Kissing Tales — Volume One — Short Story Collection by Kathryn Kaleigh

Author:Kathryn Kaleigh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: KST Publishing

Chapter 2

I sat at my computer desk in my little one-bedroom apartment and tapped my fingers against the blank yellow pad of paper sitting next to my MacBook. Two abnormal psychology textbooks stacked neatly at the back of the desk in front of the window.

I had the blinds pulled up giving me a clear view of the courtyard two stories down. A lovely mimosa tree bloomed with lovely pink fuzzy flowers in front of my window. It was this tree that had sold me on the apartment.

Below, a man walked his black cocker spaniel, tugging at its leash, along the sidewalk. It reminded me of my younger teenage sister and her new puppy back home in Pittsburg.

The downstairs neighbors were frying fish again. About every other weekend, the husband took off in his pickup truck, bass boat in tow, and came home with a cooler filled with fish.

Everything seemed normal in the world.

Except that it wasn’t.

At least not for me.

Easton and Mary McCray were still at the front of my mind. I could only imagine what Mary must be going through.

They’d gone out to participate in a reenactment, like they’d done so many times before. Then Easton was shot for no apparent reason.

Now Mary was a widow.

Terry had been found and taken to jail by the authorities. He hadn’t been hard to track. According to Carter, they’d found him stomping around the woods, talking to himself.

I kept thinking about what Terry had said before he’d shot Easton. You murdered my mother, raped my sisters, and burned my house down.

It was such a specific, detailed statement. And he’d said it with such conviction. He hadn’t hesitated or even stumbled over the words. He’d been very clear.

Then he’d shot Easton point blank.

Of course, everyone had thought Easton had fallen off his horse to “play dead.” I must have been the only one who noticed just how hard he fell. That kind of fall would have been difficult to do on purpose.

I took a pencil from the pencil cup sitting in front of the two psychology textbooks and drew some spirals on the yellow paper.

Terry had been in Vietnam. So he could have post-traumatic stress disorder. But the nature of his flashback was nothing like I’d seen before.

It wasn’t ethical to google patients. Not without their consent, anyway.

But Terry wasn’t my patient. I was in no way involved with him professionally.

This would be more like research. Learning more about the psychotic aspect of PTSD.

I printed his name at the top of a clean sheet of paper.

Then I googled his name. After finding nothing more than I already knew – he was an assistant professor at LSUA, I paid the money required to dive deeper into his world. Found that he was from Tulsa, Oklahoma. And he had one older brother. His father had died several years ago, but his mother was still living in Oklahoma.

That wasn’t it.

I tapped my pencil eraser on the desk.

Even though I had an account, I had an aversion to Facebook.

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