You Never Know a Good Thing Until it's Gone

I thought I’d feel a little relieved that Kari-Ann was finally gone, but for some reason, it didn’t make me feel any better. My mind was filled with these thoughts that maybe I was a little hard on her, and I did an extreme thing by firing her and kicking her out. I wanted to shrug off these thoughts because I knew I did the right thing. She had been lying to me for the longest time, and it wasn’t just me… It was the kids, too. That wasn’t fair to Johnny and Brenna because they really looked up to her as a mother figure, and she just took advantage of our trust in her like it was all a game. And she had no excuse for lying to me or for not finding the right time to tell me that her real name was Kari-Ann Maloney instead of “Kara Muller.” She had every opportunity to tell me the truth; she just wanted to continue playing a game with my heart because she was a heartless, uncaring person who cared only about herself. I had no intention of hearing anymore of her excuses. We’re done, and she knew it, so good riddance, Kari-Ann. I guess it’s true what they say about blindly falling in love: “You never know a good thing until it’s gone.”

I needed to put Johnny and Brenna first. They would always be my main priority. Any woman I wanted to date in the future needed to love and respect them as well as they loved and respected me. Kari-Ann was not that person, unfortunately. I should punch myself in the face for falling so hard for her and not having done a thorough background check on her before asking her to work for me. Well, lesson learned. Never again.

I wanted to make my way back to the office so that I could give Dad a brief update on Kari-Ann’s condition, then pack all my stuff and head back home. In my mental state, I didn’t feel like staying in the office for too long. I was working from home for the rest of the week, anyway, so if I was needed in the office for any reason, I’d certainly be there. For now, I just didn’t want to face anybody or talk about anything. I was too humiliated to talk about this with anyone else outside of the family. I wanted to be alone, and I needed to come up with a way to tell Johnny and Brenna everything when they got home from school.

When I returned to the office, Dad asked me, “So, how was everything with Kara?”

I hated that I had to keep playing along and referring to her as “Kara”. “She’s fine, Dad. You don’t mind if I just pack up and head home now, do you?”

He gave me a concerned look. “Is everything okay, son?”

I sighed as I sat at my desk. “It’s a pretty long story, Dad. I’ll explain it to you guys later tonight, okay? For now, I just need to head home. I… I, uh, have a little bit of a headache. Tell Jason that we’ll talk later, okay?”

“Okay, son.” Dad still gave me a look of concern as I got my laptop and the rest of my stuff together, then gave him a quick hug before clocking out for the day. I met up with Sergio outside, and he gave me a ride home.

When I was in the car, I saw that Cecilia had responded to my texts, saying that she had some information she’d discovered about Kari-Ann and her fake name, “Kara Muller”. Her most recent text just came in, saying that she was on her way to come see me. Perfect timing. I couldn’t wait to see what she had to uncover about Kari-Ann.

Sergio rang the doorbell, and Adam answered the door, giving me a hug. “Hey, you’re back already?” he said.

“Yes,” I said as I entered the house. “I just couldn’t stand another minute of being in the office, not after what I’ve just gone through with Kari-Ann.”

“It’s okay,” Martha said as she gave me a smile. “It’s totally understandable that you’d want to take some time to yourself before the kids get home.”

“Yeah.” I sighed as I sat on the couch. “I still can’t believe it, though. I’m trying to wrap my mind around everything that just happened with Kari-Ann and me.”

Adam and Martha sat across from me. “What happened, man, was that she pulled a fast one on you and us, and the kids,” Adam said.

“I know I’m not supposed to blame myself, but in some ways, I feel kind of responsible,” I said. “I just heard back from Cecilia; she’ll be coming by any minute now to give us an update into her background check on Kari-Ann.”

“Well, that’s good news,” Martha said. “Hopefully, we can all learn a little something about this girl’s double life so that we can warn other people around her to steer clear of her. And Dominic, stop beating yourself up already, okay? You couldn’t help being in love with her or grateful for what she did to save Johnny’s life. It’s just human nature. Sometimes our emotions can get the best of us… Which I guess I should say, because of, you know…” She shrugged, trying to make an implication about Kari-Ann’s dark, criminal past. “But don’t blame yourself. She was the one who lied and chose to keep lying. That wasn’t fair to you or to the kids.”

I liked that Adam and Martha were there to reassure me. “Thanks, guys,” I said.

“I was right to be suspicious,” Adam said. “It’s not like I meant to walk in on her phone calls or anything, but I just kept hearing the name Kari-Ann, and I kept hearing Ryder, as if it’s a town or something, even though she said she was from Hartford. I’d hear little things like that, along with how she’s ‘trying to turn over a new leaf’, so the context of that conversation can be pretty disturbing to a normal person. Like, what is she trying to say? You know?”

