“Apparently the day started out pretty good,” Ron told Kara. “The kids opened their presents. Eric had gotten Kitten a new iPhone which she had been complaining they couldn't afford but which she really, really wanted. The twins were actually engaged with the family, rather than spending every minute texting their friends or updating their Facebook pages.”
Kara nodded in understanding. The twins, like most teenagers these days, were completely absorbed in their electronic worlds. When they'd gone skiing at Snowline Lodge this past August, they'd been so obsessed with their phones that they'd practically been texting while racing down the slopes. It was easy to see why Kitten—especially in the needy mood she'd been in lately—would have found it flattering and uplifting to get the full attention of her children. “So what happened?”
“As the day went on, the twins started making plans to meet their friends and Kitten started moping. Then Anne called to share her excitement and—”
“Oh, no,” Kara whispered.
How could Anne be so insensitive? Everyone knew how frustrated Kitten was that she hadn't heard from her birthmother yet.
“That's right,” Ron said. “After the news, she upgraded from Irish coffee to straight scotch. I, um, don't know if you've noticed, but Kitten is flirting with a drinking problem.”
“You'd have to have your eyes shut not to see it,” Kara told him.
“Well, after getting more and more upset as the afternoon wore on, she apparently decided to go out and talk to me.”
“Talk to you?” Kara repeated. “Why would she—”
“I don't know,” Ron interrupted her. “I mean, I
am
her brother, but...Hell, she didn't come to see me or even call. I was probably just an excuse she gave to Eric.”
“He let her go alone?” Kara asked thinking about how drunk Kitten must have been.
“It's probably more accurate to say she wouldn't let him come,” Rob told her.
“And where did she go?” Kara asked.
“That's the question,” Ron said. “Where did Kitten go?”
Kara looked out the window into the falling snow wondering how they were supposed to find Ron's sister in this storm. It would be a near impossible task in good weather, but now? “Where do you want to begin?”
Ron slowed for a traffic light. There were very few other cars on the street with them but he gave his vehicle plenty of time to roll to a halt. “The only place I can think of is your house,” Ron said.
“My house?”
“Yeah, she did say she was looking for me and she knows where it is because she and her family helped us move me in. It's a place to start.”
Yes,
Kara agreed mentally,
it's a place to start all right. But where are we going to look when she's not there?
What she said out loud was, “Okay, let's start at my house.”
* * * *
Chapter Twenty
“So where do we look now?” Kara asked.
As both of them had suspected, there was no sign of Kitten waiting for them at Kara's. Her old Ford Taurus was not parked in the driveway or by the curb and no one was sitting shivering on the porch. Of course there was no way to tell if she had been here earlier and left. The snow was falling rapidly enough to cover any tire marks pretty quickly.
“I don't know,” Ron said. “This isn't like when I found you after you drove off the road last New Year's. Kitten wasn't driving from point A to point B. She could be anywhere.”
“Do you think that maybe she went to your parents?” Kara asked. It seemed unlikely considering how upset with them she was, but she felt the need to suggest some possibility—any possibility.
“I don't think so,” Ron said. He dropped his head back against the headrest. “Let's face it. I have no idea where she could be. I'm just going to drive around aimlessly looking for her car.”
“It will be hard to spot it in this snow,” Kara told him.
“I know,” Ron agreed. “And
hard
is an understatement. This is going to be impossible. Do you want to get out and go inside while we're here?”
“What?” Kara asked. Ron's question genuinely surprised her. “No, of course not. I want to stay with you.”
“Okay then,” Ron said.
He eased the car back in gear and pulled away from the curb.
“Maybe she's drunk enough and upset enough,” Kara said, “that she went to your old apartment by mistake.”
“I suppose that's possible,” Ron agreed, “and it's better than just driving around the city hoping we find her.”
He turned left at the end of Kara's street and started off toward his old apartment. It was in the same general direction as his parents’ house. All of the Miller children had made their homes in a sort of circle a few miles out from Hanna and Howard's home.
