Katherine walked into her house and slowed when she saw Nick sitting alone at the kitchen island, scratching thoughtfully at the label on his beer bottle.
At that moment, her heart constricted painfully.
So much had changed in her emotional life in the last few weeks, and she had resolved to figure it out first before taking any steps, possibly causing pain to herself and others.
For some reason, she had been feeling trapped for no reason for some time and felt the need to pack up her things and leave for another city or state. At first, it was a fleeting thought while watching an airplane in the sky when she wondered what her life would have been like had she not returned to Boston. Whether she would still have become a part of the criminal justice system, or whether she would have opened a practice in some small town, with a population of barely more than 5,000, and now be lying on some beach in Mexico or Australia during the vacation season, enjoying her well-deserved free time, instead of being jolted out of sleep in the middle of the night with a single phone call and then poking around in the dark, twisted psyche of a serial killer for days, if not, weeks.
That single thought of just breaking out of her life had almost euphoric her, and she had found herself thinking about just grabbing a suitcase or two some evenings after coming out of the bathroom after work and standing in front of the closet, packing the 'most important' clothes and just disappearing. To start a new life somewhere in a small town where they didn't know her or her name.
But then the rational part of her brain had kicked in, telling her that in Boston, she had a job and a family, a son who wouldn't understand why his mother had just left him, especially at his age.
Nick, even more so, wouldn't understand because he had never given her any reason even to pursue such a thought process of just leaving everything behind and starting over.
Nick had always done right by her, or at least mostly, had given her all the freedoms when she had asked for them and supported her in most things when they weren't irrational. Of course, there were disagreements here and there, but nothing that a good talk couldn't have settled.
Some women might even go so far as to call Nick the perfect man.
Katherine didn't; however, he came very close to being a perfect man, though.
Once, when she had met a friend from medical school for coffee during one of her brief breaks from work and described her current emotional state, the other woman had succinctly named Katherine's problem, "Katie, honey," she has said, "all of this sounds to me like you're burned out."
Burned out, that sounded so unlikely to the psychiatrist, yet it would explain so much. The longing to drop everything and disappear without looking back. At that moment, Katherine concluded that it wasn't such a bad thing to talk about it with someone who wasn't part of her specialty, who had nothing to do with the human psyche, but was instead busy treating children in the hospital. Someone who didn't analyze every word from the beginning and came to the simple conclusion that Katherine wasn't living a contented life.
For this reason, she had confided in her sister on the drive back from Bonnie's ranch to the BPD, but the detective had failed to recognize the dodge and even made a bit of a joke of the brief conversation.
Elizabeth probably even felt that the psychiatrist had fallen out of love with Nick as quickly as she had fallen in love with him, but that wasn't the case, even as she kept wondering if she and Nick hadn't skipped a few steps. Eventually, they'd gone from casual acquaintances to work colleagues, then had become friends confiding in each other on a night when Katherine had been placed under Nick's protection when Wesley Phelps, a.k.a. the Anagramist, had been up to his mischief in Boston, and then from very good friends to lovers after Phelps had barged into Katherine's parents' house and waylaid the two of them. A year later, Nick proposed to the doctor, which she had happily accepted. And barely a year after the wedding, she became pregnant.
A development of the relationship within less than three years, for which other couples needed several years if not decades.
Katherine took a deep breath and ambled to the kitchen island, unsure what to expect. Should she join her husband unasked? In recent weeks, she had come home after Nick greeted him fleetingly and then, after taking a shower and playing with Jalen, reading to him or, if it was already too late in the evening, at least kissing him goodnight, retired to her home office.
So she could say in good conscience that her troubled emotional world had also affected her sex life.
She wouldn't be surprised if Nick went so far as to assume she was having an affair but had never brought it up.
She hesitated momentarily before pulling back the barstool and sitting down next to the detective. "Hi," she said almost in a whisper, as if afraid to start an argument if she spoke a little louder.
Nick gritted his teeth and looked at her for a second. "Hey," he replied in a neutral tone before sliding her a glass of red wine that he poured like he did every night after he got home from work and that had been left untouched on the kitchen island for the past while.
Katherine nodded slowly and pulled the glass toward her. "Thank you."
He licked his lips and looked stoically straight ahead. "You're welcome," he said curtly before silence settled over the room again. He took a deep breath and frowned a little. "Bad case we've landed again, isn't it?"
Katherine's heart contracted painfully once more as the feeling spread through her as if she were in a cop bar and had sat down next to a longtime colleague who much preferred to confine himself to professional matters rather than personal ones and not next to her husband.
She closed her eyes for a second. "Nick --," she whispered his name.
It seemed as if his name coming out of her mouth was all it took to break down his protective wall, and he turned his head to the doctor to look at her closely. "Are you unhappy in our marriage, Kate?"
Katherine hadn't expected this confrontation and sucked in air through her mouth in surprise. Had Elizabeth hinted at such a thing in the coffee kitchen at BPD during a brief break when she wasn't present? Had her sister told Nick about the short conversation in the unmarked car?
She looked him straight in the eye and pressed her lips together when she saw not anger and disappointment that she hadn't been honest with him.
Nick nodded slowly as she remained silent, taking a sip from his beer bottle. "I'll take that as a yes."
"Nick," she said quietly, just as he spoke to her. She hadn't been aware that she'd been holding her breath the whole time. "I'm not unhappy --"
He took a deep breath and gritted his teeth one more time. "But?"
The psychiatrist realized it was time to be honest with her husband. "But I'm not happy either." She quickly put her hand on his when she saw more confusion in his eyes. "It has nothing --" She paused as the words 'It has nothing to do with you' almost slipped from her lips. It would have been a lie. It had to do with Nick, Elizabeth, her parents, her job, and herself. It had to do with the course of her life. "It's the overall circumstance that I'm unhappy with right now. Most of all, I'm unhappy with myself. With some of the choices I had made throughout my life." She grabbed Nick's wrist as he tried to pull his hand away and looked at him with wide eyes. "Not the decision to fall in love with you, marry you and start a family with you, though," the words spilled from her lips without her permission.
Nick took a deep breath and relaxed a little. "We have a lot to talk about, Kate."
Katherine sighed loudly and nodded with a furrowed brow. "Yes," she agreed. "Yes, I know."
She opened her mouth to start the actual conversation when Nick's cell phone rang.
It was Elizabeth. He listened intently. "And why us? Not a young ... girl, but ... a rose?" He looked at his wife. "All right, we're coming." He left his beer and stood up abruptly. "I think we'll have to postpone this conversation," he said, looking closely at the doctor. "Liz is sending Ash and Nikki over so Jalen won't be alone tonight. I'll explain everything in the car."
