Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [105]
She nodded as if dazed.
“Why did I . . . disappear?”
Again she nodded.
“I’d had enough,” he whispered in her ear, as if sharing a confidence. Then the whisper became a hiss. “Enough of her rules and her demands and her school and her arguments and her—”
“My brother never would have just walked away from his home. It wouldn’t have happened,” Kendra interrupted, shaking her head slightly, side to side. “No. He had no reason to run away, he had—”
“You think only poor kids run away, Kenny? Only poor kids from broken, neglectful homes?” He snickered. “You are just like her, aren’t you? You’ve grown up to be her. Just like they say, every woman, eventually, becomes her mother.”
“You’re not him.” She shook her head again. “I don’t know who you are, but you are not Ian.”
He grabbed her arm and looked deep into her eyes, as if waiting for some revelation. “Well, then, how to prove . . . I know.”
He snapped his fingers as if something had just occurred to him. “You can test me.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Go on. Ask me something. Anything.”
She stared at him, wondering how this could be.
“Kenny, this silence is not at all welcoming. Why, one might think that you’re not happy to see me. And you should be welcoming me with open arms. After all these years, I can’t tell you how disappointed I am.” He stared at her through soulless eyes. “You should be happy to see me. You should know me, Kenny.”
Kendra stared unblinking at the stranger who demanded recognition. She knew the face, all right. She’d sketched it over and over, several times over the past few weeks.
It couldn’t be her brother’s face. It just couldn’t.
“Where have you been?”
“Well, now, you know the answer to that. You know where I’ve been staying.”
“Before that. Before you went to Father Tim’s. If you’re really my brother, you would have come here.”
“I did want to come here . . . it’s my right to be here, same as yours. Smith House. It’s mine, too.” He stiffened slightly, then said, “But I wanted to be able to see you for a while first. To get to know you, so to speak.”
“You were spying on me? Watching me?”
“Every chance I got,” he admitted, the smirk still in his eyes, if not on his face. “I admit I found Father Tim’s by accident, but once I found out that you were one of the funders of the Mission, well, you have to see the irony of that.”
“No,” she told him. “No, I don’t.”
“All these years, I’ve supported myself. I come back to Smith’s Forge and immediately find the Smith money just waiting to take care of me.”
“How did you support yourself?” Heart pounding, she forced herself to appear calm. Keep him talking.
“Oh, there are lots of ways for a good-looking little boy to earn what he needs. You wouldn’t believe all the things I’ve learned to do for money. Then again, you probably wouldn’t want to know.”
“Is that what you’re here for? Money?”
“You know one thing I missed all these years?” He ignored her question and took a step toward her. “Remember when I was little and you used to make me pancakes in the afternoons when Mom was going to law school?”
Kendra shrunk back, her mind still muddled. As a youth, Ian had been troubled, yes, but had his defiance, his growing bouts of rebellion, concealed something deeper? He had been seeing a child psychiatrist that last year, but her mother had never discussed with Kendra the nature of his problems or what had caused them. There was an air about the young man who stood before her that was sinister, almost unholy. If the seed for such had lain dormant in her brother, could she have been blind to it?
This is a dream, she told herself. A really, really horrible dream.
“I never forgot how you used to do that for me.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and she flinched from his touch as he turned her around so that she was facing the kitchen door. If he noticed her revulsion, he did not acknowledge it. “I want you to make me pancakes, just like you used to do. That would be the perfect welcome home for me.”
He pushed her through the doorway, her feet leaden, her mind numb. “And