Chapter 14 Catherine
Iwalk through my front door and the fight is already waiting for me.
My mother is in the kitchen. Not cooking.
Standing. Arms crossed. The posture of a woman who has been standing in that exact position for an unknown amount of time, rehearsing what she’s about to say.
My father is at the island, but he’s not reading the paper.
He’s sitting with his hands flat on the counter, the way he sits when he’s bracing for something.
They both look up when I walk in.
I’m still wearing Kaiden’s sweatshirt. MONAGHAN across my back.
My pajamas folded in my arms. Bare feet.
Bandaged wrists under sleeves that are three sizes too big.
I look exactly like what I am: a girl who spent the night at a boy’s house and is walking home in his clothes at nine-thirty on a Saturday morning.
My mother speaks first. Her voice is controlled in the way that means she’s been crying and has stopped and is now operating on the thin layer of composure that sits on top of fury.
“Sit down, Catherine.”
I don’t sit. I set my pajamas on the counter and stand at the end of the island because sitting means being below them, and I’ve been below people my whole life and I’m done.
“What.”
“You climbed out of your window last night. You went to the Monaghan boy’s house. His father called us at six a.m. to let us know you were there. You spent the night in his bed.”
“Yes.”
My father makes a sound. Not a word—a sound. The particular exhalation of a man who was hoping for a denial and didn’t get one.
“This is what I was talking about,” my mother says, and there’s something in her voice I can’t place—an edge that doesn’t sound like anger exactly.
It sounds like fear wearing anger’s clothing.
“This is exactly what I was worried about. You’re out of control, Catherine.
The attitude at school. The—the things you’ve been saying in the hallways.
Burke calling us. And now you’re sneaking out to sleep with—”
“I went to Kaiden’s because I needed help and I couldn’t come to you.”
The words land in the kitchen like a dropped plate. My mother’s mouth opens, then closes. My father’s hands press harder against the counter.
“What do you mean, you couldn’t come to us?” my father asks. Quiet. The quiet that means he’s working very hard to stay calm.
“I mean the last time I tried to talk to you about how I was feeling, you told me I was being reckless and selfish. You threatened to send me back to the program. You made it very clear that my mental health is an inconvenience to your campaign.”
“That is not what we said—”
“That is exactly what you said, Daddy. In this kitchen. Twenty-four hours ago.”
My mother steps forward. “Catherine, we are trying to protect you. Jonathan’s father called again this morning—”
“Jon’s father.” Something cold settles in my chest. “Why is Jon’s father calling you, Mom?”
A flicker. Fast. There and gone. Something in my mother’s expression that I can’t decode—a tightening, a flash of something that looks less like parental concern and more like—
Fear.
“He’s concerned about you,” she says. Too smooth. Too rehearsed. “He says Kaiden is a bad influence. He says the Monaghan family has a history of—”
“The Penningtons are the ones with a history, Mom. Their older son kidnapped and tortured a twelve-year-old boy for three days. Their family paid to make it disappear. Jon stood by his brother and told people the victim was lying.”
The kitchen goes silent. My mother’s face drains of color.
“Where did you hear that?” she whispers.
“From the boy they did it to.”
My father stands. Slowly. The way a man stands when the ground beneath him has shifted. “Catherine. Are you saying—”
“Kaiden was the victim, Daddy. The boy they kidnapped. He was twelve. And the Penningtons bought their way out of it, the same way they buy their way out of everything. And now Jon’s father is calling our house and feeding Mom information about how dangerous the Monaghans are?
” I look at my mother. “Does that sound familiar to you? Does that sound like a family you should be trusting over your own daughter?”
My mother’s composure fractures. Not into tears—into something sharper. “You don’t understand the full picture, Catherine. There are things—complicated things—that you’re not seeing.”
“Then tell me what I’m not seeing!”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t. You can’t tell your own daughter why you’re taking phone calls from the family whose son assaulted me!”
“That’s enough, Catherine!” My father’s voice. Sharp. The first time he’s raised it. “Your mother and I are on the same page here. We are concerned about you. Your behavior at school—the things you’ve said, the pictures, the boys—”
“The ‘things I’ve said’?” My voice goes cold.
The ice princess taking over because the girl underneath can’t handle this.