“What are you going to do when you find her?” Kara asked.
“What?” Ron said. Her question seemed to surprise him. “I'm going to take her home.”
“And what if she doesn't want to go?” Kara said.
“Why wouldn't she?” Ron asked. He kept trying to look at Kara while he drove and it was making her nervous, especially in this snow.
“It's okay if you want to keep your eyes on the street,” Kara told him. “And what I mean by my question is that Kitten is obviously hurting, and you're somehow part of her pain. I think you need to talk to her about what's going on in her head. I don't think you should tell her this tonight, but Kitten obviously needs professional help if she's going to cope with her feelings of abandonment and low self-worth.”
This time Ron kept his eyes on the snowy street when he answered her. “I, um, I don't know what to say to her. I don't really understand why she's so mad at me.”
“I'm not a hundred percent certain why she's mad at you either,” Kara said, “but it's obvious that she connects your birth with her feelings of abandonment.”
“She thinks that when I came along, Mom and Dad stopped loving her and gave all of their attention to me. It's ridiculous.”
“I don't think it's that ridiculous,” Kara told him.
Ron jerked his head so quickly that the car swerved dangerously and skidded on the snowy street.
“Watch your driving!” Kara shouted at him.
Her right hand gripped the door handle for support while she used her left to brace herself against the dashboard.
Ron fought with the wheel for a few moments and finally got control of the automobile again. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I...this is hard for me, too. Not just for Kitten.”
Kara eased the pressure with which she was bracing herself on the dashboard and tried to relax. It wasn't easy. Ron was normally a good driver, but tonight he couldn't seem to get his act together. “Maybe you should pull over and let me drive,” she said.
Ron raised an eyebrow at her like Mr. Spock did on TV but otherwise ignored the suggestion. “Why don't you think it's ridiculous?”
For a moment, Kara couldn't pick up the thread of their conversation.
“You said Kitten's ideas about me screwing up the family weren't that ridiculous,” Ron reminded her. There was a clear note of anger in his voice that proved to Kara how disturbing he found this whole situation
“I didn't say you screwed up your family,” Kara insisted. “What I said was that from Kitten's perspective, it is easy to see why she blames you for the changes in your family dynamic. Your mother was obsessed with having a biological child and everyone knows that you're her favorite. But at the same time, your birth was proof to your father that your mother had been cheating on him and it was probably the beginning of his shift toward extreme misogyny. As Anne and Kitten got older, your father began to include them in his general dislike of all women. You got from both parents the love and attention that she desperately needed and to some extent, she's displaced her anger at them onto you.”
“But I always thought Kitten liked me growing up. I mean—we were buddies. It's only been lately...”
“That's why you need to talk to her, Sweety. You have to figure out what's wrong now and why her finding out that she's adopted is leading her to hate you.”
Ron turned a corner again and the car drove by Hollow Lane and Ron's old neighborhood.
“Wait a minute!” Kara called out. “Turn the car around.”
Ron immediately slowed the car, pulled the vehicle over near the curb and then executed a broad u-turn in the street. “What's up?” he asked.
“Remember when we drove by here yesterday you said this was the place where your family was happiest?”
Ron's brow furrowed as he thought back to Christmas Eve. “I don't think I said that exactly,” he said.
Understanding suddenly lit his face. “Oh, I get it. That's a really good idea.”
He turned onto Hollow Lane and slowed the car again so that they could look out at the street as they drove past. “Do you see her car?” he asked.
“Ron,” Kara said, “I love you dearly, but one of these days you're going to realize that I don't remember cars better than people like you do.”
He grinned—actually grinned—at her joke. “It's a 1999 Ford Taurus,” he said. “She's got a green model, although I doubt we'll be able to see that with all of this snow falling.”
Kara began peering at the cars parked on her side of the street. “There's snow all over these windows,” she said. “Do you think she'd be sitting in the car with the windows covered?”
“I hope not,” Ron said, “because someone is likely to call the police if I pull over and they see me wiping the snow off every car parked on this street.”
