Kate Winters

Geoffrey Workenrich

Description

This is Kate’s story. From age five to adult, from intellectual exposures to a violent experience, from longing to love.
This is Kate’s story. From age five to adult, from intellectual exposures to a violent experience, from longing to love. Kate’s reactions to the experiences of her life reveal a
constantly curious multi-faceted character -- capable of both animated silliness and reasoned seriousness. Perceived as an enigmatic outsider by those afflicted by their doubts and desires, Kate seeks and finds the purity of a kindred soul and delights in the warmth of an abiding and loving friendship. Creating her own set of rules, she affects the lives of such diverse personalities as a teenage boy, a Chicago policeman and a religiously focused charity worker. And, while so involved, she satisfies her often
unsated energy by being in a passionate and life-changing relationship. This is Kate Winters’ story, her emotional and intellectual responses to life’s experiences, a story full
of living and learning, of sadness and hope.

Sujets

• Literary
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 05 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663241085
• Langue: English

Extrait

KATE WINTERS







GEOFFREY WORKENRICH












KATE WINTERS


Copyright © 2022 Geoffrey Workenrich.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.




iUniverse
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.iuniverse.com
844-349-9409

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4107-8 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4109-2 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4108-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022911176



iUniverse rev. date: 08/02/2022



CONTENTS
BOOK ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
BOOK TWO
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
BOOK THREE
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34



BOOK ONE



CHAPTER 1
THE DOWNPOUR HAD stopped. And the wind too. The fragile mist that remained provided a reminder of what had been and quiet portent of what was yet to come. The relative light offered after the last deluge had passed, the gloominess of the summer day’s late afternoon promising to get even gloomier. In the far western sky, the clouds were grayer, thicker and darker. That last rain had brought a cooling air, a crispness that signaled the approaching fall.
The cemetery was a small one. Misplaced in time, it was a still and tranquil sanctuary enveloped, as it was, by a fast-growing Chicago suburb. The descriptive word for it was—if such a word can be used with a cemetery—picturesque. Mature trees surrounded the east, west and north sides of the grounds, oaks, ashes and sycamores; these last with their distinctive whiteness more distinctive in the gloom.
Trees were also prominent in the cemetery itself, dotted here and there amongst the drab, grey tablets, tablets that stood like sturdy soldiers, tablets that guarded memories. A narrow gravel road wound serenely throughout the grounds shadowed by huge overhanging limbs; these provided a shroud affording a sense of solace to those who came, to those still making memories.
While a small cemetery, the site possessed a mausoleum; within its walls stood a man and a five-year-old girl. Shoulders hunched, his head heavy, the man’s posture expressed a crippling devastation. The little girl, standing still and erect at his side, held on to his hand and looked at where her father’s eyes stared. She both understood and didn’t. She had accepted that her mother would not be coming back, but she did not understand why. In some unknown way she sensed that her mother was both in and not in the vault where her father stared. Again, she tried to get an answer to her question. “Is mommy in there?”
After a long moment, the man looked down at the little girl. What could he say? What words would be meaningful and give comfort to his daughter? How could he deal with this too, when his mind could not endure Laura being gone? That he could not go on without her.
Since meeting her nine years ago, Laura had become everything to him. They were so different, yet those differences had coalesced into a whole more fulfilling than either of them could have imagined. He could not remember life before her and knew he did not want a life without her. But, in his grief-stricken mind, he knew his responsibility, a responsibility to his daughter and, by extension, to his wife.
He knelt down and looked into his daughter’s eyes, the extraordinary whiteness of the sclera heightened and contrasted against the speckled blue of the iris. Desperately, he tried to find the strength to answer her, searched his tortured brain for words that would have meaning to her, and to him as well. He felt his tongue touch his lips, saw that his daughter was wondering why he had not answered her. “You remember,” he said, “a little while ago when you asked your mother where the sun came from?”
The child’s head bobbed. “I remember.”
“Your mother said that some people say the sun comes from God.” The head bobbed again. “I said that some people say that when it’s time for the night to be over, the earth turns to face the sun so that there is light.” Still again the head bobbed.
The man’s lips were dry and his tongue touched them again. “Then I said that some questions are hard to answer to little girls—that when you get older, and smarter, you’ll understand better. Do you remember that?”
Listening with clear intensity, the girl displayed the precociousness that more and more her parents had witnessed. “Yes,” she said, “I remember.”
Her father nodded, thankful the incident had come to mind, thankful too that his daughter was like she was. He said, “This question is a hard question too. When you are older you will understand more.” The girl continued to look expectantly at her father. “But I can tell you,” Martin Winters said, “where your mother is for me.”
Tears were again in her father’s eyes, and the little girl watched as he brought his hands to his chest, placed them on it. “Your mother is in my heart.” The tears made tracks down his cheeks. “She is in your heart too, and she will always, always, always be there.”
The child with the curly blond hair raised her hands to her breast like her father had, and then she felt wetness on her cheeks.
“Do you understand?” Winters asked.
The little head bobbed again. “Yes, Daddy.”
Winters took his daughter in his arms; she put her arms out and wrapped them around her father’s neck and held tightly, very tightly. She didn’t understand and she knew it. But, somewhere in her, she grasped that her answer was needed, that searching for his own answers her father needed to be made to feel better. She wanted to do that, she did not want her father to cry, she did not want to see the anguish on his face. With all her might, she wanted to help him.
The little girl had other thoughts too. Maybe there wasn’t always an easy answer, a sure answer. She believed though what her father had said, that when older and smarter she would understand better. She believed he always told her the truth and tried to answer her questions the best way he could.
She knew something else too, something sensed, something less conscious but still real. She could wait for the answer; she could wait until she was older. Endowed with a judicious patience, she possessed an inherent understanding that the rhythms of existence change, that what was will not always be what is, that she would get smarter, that somehow, sometime, she would learn and learning comprised much of what life was all about.



CHAPTER 2
TWO MONTHS LATER another five-year-old girl stepped slowly and silently from her upstairs bedroom and along the hall toward the staircase. It was night, the hall was dark, but she did not put on a light. As she went down the stairs, her steps were illuminated by the yellow glow that emanated from the kitchen at the back of the house. Her bare feet made no sound on the carpet runner. Her pajamas hung loosely on her thin frame; her hand and arm clutched to her chest her teddy bear.
Strident sounds had awakened her and as she reached the bottom of the stairs, they became louder. She sat down on the landing, two steps up from the tiled entry hall. Carefully, using the main baluster to conceal her body, she tilted her head beyond it. Eyes wide, straining, she peered into the kitchen. For several minutes, she watched and listened, her lips compressed in a tight line. She made no sound, but she pressed the stuffed bear even closer to her breast.
Afterwards, retracing her steps on the stairs and hall, she entered her bedroom. Instead of going to her bed, she went to the dark closet and made it darker by closing the door. She sat down in the corner, the walls hedging against her shoulders, her little dresses hanging above her head. She continued to clasp tightly to her teddy bear. Periodically, she opened and closed her eyes, but as time went by, she gave way to sleep.
When the next day’s sun had been up for several hours, Jennifer Pruit’s grandmother opened the closet door and looked down at her granddaughter sitting in the corner, legs bent, bare feet on the floor. Jennifer’s eyes were bloodshot, her face downcast as if fearing what would happen next.
What happened next was that Jennifer came to live with her grandmother. The woman felt an obligation. In truth, she had no desire to be responsible. She wanted to spend the rest of her life nursing her small retirement income and sitting i