He Hid Me for Twelve Years, Now the City Knows My Name novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Unless I Ask

Kate's POV

I read the message on his screen twice.

Don't tell Kate yet.

Harrison held still in the armchair with my coat on his shoulders, waiting for me to say something.

"Come upstairs," I said.

My kitchen was warm and smelled of last night's coffee.

He sat at the table where he'd sat so many nights, with his elbows on the wood, and I stood at the counter with my back against it and my arms folded.

"Tell me all of it," I said. "Everything she's told you in the last three days."

He told me.

He said it flat and plain, without inflection.

When he got to Lorna's name, my hands went tight on my own elbows.

Then I said the thing I had been holding in since the curb.

"Why a friend of the family?"

He looked up.

"You had a hundred people watching and a thousand words. You chose those."

"I panicked."

"That's not an answer."

He breathed out and rubbed his face.

"Every time I tried to say your name to anyone connected to my family, I heard my mother's voice," he said. "Not what she'd really say. What I was afraid she'd say. And that voice always got there before I did."

"Have you ever once heard her actual voice say it?"

"No."

"Because you never asked her."

"No," Harrison said. "Because I never asked her."

It was the first honest thing anyone had said in that kitchen in a long time.

I crossed the floor and stood in front of his chair.

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