“Then how are we going to know if she's in one of them?” Kara asked.
“I don't know,” Ron told her. Then he pointed at one of the houses. “I think that's the one we used to live in,” he said. There were lights on in all the windows and a brightly decorated Christmas tree visible through one of them. “Do you think she might have knocked on the door and asked to go inside?”
“I hope not,” Kara said. “This just gets more and more impossible.”
Ron used the next intersection to make another u-turn and start back up the road.
“I...you're right. This is impossible,” he admitted. “I want to help Kitten, but we're never going to find her like this.”
He pressed the gas pedal a little harder and the car picked up speed. “I guess I ought to call Eric and tell him we've struck out.”
They reached the end of the street and turned back on to the main road while Ron dug in his pocket for his phone.
“Wait a minute,” Kara told him. “I think I know where she went.”
* * * *
Chapter Twenty One
Ron parked his Jeep next to a snow-covered Ford Taurus in the parking lot of Albert Einstein Elementary School.
“Anne and Kitten went to school here,” Ron told her. “They loved this place. That has to be her car.”
Kara pulled her gloves on to her hands, took the time to secure her scarf around her neck, and then braced herself for the snow.
“Are you ready?” Ron asked her.
“Yes,” she said and opened her door.
The temperature had been dropping while they drove—either that or the toasty warm interior of the car left her particularly vulnerable to the frigid snow-filled air outside of it. She gritted her teeth and stood, her feet sinking into what was now a three or four inch accumulation. Ron shut his door and leaned over the Taurus beside him, cleaning the windshield with his gloved hand.
“Is that her car?” Kara asked.
Ron shrugged. “It's the right color and it's a mess inside, but I can't really tell for sure,” he said.
He came around the vehicle to take her hand. “You think she's up on the hill?” he asked.
“That's what I thought before I realized how cold it's gotten,” Kara said, “but now I'm not sure.”
“Well, let's take a look,” Ron suggested.
Still holding her gloved hand in his, he led her around the building and onto a snow-covered blacktop playground. The snow made the footing particularly treacherous, but even though they slipped and slid a little, they managed to reach the grass on the far side of the pavement without either of them falling.
“Can you see her?” Ron asked.
Unfortunately, the snow was falling heavily enough to limit their effective vision to only fifteen or twenty feet. “No,” she admitted. “Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.”
“That's probably her car in the lot,” Ron reminded her. “Let's climb the hill and see what we find.”
The hill loomed in front of her, taller than anything else in the area. It wasn't going to be an easy hike. If the footing had been treacherous on a level playground, how much worse was it going to be ascending this slope? “Okay,” she agreed.
She tightened her fingers on Ron's hand and took her first step. Her boots were designed for fashion, not the weather, but she did okay anyway. Ron's strong arm continued to support her and while he slipped once himself, overall he did far better at finding sturdy places to set his feet than she did.
About two-thirds of the way up the hill, Ron stopped climbing while he pointed toward the top. “There she is!” he announced.
Kara squinted against the falling snow and made out a blurry shape huddled at the top of the hill.
“Kitten!” Ron called out to her.
His muscles flexed as he helped Kara climb a few feet higher.
The shape stirred, and snow dropped off of Kitten's green and white coat. “R-ron?” she called back.
She sounded cold and disoriented to Kara.
“Yes,” Ron called back as he and Kara climbed higher. “Kara's with me! What are you doing out here?”
Kitten was obviously aware of how ridiculous she looked—sitting on the snow-covered ground while yet more snow fell atop of her. “I, um, wanted to think for a while,” Kitten said.
“And you can't do that inside where it's warm?” Ron asked.
Kara suspected he thought he was being funny, but it didn't come off that way.
Kitten's voice lost any hint of embarrassment and became sulky. “What are you doing here?”
Ron finished leading Kara up to the top of the hill. “Eric called me,” he told Kitten, leaning down to get a better look at her. “He's worried about you. I told him I'd drive around and see if I could find you.”