Something Blue

Chapter 7

Katherine

Katherine's friend Melissa was afraid of small spaces. Claustrophobia, she called it, with an air of superiority, like giving it a fancy name made her irrational fear somehow more valid.

Katherine herself had never minded small spaces. When she was young, playing hide and seek with Gabe, she was the best hider. She'd tuck herself into rotted out tree trunks or into the tiny crevices between two rocks and she'd snicker as he walked within inches of her hiding spot, none the wiser.

That was the story she'd told Isobel while they lay waiting beneath the floorboards. She'd changed his identity, of course, but nothing else. She even let the faraway wisps of nostalgia brush over her cheeks like a gentle breeze as she thought of who she had once been. Who they had once been.

Isobel was frightened, but she was also too brave and too smart. The second Gabe lowered her into their dank, damp hiding spot, she went quiet, her whispered, shaking words barely above a breath.

"Is pa coming?"

"We're going to hide from him," Katherine had said, unable to answer outright. To give voice to the stark fear in her own heart. "He'll go away if we're very quiet."

"Mister Gabe will make him go," Izzy said, and though it wasn't voiced as a question, Katherine nodded, her head throbbing as she pressed her cheek to Isobel's hair.

"Yes, he'll make him go away. But we have to be very quiet, Isobel. Mister Gabe will get in trouble if your pa hears us and finds out we're here. It's better if we're quiet and he never even knows."

"It's a secret," Isobel said in hushed awe. Izzy loved secrets. She declared all kinds of things secrets that really had no need to be.

"The biggest secret," she confirmed, and she told Isobel stories of clever hiding places and innocent secrets until the sound of footsteps sent them plunging into silence as deep as the darkness.

The male voices were muffled, but Katherine recognized Jacob's tight, affected tones. She hated his voice. It was like music. Like the organ music at those big churches in the city. Lyrical but not pretty. Powerful, but somehow lacking in the lovely ebb and flow that, to her at least, made music worthwhile. She would never want to dance to organ music.

She also heard the sheriff, and Gabe. His voice didn't make her want to dance either. It wasn't like any kind of musical instrument she'd ever heard. She must still be feverish, because when she heard his voice all she could think was that she wanted very desperately to curl her soul around it and sleep for a million years.

The voices continued overhead, and the heavy footsteps on the floorboards seemed to resonate in her chest, making her flailing heart stutter and skip. Isobel was trembling in her arms, face tucked into her side and hands clenched into fists in the sheets. Katherine couldn't speak to her, or sing, or even hum to soothe her. All she could do was tighten her grip on her daughter's body, hug her close, and cover her small head with a bruised hand, as if that could somehow protect her. She pressed her lips to the crown of her daughter's head and let her thumb brush a slow rhythm over the little girl's cheek.

It'll be alright, she tried to say with her hands, willing her heart to slow so Isobel wouldn't hear the lie in its frantic thumping. We are safe. You are safe. I'll never let anything bad happen to you, ever again.

She kept an ear tuned to the muffled conversation, and knew when the men stomped out. Her mind told her they were gone, at least for now, but her body was locked tight in leftover dread, and Isobel made no move to pull away. Gabe said he would return when it was safe, so it must not be safe yet. So they remained, twined around each other in the darkness, and the seconds ticked by. The more time passed, the more Katherine began to wonder about claustrophobia. Melissa said it felt as if the walls were closing in. As if she were running out of air.