Identity
“The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are of loving the future.” - Barbara De Angelis
Sunday morning came round all too quickly and Kate found the nerves of being company co-director were setting in fast. Thanks to Jethro, she didn’t need to spend frantic hours in the office, checking everything was organised and in it’s place since he’d dragged her there yesterday and put everything in working order. He felt it only fair since he failed to reconstruct her bed.
After they’d left the office on Friday, they’d found a not too shabby Spanish restaurant, Mezza Luna, just around the corner from Kate’s, which had surprisingly good wild mushroom ravioli on it’s menu. On their way back to Kate’s they’d picked up some coffee and iced tea and even some breakfast for the next morning, having known Jethro wouldn‘t be leaving that night. It seemed they lost their luck after that.
They ate quickly and headed up to the second level to start assembling the wooden bed frame Jethro had so graciously dismantled back in New York. The funniest thing she’d ever seen was Jethro Gibbs, crawling around her bedroom floor with a screwdriver between his teeth and determination in his eyes; for all his time spent building a boat, he was useless when it came to assembling household furniture. She couldn’t help thinking he was a typical man, ignoring the sheet of instructions, certain he knew exactly how to put the frame together. On Saturday morning, having had to spend the night with him, she learned that the man had the boat he’d been building in the basement of his brownstone in New York shipped down to DC; she spent a good three hours in his new basement sanding down ribs.
Those three hours gave her time for reflection, think about her past and about the words Jethro had said to her over dinner, “You can‘t let your past cloud your present.” She had agreed in a quiet voice, but even though he knew everything of her past he had no idea what it had been like to live it.
She grew up on a marine base in North Carolina, the eldest of five children. Her father was rarely home in her teen years, and her mother wasn’t exactly someone you turned to for advice. On the rare occasions her mother was sober, Kate could see the person her mother was, everything the drink masked, but those moments were few and far between.
Her brother Danny was born in seventy-six and that’s when Kate first took on the role of surrogate parent. His care had almost been forced on her at a mere seven years old, but she faced it with the same force which she faced everything. Jason and Sarah were born towards the end of the seventies and Kate found herself faced with the new challenge of being a surrogate mother to three. When the youngest, Owen, was born, Kate was already managing to split her time between school and childcare all the while maintaining a 4.0 GPA.
It wasn’t exactly the life she wanted for herself but she made the most of it; sticking in at school and doing extra credit assignments when she could; shutting herself off from her friends to look after her family; working at a local diner when she was able to.
Jethro had stumbled into the basement then, stalling her childhood memories for the time being and taking her up to the kitchen where he fed her before dragging her to the office. She hadn’t realised just how much she had come to depend on him, how much she loved him. It was hard not to love someone when you spent every waking hour of sixteen years with them, and they knew everything about you, right down to the intimate details.
Now she focused herself back on the present, and decided Jethro was absolutely right; she wasn’t going to let her past shape who she was anymore, she’d done that for long enough, determined not to make the same mistakes as her parents.
Kate had woken early that morning and set about getting her personal affairs in order, starting with finding a good doctors office. She’d loved her doctor, Collette Shepard, in New York and had even been in attendance at her daughter’s christening. Now she needed to find one here who she could a similar friendship with.
She’d been in DC for her third morning and already there was a pile of letters on her desk that needed her attention; Kate felt they could wait a few more hours, at least until she’d got herself into a routine. She changed into her running gear, grabbed her keys and driven up to Rock Creek Park, where she’d heard there was a good jogging route.
She took her time familiarizing herself with the route, keeping a leisurely pace. Running allowed her the chance to think, to work over her problems if she had any and come up with a suitable solution. She was surprised the park was as empty as it was for a Sunday morning, compared to Central Park which was constantly full of pedestrians and mounted police. Talk about a change in pace.
