Between Universes

Chapter Eleven

School resumed again, and Katherine made it her priority to keep her grades up. While waiting for the police investigation to turn anything up, she kept asking Henry if he knew who Jonathan Jones was, but he would never answer her clearly. The most she could come up with was that he was a friend of Kat's dad, and a business partner with Henry's. When things broke between the Greylake and Moore families, Jonathan was the one who took it the hardest. He would either lose his best friend or his source of money, and Katherine had a pretty good guess of which one he had chosen. She still didn't know how to find him or exactly how he fit into the picture, so she would wait for an opportunity to find out more when she could.

Henry and Katherine had been ecstatic when they had been paired together for the first history assignment of the semester. They agreed to meet at a coffee shop after school to finish the short assignment, and they did.

The couple shared a brownie, and they each had a coffee beside them as they typed away on their laptops. The joint presentation was made quickly and easily, as both were toward the top of their class in grades and understanding of material. Katherine would type something and Henry would correct it, then she would stick her tongue out at him before he would lean over and kiss her. She hoped things would stay like this for a long time, forever even.

However, all great things had to come to an end, and Henry's smile disappeared as he looked at his phone.

"What is it?" Katherine asked, worried. They had already finished the short presentation at this time, so she wasn't worried about their grades slipping.

"It's my mom. She says that I need to come home urgently, and that I better not be with you right now."

"Well, I won't tell if you don't." Katherine said, standing up and collecting her stuff. They kissed goodbye and Katherine went home, wishing he had been able to stay for a few moments longer. A few moments with her that she could never get back.

When she arrived home, her mother wasn't there. Her sister, however, was. She was sitting at the table, looking at a piece of paper, but turned to Katherine as she entered the house.

"Kat, can you help me with my homework? I'm confused."

"Of course I can." Katherine made her way over to the table by her sister and sat down next to her.

"How do you spell your name?"

"Katherine, I'm in the fourth grade. I'm not in kindergarten."

"It's always good to keep it sharp though. Sometimes I misspell my name."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"It's spelled L-i-l-l-y."

"Good job, now what do you need help with, Lilly." It amazed Katherine that it had taken her almost an entire year here to learn her younger sister's name. She thought it would be weird to ask, but in this situation she was able to make a joke out of it. Her mother had never called Lilly's name or anything. There was a point where she accepted that she would never know her sister's name, but she was extremely glad that she did now.

"I don't know how to do this math problem."

"Well it looks like a division problem to me. You know how to do division, right?"

"Yeah, but this one is confusing."

"So, you take the number on the outside, which is 2, and you see how many times it can go into the last digit of the number inside, which is 8. How many times does 2 go into 8?"

"4."

"Good, so right that here." Katherine pointed at the line on the paper, "And how many times does 2 go into 2?"