IT WAS Monday morning. The weekly Aurora staff meeting was underway with Robert leading the usual charge. And Kathleen was nowhere in sight.
I couldn’t pay attention to a word Robert was saying as he updated everyone on the latest company developments, and I couldn’t wait until the meeting was over before pulling my phone from my pocket.
After keeping my distance from Kathleen over the weekend, I couldn’t take one more minute without saying something. I texted her, anticipating that her plane had landed in Portland the previous evening. Maybe she’d decided to sleep in this morning.
“How was your flight home?”
Kathleen texted me back in short order, but not in the way I expected her to.
“Sorry. I can’t talk right now. I’ll text you when I’m free.”
“Are you in your office?”
“No.”
“Is everything all right?”
“I’m fine.”
Confused, I was now intent on seeing her. I texted her again, this time more insistent.
“I’m coming over to your place after the staff meeting.”
Her reply was immediate and infuriating. “We can’t see each other today.”
“Why not? Where are you?”
Her next text took longer to arrive. After excruciating minutes, she answered back with just one word. “Safe.”
“Fuck this,” I hissed at my phone and then remembered where I was. Robert was still addressing the crowd but shot a brief glare in my direction. I shoved my phone in my suit jacket and concentrated on Robert’s concluding remarks. I stayed stock-still as my coworkers avoided eye contact and filtered back to their work stations. Once the room cleared out, I wasn’t surprised when Robert approached me. He stood in front of me and waited for me to speak.
“I apologize for my rudeness.”
Robert’s intense scrutiny soon had me averting eye contact.
He took a deep breath. “Let’s go talk in my office.” He walked away.
Not knowing what else to do or say, I followed. I focused on the short walk and entered Robert’s office. He circled his desk and sat down as I closed the door behind us.
“Jack.” His tone was somber, and authoritative. The impending conversation wasn’t going to be between an employee and his boss. I needed to speak with Kathleen’s father, and Robert knew it.
“What’s happening with Kathleen?”
Robert gestured to an empty chair in front of his desk. “Sit down.”
He was cautious, and even though I was determined to get answers about his daughter’s whereabouts, I allowed Robert to set the standard for our discussion. He set his hands on the desk and drummed his thumbs on the surface as he contemplated his words. It was a rare display of subdued deliberation, and the gesture provided me with an unsettling insight.
Robert held my unyielding gaze and said, “When I opened your position here, I had one goal in mind—to alleviate Kathleen’s stress. Things between her and me were spiraling out of control and I was helpless to stop it. Kathleen wasn’t listening to me, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to take advice from me. I was grasping at straws, hoping I could at least slow down her implosion. I expected your presence to ease things for my daughter, not complicate them.”
My response to this revelation wasn’t immediate. I processed Robert’s words for several agonizing moments. “When I applied for this job, I was grasping at straws, too. I accepted your offer because I wanted to save my marriage. It wasn’t my intention to move to Oregon and lose Allison. It wasn’t my intention to move out here and fall in love with Kathleen either.”
“Have you gone back to your wife?” Robert asked without mercy.
I shook my head. “It was never my intention to hurt your daughter, and it sure as hell isn’t my intention to lose her. Not now. Not ever.”
If Robert took any solace from my answer, he kept it hidden. The severity of his mood remained intact. “I haven’t always been the father she needed, but that has changed now. While I still have a chance to make things right between us, I will do just that.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
I shifted in my chair and rubbed the back of my neck. I searched for a way to connect with Robert on a personal level and took a risk.
“Kathleen told me about her mother’s death.” I tried my best to strike a gentle tone.
Finally, there was a shift in Robert’s demeanor. He absorbed my statement with widening eyes, leaning back in his chair as if to place some level of emotional distance between us. “She told you what happened?”
“Yes.”
Robert appeared skeptical. “Did Kathleen tell you what she saw that night?”
“She told me everything.”
Robert froze. The lone sound in the office for the better part of a minute was his uneven breathing. I could only imagine what the weight of my revelation was doing to him. When he eventually responded, he couldn’t look me in the eye.
“She’s never told anyone, Jack. In all these years, she’s refused to talk about what she went through. I still don’t know what happened between her and her mother… beforehand.”
The significance of this moment was vital. I sat there, imagining how terrible it would be for Heide to withhold anything from me, let alone the most traumatic experience of her life.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “It has to weigh on you, but please understand. I’m not going to betray Kathleen’s confidence.”
“Nor would I ask you to,” he said, his voice brimming with emotion. “But this changes things. Give me a minute.”
Robert rose from his chair, turned his back to me, and wandered over to the large window behind his desk. He didn’t take in the view. Instead, he looked down at the floor and placed his hands in his pockets.
“We’d been unhappy for years,” he began. “Her mother and me. I sought out an affair and then used it as the excuse to leave her. It was chickenshit. But then, so was I.”
Realizing how difficult it had been for Kathleen to share her family’s story with me, I expected the same was true of her father. I drifted into an uncertain silence as another one of the Brighton family secrets was exposed.
“Kathleen doesn’t know about the affair,” Robert added as an afterthought.
“Are you sure about that?”
Robert turned and pierced me with a significant look. “Why do you ask? Did she tell you otherwise?”
“No. She’s never mentioned one, but are you sure she doesn’t know?”
“Besides me and the other woman, Kathleen’s mother was the only person who ever knew. It was never serious, and it wasn’t going to last. It ended right after the suicide.”
“I see.” I paused, haunted by the family tragedy a father and daughter had endured in isolated despair.
Robert and Kathleen had each extended a level of trust to me that was undeserving. Just as these two were finding common ground, my own inability to cope with disaster was driving them apart again. If I couldn’t save my relationship with Kathleen, I could at least help bring her home.
“What would’ve happened if Kathleen found out?”
“Found out about the affair?”
I nodded. I wasn’t ready to hear the answer, but I needed to know it.
Robert shook his head and turned his gaze toward the window. “I don’t like to entertain hypotheticals, Jack. It’s a waste of time.”
“She was supposed to be at work today. Have you heard from her?”
“She’s been in touch.”
“I told her I wanted to stop by her place. She’s clearly not in Bend.”
Her father didn’t deny or confirm my conclusion. “She’s asked for a few more days.”
“You will welcome her back? If she decides not to go to Denver?”
Robert looked over his shoulder, assessing me. “This was unexpected. But Kathleen will always have a place here. Never doubt that.”
“What do you think she’s going to do?”
Robert offered a sad smile. “Hypotheticals, Jack.”
“Please,” I implored. “I need to be prepared.”
Robert sat back down at his desk. He pointed a long finger at me. “Before she met you? I could’ve answered your question with total confidence. Now… I’m not so sure.”
“What would you have told me then?”
“Then?” Robert glanced briefly at the wall behind me. “That you’d have better luck breaking into Fort Knox than getting through her barriers. When her steel door closes, it’s impenetrable. And God help you if you’re on the wrong side.”
“And now?” I asked. “What’s changed?”
Robert considered this at length and I waited with mounting anxiety.
“Now? I don’t know if anything has changed. Maybe the only thing that has changed is how she deals with those barricades. Maybe Kathleen doesn’t know how to keep the vault door from locking any more than we do. Maybe putting some distance between the two of you keeps the door open.”
My heart was pounding. “That sounds dangerously close to hope.”
“Be patient, Jack. If she can forgive me, she should have no trouble finding her way back to you.”