“Exactly,” Martha said in agreement. “Just trying to cover up her web of lies. And you know what’s really scary? The BS excuse she’d come up with for not having a driver’s license. Like, I don’t understand how a person can’t be that excited to get a license for the first time, so in your head, you have to think, ‘Hey, wait a minute. Maybe she did have a license after all.’But of course, it was suspended for two years after she got released because she used her car as a weapon to run someone over and cause their death.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Just think… If I hadn’t suggested that I take a few days off a week to pick the kids up from school for extracurricular activities like soccer for Johnny and piano practice for Brenna, she would’ve tried to think it was okay to go driving around Los Angeles without a freaking valid driver’s license. She would’ve put my kids in harm’s way to think that was an ‘okay’ thing to do. I’m pretty sure that after all this time behind bars, she would’ve instantly forgotten how to drive. So, yeah, she’s capable of putting someone in danger once and doing it again. Unbelievable.” I shook my head at that horrifying thought.

“But thank God we called her out on it, otherwise the Kara Muller charade would’ve continued on for God knows when,” Martha said, giving a sigh of relief. “And if we’d gone down to the hospital to check on her to see how she was doing when we first got the news and we referred to her as Kara Muller, the staff would’ve thought we were nuts or something, saying that they don’t have a patient who goes by that name. But you have the most recent picture of her, don’t you, Dominic?”

“Yeah, I do,” I replied. “I showed them her picture and they immediately recognized her as Kari-Ann Maloney, and they directed me to the room where she was. I hated that I couldn’t confront her right then and there, but I needed to be considerate of her situation.”

“A situation that she created for herself with her little web of lies,” Adam said. “It’s random that she brought up this other guy’s name, Will. Suppose he’s the baby’s father? What would that mean for you, Dominic?”

That was a good question. I just needed to be absolutely certain that the baby was mine. If it wasn’t, then Kari-Ann and I were over for good. “I mean, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what the paternity test reveals. If there is a great chance of me being the father, I’d like to stick around and give her another chance. But if this Will guy turns out to be the father…” I shook my head. “No. Just no. We’re done, and I mean it.”

Adam and Martha glanced at each other, as if they were trying to agree with my plan to stick around for Kari-Ann’s sake for the next few weeks until the paternity results said otherwise. “Whatever makes you happy, Dominic,” Martha said. “At the end of the day, we really just want you to be happy. We trust you to make your own decisions about your love life.”

“So, you guys would be okay with me giving her another chance if I wanted to?” I asked.

“As long as we know that the baby’s yours,” Adam said. “That’s what we want. And also, if she’s planning to keep it, once you guys are absolutely sure that this baby is yours.”

That was the plan we agreed with. Probably not the best, but we’d just have to see. I still needed my space from Kari-Ann for now, so I wasn’t hoping to see her or hear from her any time soon.

Just then, the doorbell rang, and I had a feeling that it was Cecilia. Martha went to answer the door and greeted Cecilia. “Hi, how are you?” She shook hands with Cecilia.

“I’m doing great, Martha. Thanks.” Cecilia smiled as Martha shut the door after her. “Hi there.” She waved to Adam and gave me a hug. “I’m sorry for missing your calls and messages earlier, Norworth. Working for the LAPD can be a real handful sometimes. One meeting after another can be pretty exhausting.”

“It’s totally fine, Cece. No worries,” I said. Cece was my nickname for her.

Cecilia was an alumna of Stanford, but she and I had some mutual friends in common, so we were able to link up with each other at some point on social media. She was a year younger than me, and the same age that Shayla would be right now: thirty-eight.

She sat next to me on the couch as she pulled up her laptop to reveal all the information she’d discovered about Kari-Ann. “Yeah, so I did a little bit of digging into your friend here–right? Should I call her your friend, Dom?”

I shook my head. “‘Friend’ is a relative term. We’re not friends anymore. She’s someone that I hired to watch after the kids full-time, but she completely took advantage of me and our family, lying to us and using a fake name. Kara Muller is the fake name; her real name is Kari-Ann Maloney.”

Cecilia nodded in agreement. “Uh-huh. I got that impression when I was doing my research and couldn’t find any information on a Kara Muller in Los Angeles at this address or any other street address. Nor is there a record of a Kara Muller being enrolled at the Los Angeles Trade-Technical College in the Culinary Arts Program. Or at any of those places where she’d worked previously, even in Connecticut. No record of a Kara Muller from Hartford, Connecticut. Nada. Zilch. So, this girl’s a lot more clever than we’ve given her credit for.”