“You mean when I told Jon Pennington that I’ve killed a man?
Is that the thing that concerns you, Daddy?
Because that’s not a lie. That’s a fact.
I killed Jack in our kitchen to save your life and Mom’s life, and you’re angry at me for saying it out loud? ”
My father flinches. Actually flinches—his whole body jerking like I’ve hit him. “That information is sealed for a reason,” he says. His voice is shaking now. “If it gets out—if a reporter connects it—”
“Then what? Your campaign suffers? You don’t get to be governor? That’s the priority? That’s what matters more than your daughter standing in front of you telling you she’s struggling?”
“Of course you matter more!” he shouts. Actually shouts. Thomas O’Farrell, the man who communicates through the absence of hostility, is shouting in his kitchen at nine-thirty on a Saturday morning. “But I can’t protect you if you’re detonating everything we’ve built to keep you safe!”
“Safe?” I laugh. It sounds like glass. “I’m not safe, Daddy! I cut myself last night! Deep enough to bleed through my pajamas! And I went to Kaiden’s house instead of coming downstairs to my own parents because the last time I tried to talk to you about my pain, you made it about optics!”
My mother makes a sound. A choked, guttural sound—the sound of a parent hearing something that breaks them. She reaches for my arm.
Her hand closes around my wrist. Right where the bandages are. Right where the cuts are. The pressure sends a bolt of white-hot pain up my arm and something inside me—something old, something that lives in the basement of my nervous system where Jack’s hands are still stored—detonates.
“GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME.”
The words come from somewhere primal. Not my voice—the voice of a twelve-year-old girl who learned that hands on her body without permission mean pain. Guttural. Animal. The kind of sound that stops a room.
My mother recoils. Her face crumbles. My father takes a step back. I’m shaking. Full-body. The adrenaline pouring through me in a flood that makes my vision sharpen and my hearing go razor-clear and every instinct in my body scream to run.
“Don’t touch me,” I say. Quiet now. The quiet that comes after the scream. “Don’t grab me. Don’t hold my wrist. Don’t put your hands on me when I haven’t said you can. I don’t care that you’re my mother. I don’t care that you love me. You do not get to grab me.”
My mother is crying. Silently. Tears running down her face without sound, her hands at her sides, palms open, the posture of a woman who has just been shown the depth of the damage and can’t unsee it.
My father is crying too. Not silently—a ragged, desperate thing, his hand over his mouth, the other gripping the counter like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.
“We’ll call the program,” my mother says through her tears. “Monday. We’ll get you help, Catherine. Real help.”
The program. Again. The threat that isn’t a threat—it’s a cage.
A year of my life in a facility that calls itself treatment and functions as erasure.
A year away from Edgewood, from Penny, from Iz, from Kaiden.
A year of being the damaged girl in a room full of damaged girls, monitored and medicated and slowly, methodically stripped of every edge that keeps me alive.
“I am not going back to that program.” My voice is flat. Absolute. “I would rather die than go back there.”
The words fall into the kitchen and nobody breathes.
I don’t say another word. I turn and walk out of the kitchen and up the stairs, and my parents follow me because of course they do—my mother’s heels on the hardwood, my father’s heavier tread, both of them talking over each other in a way that tells me the fight has metastasized from parents-versus-daughter into parents-versus-each-other.
“Thomas, I told you this would happen if we—”
“If we what, Fiona? If we let her make her own decisions? She’s eighteen—”
“She’s a child who needs structure, not a boyfriend who—”
“And sending her back to that facility is structure? She just told us she’d rather die than go back!”
“She’s being dramatic, Thomas. She’s always been—”
“Dramatic?” My father’s voice cracks. “She showed us her wrists, Fiona. That’s not dramatic. That’s a girl who’s drowning.”
I tune them out. Not emotionally—I can’t do that, the words are landing like shrapnel even through the walls I’m building in real time—but functionally. I go into survival mode. The mode that packs a bag while the world burns.
My room. Closet first. I grab my black jeans—the good ones, the ones that fit like they were custom—and a fitted black top. A bra. Clean underwear. My Edgewood blazer because I might need it, I don’t know, nothing makes sense right now. I shove everything into my backpack.