When You Are Mine(16)

"Kerris?" Sofie ventured, as if surely no one of her acquaintance would be cleaning a bathroom. "Is that you?"

"No, it's my domestic doppelgänger." Kerris tacked a smile onto the quip. "Hi, Sofie. How are you?"

"Doing well." Sofie fiddled with the belt of her designer dress and looked like she was afraid menial labor was contagious.

"Did you find it?" a pretty brunette, just as well dressed as Sofie, asked from the doorway. "Oh, hi. ¿Hablas inglés?"

Kerris gritted her teeth. She should be used to it by now. All her life  she'd had people walk up to her speaking Spanish, French,  whatever-assuming she was one of them. She wished it were that simple.  She was a mutt, that was for sure. And right now both ladies looked at  her like she'd just peed on the rug.

"I speak English." Kerris rose to her feet and gave both ladies a pseudo-sparkly smile.

"Ardis, this is Kerris." Sofie recovered her manners. "She's Cam's girlfriend."

Ardis looked at Sofie blankly, mouthing "who"? Did she think she was  invisible? I can see you, Kerris wanted to yell. Wealth doesn't give you  superpowers.

"Cam." Sofie raised her "you know" brows. "Walsh's best friend."

"He's adorable." Ardis looked at Kerris with new eyes. Probably wondering what he saw in a cleaning urchin.

"Yes, I hear he's pretty serious," Sofie said in a singsongy voice to Kerris. "Heard he's popped the question."

"Where'd you hear that?" Kerris asked, raising her brows into the bandanna covering half her forehead.

And what business is it of yours?

"Jo told me. They're thrilled that Cam has found someone so … compatible. I  think your similar backgrounds make you a perfect match."

Kerris squeezed a dry sponge with unnecessary force, not bothering to respond.

"I just want you to know how much I admire you," Sofie continued.

Kerris gathered her bucket of cleaning supplies, careful not to brush against either woman's finery on her way into the hallway.

"I mean, you've worked so hard to pull yourself out of miserable  circumstances." Sofie's private-school-educated voice followed Kerris  onto the landing of the stairs. "And now I hear you're opening your own  business. It'll be a real rags-to-riches story one day. Don't be  discouraged that right now it's just, well, rags."

Kerris's anger throbbed in her temples. Her teeth gated the spiteful  responses she wanted to hurl at Sofie. Her jaw ached with the restraint.  Obviously Sofie wanted to put her firmly in her place.

"I'm gonna do one more walk through to make sure we didn't overlook  anything," Kerris finally said. "It was nice meeting you, Ardis. Nice  seeing you again, Sofie."





Chapter Twelve



Kerris leaned back in the small boat Cam had rowed out to the middle of  the river¸ closing her eyes against the brightness of the August sun.  After cleaning the mayor's house all morning and breathing those fumes,  Kerris appreciated the clean summer air. She slitted her eyes open,  realizing Cam had stopped rowing.                       
       
           



       

"You okay?" She sat up, searched the somber lines of his face. "You look so serious."

"For once, I am serious."

"What's up?" She trailed her fingers through the cold water.

"Remember what you said on the Fourth of July? That the woman I want to marry should know everything?"

Kerris's fingers went limp in the water. For the first time in the  August heat, she felt sweat break out under her arms and between her  breasts. She wasn't ready for another proposal. There were too many  unresolved issues, too many questions she didn't have the right answers  for yet. She was still sorting through what had happened with Walsh.  Could she actually marry Cam, knowing she didn't feel as deeply for him  as he felt for her? He said he'd take whatever she had to offer, but  what if some day down the road, it wasn't enough?

"Do you remember that?" Cam's frown pressed her when she looked at him without responding.

"I remember."

"I want you to know everything." He swallowed loud enough for her to  hear. A gulp telling the story of his anxiety. "I've never shared this  shit with anybody except Walsh, but I want you to know."