“Trust me, Cecilia,” Martha said, shaking her head, “she’s not that smart.”

“That I can agree with. So, Dominic, why didn’t you consider doing your own research on her fake name before you hired her? Not judging, just curious.” She gave me an understanding smile.

“Well, you know, she saved Johnny’s life from choking when we were right here. I was going over her resume for our interview, and Brenna came running over to say that Johnny was choking, and Kari-Ann just ran to the dining room and acted on instinct. Adam was there; he can vouch for that.”

“Yeah, she rushed to save Johnny’s life,” Adam said.

“Well, that’s very nice and heroic of her, I guess I should say,” Cecilia said, although there was a little bit of cynicism in her voice, given all that she’d just researched. “With all the information I found out about Kari-Ann Maloney, that’s a stark contrast to the persona that she presented to you guys for the past few weeks.” She cleared her throat. “So, according to my research…” She placed her laptop on the coffee table so that we could all look at it as she was showing us everything. “Kari-Ann Maloney is a thirty-one-year-old female originally from Ryder, Connecticut. This is her most recent address here in Los Angeles…” Then she glanced around the living room, as if she was trying to find any trace of Kari-Ann’s presence. “Unless she’s a ghost or something?”

“No.” I shook my head in response. “I just kicked her out, Cecilia. She confessed to me about everything, and I broke up with her and fired her. No time for that kind of drama in my life right now.”

“Smart thinking, Dominic.” She smiled at me, then gazed back at her computer screen. “So, her name turns up about a million results on Google because it’s associated with the crime that she committed in Ryder some fifteen years ago. The killing of her classmate, Eric Franklin Walker, on the evening of Labor Day back in ‘08. Paraphrasing what most of these news articles are saying, there was an argument of some type that transpired at a female classmate’s house party where Mr. Walker showed up uninvited, only to retrieve his sweater. He saw all his friends having fun without him, and he became hurt and upset, and some people confronted him about his intoxicated behavior, and one person even offered to take him home. Guess who?”

“Kari-Ann,” we all said in unison.

“That’s right.” Cecilia nodded. “Anyway, paraphrasing all these other articles. Some articles and news sources have been alleging that drugs or alcohol–or a mixture of both–might have been present at this party because with any teen party, we all know that drama tends to go down in a million unexpected ways. Just watch some TV or some teen movies and you’ll see. There’s almost always drugs involved at these types of parties where one person feels left out, makes a scene, but the ex-girlfriend rarely makes the conscious choice to take the unpopular guy home, so it’s possible that drugs might have played a factor in her behavior that night, or Eric’s, or both of their behavior at the same time. It contributed to that fiery explosion of a conversation in Kari-Ann’s car, she kicked him out, then he stood in front of her vehicle while she was still behind the wheel, and in a provoked–or unprovoked–rage, she ran him over. Witnesses have reported hearing loud crashes and a male voice screaming at that same hour, indicating that Eric must’ve been the one yelling in pain after he got struck by Kari-Ann’s car. And you know the rest of that story, right?”

“She did absolutely nothing at all to help him,” Martha said. “We’ve read the stories. She just let him bleed to death in her car. The case should’ve been declared a hit-and-run. She let him suffer like an animal in her car until he took his final breaths in front of her!”

“That’s right.” Cecilia nodded. “But I suppose the state laws were pretty different at the time. Even if she didn’t just leave him lying on the road, she was still the one who’d hit him in the first place. She didn’t even call 911 or anything right away, or perform any life-saving measures like CPR. So, she neglected to help save him that night. I see now why that’s considered manslaughter. It may have been a total accident, but still… This was someone’s life that you claimed to care about. You’re still running away from what you did, so it just…” She shook her head in disbelief, trying to fight back tears. She was pretty emotional when it came to solving certain cases like this one. “I don’t know… It just doesn’t make sense to me, even as a professional. I don’t think it’ll ever make sense to anyone else, as long as we all live.”

“Thank you, Cecilia,” I said. “You’re doing a great job, giving us all this information.”

“No problem.” She gave me a small smile. “And then, her phone records… She’s clearly made a lot of phone calls over the past few weeks since she’s been here. Lots of text messages to friends and family back home in Connecticut, I’m assuming, for the most part. And now, here’s a new thing… A new contact for someone by the name of Will. I had to search up the name Will, which turned up dozens of results specifically in this area, so the approximate match is to a young man by the name of Wilford Brooks who lives on this street.” We looked at the address for this guy, Will. “He’s a thirty-year-old guy. Looked him up, learned that he owns a fitness center at his house with his twin brother, Ethan.”