Coming to rest at a park bench, Kate checked her watch and realised she’d been running for almost two hours and it was just coming up for eight o’clock. She’d lost herself in the therapy running provided and already most of her morning was gone. Taking a seat, relieving the ache in her calves which came as a result of pushing herself too far after having not ran like this in a few weeks, and the result of wearing unforgiving three inch heels every day, Kate started to plan the rest of her day. Giving up half way through her plans and deciding to just be spontaneous, Kate trudged back to the top road to her car.
Driving through the still quiet streets of her new home allowed some more time for thinking and reminiscing. Thinking of her year long romance with seventeen year old Jack Thomas when she was fifteen. By that age she had the art of being a working single “mother” down; she could recite the number of times Sarah had been ill or the amount of fights Danny had got into at school. What she couldn’t do was work out how she found any time to spend with Jack that year.
Jack had offered her the freedom she hadn’t experienced in eight years, gave her the chance to be a teenager without the restraints of worrying for her family. With her father spending more time abroad than with them, her mother’s drinking increased as did her pill consumption. Danny and Jason were going through pre-teen angst, Sarah was wanting ballet lessons and the tutu that came with the dream and Owen couldn’t decide whether he wanted to spend all his time in Kate’s lap, too shy to go to day care, or if he wanted to be a fireman; time with Jack allowed her to live her life the way she never expected and she owed a lot to him. One night in particular came to mind.
Kate had finished her shift at the diner a little later than planned and arrived home to find her mother in a less than conscious state. It wasn’t unusual for her mother to be passed out in bed, not knowing where her children were. Kate often wondered if her mother appreciated all she done for them, all the things she gave up. It was more surprising that no one had ever called child services on them, what with the amount of time the neighbours had the kids after school. Luck always seemed to fall on their side in the form of Janis Price, who lived two doors down. Two nights a week, when Kate worked the late shift, Janis picked the kids up from school and kept them until Kate finished work and could take over; Janis was another person she owed a lot to.
In eighty-four, Jack was the one good thing in her life aside from her siblings and Kate fought hard to spend as much time with him as possible, usually meaning he arrived at the kitchen door on a thrice-nightly basis with the promise of a good time. On those nights they were usually enjoying what Kate knew were typical clichéd teen romance moments; in the darkened living room supposedly watching a movie or supposedly studying in her bedroom. Whatever their location on those nights, they always came to the point where they’d be crossing that line, and they both mutually agreed to stop at that point. It may have all be clichéd, but that didn’t stop her from enjoying it.
On the weekends they’d take the kids and go to the park or beach. On rainy weekends they’d hang out in the cinema eating popcorn and junior mints. Jack accepted her family’s situation and never forced her to abandon her brothers and sister in favor of spending more alone time with him and she suspected that‘s why she loved him then as much as she did.
Jack arrived earlier than expected that night. He’d borrowed the keys to his cousins car, and mentioned the fact he had something for her. Kate worried about making sure the kids were in bed but Jack had them all pile into the car an drove them to his house. Naturally Kate protested, but Jack said he’d wanted her to relax, knowing how much she had to deal with at home and after speaking to his mother at length on the subject, Rachel Thomas offered to take the Todd children for a night to allow Kate some downtime. In the few short months she’d been seeing Jack , Kate had found Rachel to be a friend, a confidant and a mother, but she never expected the woman to avail her services to her.
After getting over the shock, and quietly shedding tears of thanks and surprise, Kate and Jack got back in the car and he took them to the Harborlight Guest House in Cape Carteret, where he’d booked them a room for a night. She couldn’t remember what the room looked like or whether they ate chocolate covered strawberries or chocolate mints; drank red or white wine, but what she could remember was that it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for her, even to this day, and that it was the night she slept with Jack for the first time. The next morning, they relaxed in the bath, while listening to Bryan Adams. Their song was “Summer of 69”, which was pretty fitting as it was the year of Kate’s birth. Listening to that song now always took her back to that night Cape Carteret and probably always would.
