Chapter 11: Three at the Table

I brought Kenzie into Stefan's kitchen and sat her at the table.

She was shaking so hard the chair rattled.

Stefan put a mug of tea in front of her and a box of tissues beside it.

"I'll be on the porch," he said, and he went out and shut the door behind him.

Upstairs a floorboard creaked, and Maxine came down the outside stairs in her socks.

She stopped in the kitchen doorway when she saw who was at the table.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," said Kenzie, and her face crumpled again.

Maxine pulled out the chair beside her and sat.

She didn't touch her.

She just sat there, close enough to be counted.

"My mom came into my room at eight," Kenzie said, to the mug.

"She sat on my bed and said she had something to tell me."

"What else did she say?"

"That I had to promise to stay calm."

"Did you?" I said.

"I screamed." She laughed, wet and awful. "Then I got in the car."

"Does she know where you are?"

"I left her a note on the fridge."

I texted Leah that her daughter was safe in a warm kitchen.

Then I put the phone face down on the counter.

Kenzie drank some tea.

"She said he's been wanting to tell me my whole life," she said. "She said she kept begging him to wait."

"That doesn't sound like Blaine," Maxine said.

"What does that mean?"

"Dad has never waited for anything. He couldn't wait for a pizza."

Kenzie made a sound that was half sob and half laugh.

"My whole life, my mom told me my dad left before I was born," she said.

"She said he was a guy from her cousin's wedding, and he never called."

"I believed it. I never asked about him."

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