CATERINA


    “You know, we haven’t been out for another happy hour since that first one, where you bailed <b>on </b>us.”


    It isn’t until I realize everybody’s staring at me that I tune back into the conversation in the break room. It seems I’ve developed a bad habit of tuning out things that bore me, and nothing bores <b>me </b>more than small talk being exchanged around the coffeemaker. It’s either grin and bear it or not get a refill of coffee, and I need all the caffeine I can get my hands on today.


    “Are you talking to me?” I ask on a nervousugh.


    Todd rolls his eyes. “No, I’m talking to the other coworker who bailed in the middle of a happy hour the first time she ever came out with us.”


    “You honestly need to let this go,” Stephanie sighs while I sputter <b>in </b>confusion. “I swear, you are worse than a dog with a bone when you make up your mind to be pissed off about something.”


    Todd snorts. “I’m not pissed. I’m just saying we were all worried.”


    You didn’te off so worried about me.


    Sometimes I wish I had the nerve to say the things that pop up into my head. If I remember correctly, he and everybody else were busy having a good time, mming back drinks and dancing, while I was upstairs with Gianni, watching from the one–way ss in his office as we were… the muscles in my stomach tighten. This is not the best ce to think about that. It’s bad enough that I’ve been fighting memories ofst night all day long.


    “I’m still here, alive and well. I’m sorry things went as they did.” I make a big deal of checking the time on the microwave before anybody starts demanding specifics on what happened that night. It’s been weeks, for God’s sake, only Todd can’t seem to let it go. “I need to get back to my desk.”


    I’m starting to think Todd might have a tiny crush on me, which is a shame. Maybe if I didn’t know Gianni existed, things would be different. That’s a little difficult, since he does exist, and therefore no other man will ever measure up.


    It’s like living a double life sometimes. Going through my days as an average twenty–two–year–old working her first real, grown -up job while spending her nights as Gianni Rossetti’s slut. It’s precisely how I feel today. I’m more than a little ashamed of how easy it was for him to twist things around until he had the upper hand, bending me to his will.


    Out of all the ces I feel like being today, seated at my desk with an inbox full of spreadsheets to review has to be at the bottom. I might be here physically, but mentally I’m on another. Nothing could matter less than whether somebody put a decimal point in the wrong ce or didn’t use the correct form to calcte interest.


    In my head, I’m in Gianni’s house. Crawling on my hands and knees. Watching in the bathroom mirror while he fucks me hard enough to hurt me<b>, </b>maybe not physically but emotionally. Inside, in my chest where my heart is, he has peeled back theyers, refusing to let me see anything except him and me. It’s amazing I can still walk after what he did to mest night.


    My cheeks flush every time I think about it, meaning I’ve sat here all day looking like I have a sunburn. I can’t get him out of my head, but since when is that anything new? It’s times like this I wish I knew the magic spell that would break me free of his


    grasp.


    At the same time, to be free of him would destroy me.


    I would have a challenging enough time staying awake and alert if wasn’t already fighting for my life after a night spent tossing and turning. I worried Dad would be waiting for me when I got home. Thankfully, however, he was already in bed.


    At least his bedroom door was closed, though a light shone from underneath telling me he was inside. I figured it was better to stay quiet and tiptoe through getting dressed for bed rather than disturb him. His night with Ken must have been an absolute rager if he didn’t have it in him to fling the door open and demand a full y–by–y of the evening


    Instead of being tortured by his questions, I tortured myself for hours, wrestling with a sense of betrayal. What would Mom ihink if she knew I just got home from fucking a man not only old enough to be my father but also the man Dad mes for her


    death? What kind of person does it make me that I’m willing to have sex with the man, knowing how much Dad hates him? Tcan’t spend the rest of my life living like this. Forever torn between wanting Gianni and feeling like I’m being disloyal to my parents. It’s not that I don’t believe Dad’s theory about how Mom died–I’m willing to consider a lot of things<b>, </b>but seeing how far off the rails he seems to have gone, I can’t help wondering how much of it is in his head.


    No matter what, he believes it, and that’s bad enough. It involves everything he does now, along with the certainty of Gianni’s guilt. Until I find a way to prove he’s wrong, he will never ept the two of us together. How am I supposed to be happy if <b>it </b>means cutting him out of my life, which I would probably have to do? How am I supposed to choose between the man I love and my father?


    By the time I fell asleep, one thing was clear: I had to prove he was wrong, which meant figuring out how much of what he was saying was true and how much was what he wanted to believe.