The sound of metal grating together and the vibrations of a minor collision travelling through her body pulled Kate back to the present where she realised just how out of it she must have been; somehow she’d driven on autopilot to the grocery store and made it down three aisles before she‘d had any form of accident. Apologising meekly, Kate made her way around fellow shopper who looked as harassed as Kate felt, thinking of her past was becoming a dangerous thing to do.
Turning down the frozen foods section, Kate took a stock check of the items in the cart and noted she’d managed to pick up the items she’d been in most need of despite having no recollection of even driving to the store, let alone doing actual shopping. She was more surprised she hadn’t picked up condensed coconut milk or something equally disgusting which made her taste buds recoil in fear.
She needed to get out of there and go home where she’d relax for the rest of the day; she needed to stop thinking about the past because it was starting to affect her actions in the present and she had stopped living like that years ago. Making her way back to toiletries, Kate grabbed a few bottles of aromatherapy bath oils and headed to the checkout.
The drive home was uneventful and Kate was able to keep her mind focused on the driving by running through the names of Impressionist artists. Parking in the residents lot as opposed to residents garage, grabbed the grocery bag from the backseat and got out. Hearing the car automatically lock itself she turned and stared up at the building, just able to see the windows of her bedroom from where she was. Kate had no idea what possessed her to buy a three level penthouse when she could have just as easily rented a two bedroom townhouse, or a studio apartment like she had in New York. The security of the place had certainly appealed, as did the twenty-four hour concierge, but she didn’t need all that space the penthouse gave her. The asking price had meant nothing to her and she met it head on, especially after she learned of the on sight gym in the basement.
Shaking her head at the absurd idea of analysing her choice of home, Kate proceeded into the building when she was almost knocked over by a man on his way out, obviously in a hurry. She stumbled back, her free arm outstretched behind to prevent an injury when two arms caught her round the waist and pulled her back to standing.
“Sorry, I didn’t see you.”
“It’s okay; no harm, no foul.”
Kate looked up into the face of her attacker turned rescuer and blushed. At first glance he was gorgeous and definitely younger than her. He was slightly taller too and a part of her brain told her this was a plus, since she worked on the basis that tall guys looked good in photographs but short guys were better for sex in the shower, and this guy was a nice medium between the two. Her honest description of his appearance was that he had just rolled out of bed and with her estimation of his age being early to mid twenties, she probably wasn’t wrong.
He pinned her eyes with his and Kate lost herself in the depths of the warm hazel looking back at her. Neither one were compelled to move from the others space, nor to remove his hands from her waist. The saying “like a moth to a flame” came to mind with this brief inspection of each other and already Kate wanted to know more about him.
“You just move in?”
“Yeah, a couple of days ago.”
“There weren’t that many empty apartments available, I’m surprised you got one.”
“I bought in.”
His eyes lit up as he smiled at her, as if he almost realised who she was. He stepped back, removing his hands in the process, and gave her the once over. At first she was embarrassed since she was still dressed in her yoga pants and zipper hoodie, but when he nodded in appreciation of her looks, she smiled back.
“So you’re the girl Walter was raving about. He said you were good-looking, but I never expected this level of beauty.”
“Do you make it a point to come on to every woman you knock over?”
“Almost knocked over, and no; you’re the first.”
“Well, I guess I should feel flattered then.”
“I guess you should…”
“Kate. Kate Todd.”
She held out her hand and he looked at her a while longer before he took it in his. His skin was soft and warm and he had a grip that rivalled her own.
“Tony DiNozzo. Your security guard and general Jack-of-all-trades. Welcome to the building.”
Author's Chapter Notes:
Kate Todd is a recently promoted, highly successful business woman who embarks on an affair with the much younger security guard who works in her apartment complex.
After a night of passion and excitement, the new couple are brutally attacked on their journey home and it has devastating results. Kate sets out for revenge but finds it will never be enough.
After a night of passion and excitement, the new couple are brutally attacked on their journey home and it has devastating results. Kate sets out for revenge but finds it will never be enough.