Chapter 13
Kristen thought her hands would stop shaking once the lock opened, but she found herself only more nervous. She didn’t know what she would find inside the storage locker and she was scared. What was she about to find out about her father?
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Steel asked as he rubbed Kristen’s shoulders, but he knew she wouldn’t be able to turn back. She needed answers and he hoped that whatever was inside would provide them.
Kristen nodded. Her mouth was dry, and she felt sick to her stomach, but she did her best to ready herself for whatever it was that they would find.
As Steel pulled open the locker door, she was shocked. She didn’t know what she expected. Maybe it was boxes stacked and stuffed everywhere, but it certainly wasn’t what they had found: a single two-drawer file cabinet, sitting alone in the middle of the big storage unit.
Kristen looked at Steel, confused. “What is this?” she asked.
Steel grabbed her hand. “There’s only one way to find out.”
Kristen opened the top drawer and it was empty. “There’s nothing here!” She was upset and angry that their wild goose chase was for nothing, but Steel told her to check the bottom drawer as well.
At first, she thought it was empty as well. Without a light in the storage unit, she almost missed the folded and stapled set of papers in the back of the cabinet’s drawer. Kristen furrowed her brow as she reached for the papers.
Steel remained silent as Kristen opened the packet of papers and scanned the first page. Her expression changed from one of anger to one of horror. Instantly her face drained of all color. “Does this mean what I think it means?” she asked before handing Steel the set of papers to read.
He only had to scan the first page to see why Kristen was upset. He recognized her parents’ names on the page, as well as her own first name. Her last name was different, however. That was because the packet of papers was a set of adoption papers. Adoption papers for Kristen.
Steel wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t know what to say. What do you tell someone who has just lost their father and then finds out that he worked under another name and wasn’t even your biological parent? “You had no idea?” he finally asked. It was probably the wrong thing to say, but he wanted Kristen to say something, anything.
“What? Did I have any idea that my whole life was a lie?” Kristen spat back angrily. She didn’t mean to take it out on Steel. After all, it wasn’t his fault that she was adopted or that no one decided to ever tell her the truth.
At that moment, Kristen wanted to punch something…anything. And, unfortunately for him, Steel was the only thing there. He understood the urge though, and was fine with it. He would be Kristen’s punching bag if that’s what she needed. He listened as she ranted and raved about how there were so many times her father could have told her the truth, and when the anger wore off, he would also be there to hold her.
It only took fifteen minutes for Kristen’s yelling to turn to sobbing. As Steel embraced her, he wished he could do more. He just kept telling her that everything would be alright. Inside, though, he knew there would be more bad news to come.
As Kristen’s sobbing slowed, she raised her head from Steel’s chest and looked into his eyes. She saw compassion in them. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice was still horse, but he had heard her.
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” he answered as he kissed her forehead. It was strange how protective he felt for a woman that until a few days earlier had been a virtual stranger. But, he was protective of her and wished he could take away all the pain and unpleasantness she was feeling.
“I just don’t understand it. He always told me that I looked like my mother,” Kristen said. Steel wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or to himself, so he just let her talk. He would speak up if she needed him to, but what she needed then was just to get it all out. “I used to stare at her pictures to see if I could see myself in her. We didn’t have the same nose or eyes, but thought I saw the same lips and chin. And, I was proud of that. I was proud to have some of her features. It made me feel connected to her, you know?”
Steel nodded and let Kristen continue.
“You know, I only have one or two memories of her. I remember her singing to me as she tucked me in to bed,” Kristen reminisced and as she did, a smile began to form. She closed her eyes and could almost see and hear her mother’s presence. But, it wasn’t her mother. It was someone that adopted her. Did that make a difference? Her mother and father still raised her and loved her. She tried to tell herself that that’s the only thing that should matter, but she felt betrayed. “Why didn’t he tell me? He had years to tell me….years!”
Steel could sense Kristen’s anger coming to the surface once again. She seemed to be a ball of raw emotion, quickly going from sadness, to nostalgia, to anger. Still, he remained silent but attentive.
“Every week, we got together and ate lunch…every week! He had so many opportunities to tell me the truth. I wasn’t a little girl anymore.”
Steel wanted to say that her father just probably didn’t know how to tell her the truth, especially as she got older and older. He probably thought he would have more chances and was waiting for the right time. Deep down, he knew Kristen already knew that. She couldn’t do it now, but after the freshness of the news wears off, she would be able to think about it from her father’s perspective and realize he was in a difficult spot.
Kristen wiped the tears from her eyes as she saw the old man from the office head their way. “I see you found what you were lookin’ for,” he said as he approached.
“Yes, thank you,” Kristen answered politely, before turning away and heading to the car.
The elderly man noticed the smeared makeup on the woman and wondered for a minute if she and the man she was with had been in a fight.
“She got some very bad news,” Steel vaguely explained when he saw the man’s concern. “But, thank you very much for your help.” He asked the old man if he could use the file cabinet before telling him that the locker would no longer be needed.
As he got back in the car, Kristen seemed more put together. Still, Steel wasn’t sure if he should say anything.
“What? What is it?” she asked. She could already tell when something was on his mind. A part of her wanted to run away and hide in her bed, and never wake up. That wasn’t her, though. She was stronger than that, and even if she had to fake it for the time being, she would prove it.
“It can wait,” Steel answered as he slowly pulled out of the storage facility. He turned on the radio, in hopes that some soft music would take Kristen’s mind off of her troubles, at least a little bit.
Kristen turned the radio back off. “No, what is it!?” she demanded to know. Steel would’ve smiled at her determination if it had been under any other circumstances.
He pulled off the road and into a fast food restaurant’s parking lot and looked at Kristen hard. He wanted to gauge if she could handle what he was about to tell her. Seeing that she wouldn’t give up, he had no other choice. “There are still a lot of unanswered questions,” he began. “We don’t know if the news we discovered today is related to the break-in, or your father’s death. It doesn’t explain or even seem to have anything to do with why your father was using a different name for some of his work,” Steel explained.
Kristen felt a twinge of pain every time Steel used the word father. Even if he wasn’t her biological father, he was still her dad. She had to remember that. As Steel spoke, she realized that he has said ‘your father’s death’ as if it may not have been an accident. That wasn’t something he had shared with her. “Wait,” she said. “What unanswered questions about my father’s death?”