"Okay." She watched her reflection in the water, giving him space to tell her in his own way.

"My mom was a crackhead." He looked at her from beneath his straight, silky brows. "You know that, right?"

Kerris nodded, feeling like a voyeur about to look on a past possibly more obscenely painful than her own.

"She started tricking before she had me, I guess to get the drugs. I  know my mom was mixed, half white, half black. Her name was Sarah. My  old man-who knows. One of her johns." He chopped the words up finely,  pushing them to the side to make room for more. "I'm guessing he wasn't  black because of how I look. Maybe white or Hispanic. Guess we'll never  know."

Even with such gaps in his identical mosaic, Kerris envied him the  knowledge of his mother. The vital pieces of the puzzle she had been.  Her face, her hands, her hair, her smile. Even her vices, the mistakes  she'd made that set his life on the course it had taken. Kerris didn't  have even that.

"We lived in a hellhole. It was rough."

By the look on Cam's face, Kerris felt pretty sure that was an  understatement. She recognized the painful thought of that place  twisting in his eyes; eyes that were no longer seeing her, but looking  back along a darkened corridor of memory.

"I mean, my mom was a crackhead who whored for money, so yeah, it was  bad, but bad is relative. It could've been worse. It did get worse."

He let his last words settle around them and drift away with the river's  strengthening current before drawing a shallow breath and continuing.

"My mom met this guy, Ron MacKenzie, when I was about nine. He became  her pimp and drug dealer, and then it got … much worse." Cam paused,  running his eyes down the river before starting again. "We shared a  room, me and my mom. I slept on the floor. She slept on the bed. Well,  not just slept. That's where she did business."

Kerris closed her eyes against the horrific images invading her mind. A  young boy subjected to the filth of that lifestyle. The sounds, the  smells, the sights of adult moral squalor robbing him of his innocence.

"I saw it all. It was bad enough having to listen to my mom fucking some  stranger, blowing guys off while I was doing my homework or whatever." A  perverse smile played around Cam's mobile mouth. "Sounds pretty fucked  up now that I say it out loud, but I got used to it."

"Mac was a real piece of work." Cam pulled his brows down around  something Kerris wasn't sure he wanted to share. "He would beat my mom  some, but not too bad, if she kept him happy. You know, brought in  enough cash and other stuff that he wanted. He, um, he liked boys."

Kerris's breath stilled in her throat, her eyes glued to Cam's shuttered  face. She could see the red crawling up his neck, but wasn't sure if it  was shame, anger, embarrassment, or some witch's brew that stirred them  all together until one was completely indistinguishable from the  others. Dread filled her.                       
       
           



       

"He liked boys." Cam said it again and looked at her without flinching or hiding. "He liked me, Ker."

The summer sunshine toasted and dried Kerris's tears before she realized they'd slid down her cheeks.

"It was about a year." He plowed on, looking at his reflection in the  water before quickly looking away like he couldn't stand what he saw.  "For about a year he … you know, molested me. He had me and my mom both  hung up. Told her that if she didn't let him have me, he'd cut off her  drugs. And he told me that if I fought him, he'd kill my mom. And I knew  he would, so I stopped fighting.

"We got lucky," Cam continued in a voice as flat and dead as his eyes had become. "He died."

Kerris remembered the relief she'd felt when the man who had hurt her  died in prison. Like she could breathe easier just because he was no  longer in the world.

"What happened?"

Cam looked over her shoulder, his face hiding secrets.

"He got what was coming to him." Cam's eyes, cold as a corpse, shifted back to Kerris. "Live by the sword, die by the sword."

Kerris shivered in the sun. The Cam sitting across from her was not the  man she knew. Rough around the edges, but tender and quick to smile.  This man had granite for eyes and turned the air around him deadly.  Kerris remained quiet, fingers floating in the water, until Cam's face  softened and he returned to her. Cam rubbed his eyes, wiping away the  last vestiges of that hardened stranger.