And Then I Found You by Patti Callahan Henry Read Free Book Online Page B

the studio—Mimi Ann—and she is doing a brilliant job. I show
     up for the bigger events and sneak in when I need a fix. It’s worked out well so far.
     The studio is called LUNA.
    Maybe I should have asked you first or at least told you that I have a studio named
     after our daughter, but something held me back. I don’t know what really. Either way,
     it exists now and I hope one day you get to see it.
    Hope all is well with you.
    Jack
    Usually the birthday letters were full of information, overflowing with his year.
     But this letter was as empty as the one he’d written six years before to tell of his
     divorce, which had left him bereft and sharing custody of their two-year-old, Caleb.
    Kate understood that most people would think it strange that she and Jack hadn’t talked
     since the day they’d said good-bye to their daughter, and yet through yearly letters
     they both knew the facts about one another’s lives. No blueprint existed for this
     kind of relationship—the one between a man and woman who had once been in love and
     then placed their child out into the world with a hand-chosen family.
    Katie was thirteen when she fell in love with Jack, the day she made a vow under a
     willow tree, and yet now she knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about her own daughter,
     who was thirteen years old. Did she have copper hair or green eyes? Where did she
     live? Did she have a best friend? Was she into sports? Did she love her parents?
    As Jack had once said in one of his letters: of all the awful parts of missing their
     daughter, the not-knowing was the absolute worst.

 
    four
    ARIZONA
    1996
    When the Arizona heat felt like a cloak she couldn’t shake, Tara’s words about Jack’s
     date wiggled into Katie’s mind, twisting her thoughts with anxiety. That hundred-degree
     day, preoccupied, Katie was hiking through the shallow trail of a dried river with
     four young girls when she heard the scream. Dropping her backpack, Katie was at the
     girl, Anne’s, side in one jump. “What?”
    Anne was thirteen years old, and so skinny she seemed to be made of the dry sage twigs
     that covered the desert, her long hair tied with a frayed shoestring. She was bent
     over, holding her ankle, screaming without words. Anne was a quiet girl, and Katie
     knew her terrible story: how her mom had tried to raise her alone when Dad left; how
     her mom found Anne selling pot and drinking bourbon straight from the bottle. The
     mom had then sold everything they owned to get Anne into this program and try to save
     her from the lifestyle that was sucking them both into a black hole of desperation.
    “Anne,” Katie took the young girl’s face in between both her hands. “What is it?”
    “Snake.” She pointed to the rattlesnake’s tail disappearing into the brush.
    Katie had been trained for this, and she knew what to do. But she also tasted guilt
     in the back of her throat. If her thoughts hadn’t been braided with anxiety about
     Jack Adams, about a place she couldn’t see, she would’ve been alert. This was her
     fault. The one thing Katie was meant to do was keep these girls safe.
    Katie tied a tourniquet from the first-aid kit, quieted the other girls and used her
     satellite radio to call transportation to take Anne to the hospital. The waiting was
     interminable, but the three other girls rallied and made jokes, trying to keep Anne
     calm. Katie checked vital signs, secured the tourniquet, and marveled at the other
     girls’ ability to surround Anne. This was a family, an odd and mismatched family sewn
     together by the threads of abuse and sadness, but together forming something strong.
     And Katie had failed them.
    The crisis passed and Anne was back in the field. Katie told Winsome Wilderness that
     she needed a few weeks off.
    Shawn O’Neal, the owner of Winsome, assured Katie that the snakebite wasn’t her fault. It was nature. It was normal. But Katie told Shawn it was her fault. She hadn’t been alert.