    Now that I’m here, all I can do is stare nkly and wonder where the hell I should start.


    “Are you okay?”


    My head snaps up at the sound of Stephanie’s voice. She’s standing at the entry to my cubicle, leaning against the wall with her


    folded. I can’t tell if she’s concerned or judging me. “Yeah<b>, </b>why?”


    arms


    “For one thing, I’ve been standing here for a solid minute, and all you did was stare at your screen without moving. Second<b>, </b>you seem spacey.”


    “Oh. Yeah, it’s been a long… summer,” I finally conclude with a shrug.


    Then I wince, dropping my voice to a whisper. “Is it obvious? That’m spacing out?”


    “No, I’m not trying to freak you out. It’s the kind of thing the person who sits in the next cubicle notices.” She sets her coffee down on my desk before perching on the corner, like I invited her to or something. “What’s up? Is everything okay?”


    A lie is practically tumbling out of my mouth before I stop myself. Lies have be so much a part of my life recently I hardly have to think about them anymore. I don’t want to be a habitual liar. That’s not me. It also doesn’t mean I have to tell the whole truth, either. There’s an entire range of possibilities in between.


    “My dad’s been upsettely,” I mutter softly enough that she has to lean in closer. It’s bad enough I’m about to do this without letting other people overhear. “The anniversary of my mom’s passing set him off, and I got to thinking just how little I truly know about her ident.”


    “Oh, sweetie. I’m sorry.” She pats my shoulder a little awkwardly. I can’t me her. I just dropped something heavier than the usual office gossip on her.


    “When you walked over here, I was reflecting on that. On how I don’t know anything about how she died. I was eight, so it’s not like I was too little to understand what death meant. He must have deliberately kept things away from me, which has only made me more curious.” Biting my lip, I ask, “Is that morbid?”


    “Hell, no!” she whispers back. “It’s natural. Normal. Your mom died, and you don’t know anything about it. That would drive me crazy.”


    “I was wondering how to find out more information, although I seem to be drawing a nk.”


    “Have you looked up her obituary? What about reports on the ident?” Her forehead creases. “Sorry. Ipoly should’ve asked what kind of ident it was?”


    “Car.”


    “They might have written about it in the paper–especially since your dad is a cop. Isn’t that what you told me before?”


    “Yeah, that’s a good point.”


    “Was it when there would’ve been articles published online? Like, not so long ago that there wouldn’t be websites?”


    <b>I </b>snort, “How old do you think I am?”


    She shakes her head, grinning, “Okay, right. Have you ever thought of Googling her name?”


    Well, since she put it that way<b>, </b>I feel kinda dumb. “No, I haven’t. I start there.”


    “I’ll leave you to it–and, uh, pretend you aren’t doing this onpany time.” The big wink that follows makes meugh since she’s the queen of shoe shopping on herptop when she should be working.


    Once I’m alone again, I enter Jessica Cole into the search engine. Turns out there are lots of women with that name. After scrolling through the first results page, I add car ident into the search bar.


    I definitely wasn’t prepared for this.


    The first resultes with an image attached–a big, vibrant, full–color image of a mangled car. I let my eyes fall closed. I don’t want to look. I can’t look. Instantly I remember why I never Googled her name, even when the idea urred. She was dead, and nothing would change that, so why would I force myself to look at something so awful? It was hard enough being without her. I didn’t need another reminder of her not being here.


    Now, I’ll never forget the sight of the car with its tail end sticking out from where she ended up in the woods. I’ve imagined it so many times, yet nothing could have prepared me for the sight.


    Slowly, I open my eyes again. It was raining that day, and the cops clustered near the car wore ponchos over their uniforms. From the angle the photo was taken, I can see the deployed airbag. The car door is wide open<b>, </b>so I imagine her body was already removed when she was shot.


    There’s nothing left to do except click the link to the article from which the photo originated. It’s from the local paper published a day after the crash and doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Mom was thirty when she died–the mother of a young girl and the wife of a detective. As I read on, I find out that they med the crash on the weather. It was raining.


    The road could have been slippery, and I highly doubt people only just started driving like assholes the second a drop of


    precipitation fell from the sky. It’s possible somebody swerved, or she might have even swerved to avoid someone or an animal. Things like that ur all the time. I shudder to think of how often they do.


    The front of the car was folded like an ordion when it hit that tree. I wonder how fast a person has to be going to crunch the front of a car that way.


    “I swear, you drive like a grandmother.”