, trying to remember the details.
“I asked her if she… wrote about me. And she confessed that she did.”
Gran rolls her eyes. “And really, Darius. I’m sure you’re not happy if you feel she betrayed you, but even if she did put in the details of your past, is it anything someone researching your history wouldn’t have found out?”
She has a point.
“And didn’t she say, or I heard on the news, it was a Beauty and the Beast story? Well, she’s a beauty, but you’re no beast. Clearly, this is fiction.”
I open my mouth to speak, but she shakes her head.
Gran goes on. “And I may have only spent a brief time with Katie, but I’m an excellent judge of character. And I know there’s no way a girl like Katie would use you like that.”
I know it, too. God, I know it in the very core of my being. “Then what other explanation is there?”
Gran shrugs. “Who knows? I don’t know much about the Internet and publishing and how these things work, but I know a few things.” She gives me a stern look. “And you should know them, too.”
“Yeah?”
“When someone acts inconsistently with their character, you find out more. Don’t assume the worst. Ask questions.” Her voice grows more vehement. “Find the truth.”
She shakes her head. “For God’s sake, Darius, Tiffany’s the type that would use you for her own means. Not Katie.”