It was a stark contrast from the shaggy-haired, clean-shaven man she saw five times a week.
There was a short bio next to the photo and Kenna absorbed those sentences with the ardency of a detective without a lead, jotting down the relevant pieces.
-has been w/ the university since 2012
-graduated from UCLA
Returning to the search page, she selected the next entry, aBranchSpringHeraldfeature from 2015 headlined, ‘Ponderosa Psychiatrist FoundsRace to Remember.’
Kenna skimmed the article detailing the creation and first-year kickoff of the 5K dedicated to raising awareness for Alzheimer’s. While it offered next to no useful information, she gleaned that he was ‘a native of Oregon’ and that he was ‘passionate about giving back to the community.’
Except that was bullshit. A front for something ugly, something he didn’t want anyone to know about—and she had a feeling it tied back to Brandi’s sister.
She was well-acquainted with the sort. Giving back had always been the central philosophy of her church-going, orchard-tending family.
Where safe was synonymous with control.
Halfway down the page there was a photo from the event, captioned, ‘Dr. Merino and Charlee Pender, a psychology student at Ponderosa, pass out t-shirts to the run’s participants.’ She recorded the student’s name in her notebook as a potential future contact.
If Charlee had a similar experience to Brandi’s sister, Kenna may have been onto something.
A cool breeze stirred the night air as Dayton snapped a picture of Kenna’s bike leaning against the building’s black exterior. The idea of slashing her tires appealed to him.
She would approach him with the awful news, and he’d offer her rides to campus in a completely organic way. But as soon as he had tiptoed out of the trees, pocket knife in hand, his phone buzzed in his pocket. Nathan wanted to know about getting drinks, to which he responded with a polite no.
He didn’t dare leave the trees again.
The bike was sitting outside her apartment each time he stopped by that weekend.
Warm light flooded through the semi-sheer curtain guarding her bedroom, not extinguishing until one or two in the morning. What 21-year-old stayed cooped up in their apartment the entire weekend?
Either she was more of a brainiac than he had anticipated, or she was up to no good. He suspected the latter.
Though his hunting skills had been forced into dormancy during his two-year dry spell, the keenness of his intuition had not faded. Her preparations swirled through the air and enveloped his neck, choked by the imagined ribbon of her mistrust.
Three runs in two days barely qualified as out of the ordinary, but it was a sign—however small—of his building desperation. He was out of his element.
Even gathering intel on Kenna had been exhausting. Her file was chaste, leaving much to be desired.
Social media presence? Nonexistent.
She didn’t have a car to bug. What was he to do, place a GPS tracker on her bicycle?
Dayton’s late-night visits were often fruitless but he sometimes caught a glimpse of her, hair raising as her shadow drifted across the curtain.
It was satiating. For the moment.
This was how he’d confined himself to exist, chasing and being a part of something from a distance, hoping to gain an understanding of himself in the process. The spark of joy that came with the eventual physical contact was designed to be ephemeral and he held onto them like treasure.
Memories that lived on once the girls had gone.
9
JUST AN ASSUMPTION
Students filled the library’s long oak tables, all finishing presentations or delegating responsibilities for group projects.
Kenna didn’t mind the din of quiet conversation and she had minimal interruptions at the checkout desk as she buried her nose in the spine of her social psychology textbook. The aged smell of the weathered pages riddled the space with the potency of an incense stick. Their first test was fast approaching and she had to ace it.