[i]Earlier that evening…[/i]
In his car, Landon continued driving and followed the street into the downtown Gilded Coast, a rather small town in comparison to nearby San Diego and other cities in southern California. Nonetheless, it was still a convenient little town, with a fair amount of retail, restaurants, and a few tourist attractions like hotels and stereotypical surf shops for those who came to visit the town for the beautiful beach only a few minutes away. Landon had planned to meet Katrina at a popular Italian restaurant named Capello’s that served common but surprisingly delicious Italian dishes.

Katrina was waiting for Landon, sitting alone outside at a picnic table with a red and white checkered tablecloth draped over it. Her blue eyes were calmly scanning over the menu, but it was evident that she was very tense. Her left leg was crossed over her right and her posture was very rigid. Her long blonde hair was down and a little wavier than her normally straightened hair. She was wearing a black tank top, white shorts, and a pair of sandals—perfect for the temperate end-of-summer weather. When she saw Landon approaching her down the sidewalk, she placed her menu down on the table and stood up quickly with a big smile. It had been so long since she last saw him. He looked more or less the same, just, for lack of a better word, older. Maybe it was how he dressed. Landon saw her too and returned the smile.

She hurried over to him and give him a hug.

“Landon! It’s so good to see you!” she said cheerfully, squeezing him close.

“It’s good to see you too,” Landon replied, smiling down at her. She pulled away from the hug and led him to their table, where they sat across from each other.

“So how have you been?” Katrina asked, leaning forward with interest. “God, it’s been so long. What have I missed?”

Obviously, Katrina had missed a great deal, but Landon couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say right then, so he simply replied, “Not much, what about you?”

Katrina giggled and flipped her loose hair out of her face.

“Well, as you know, I got a job at McCormick as a counselor!” she told him excitedly. “It’s such a coincidence that we both moved out here, isn’t it?”

“It sure is,” Landon agreed. He grabbed a menu and began to look through the options. He had been to Capello’s only a few times before, so he needed to refresh his memory a bit. As he looked over the items, he sensed that there was an air of awkwardness between the two of them. Landon turned the page over, and Katrina finally spoke up.

“How are you holding up?” she asked in a weak voice.

Landon stopped reading momentarily and his eyes shifted up to look at Katrina’s soft face. With a sigh, he placed the menu down and shook his head.

“Fine,” he answered tiredly.

Katrina knew about Kaelyn. She had attended her funeral just last year in North Carolina. It was such a tragedy. She had never seen Landon so broken. It was painful to see him like that. After that, however, the two of them didn’t keep in touch very much. It was pure coincidence that they decided to move to that small California town, albeit at different times. Katrina obviously had no idea until she saw Terra, the spitting image of Kaelyn. (Terra did now show up to Kaelyn’s funeral. She knew Landon had a daughter but had never seen her.) She was shocked at first and filled with disbelief, but after a short text conversation with Landon, she learned that he was indeed in the same town as her.

“What about your daughter…?”

Landon rubbed his forward at the mention of his daughter.

“It’s obviously affected her,” he replied. “But she’s so hard to read, Katrina. I think she copes by doing all these drugs and being rebellious.”

“Maybe that’s her coping mechanism,” Katrina offered, recalling her psychology knowledge.

“Maybe,” Landon agreed. “But then I remember she’s the daughter of Kaelyn, who was exactly the same at that age. So then I don’t know how she copes with it.”

Katrina had no more insight to offer, as she didn’t know Terra well enough.

“She looks a lot like her mother…” she said. She still remembered her confused awe when she first saw Landon’s daughter.

“Everyone says that,” Landon agreed.

“I bet it’s painful to look at her.”

“Sometimes it is.”

A peppy waiter came by the table at that moment and asked for their drink orders. Katrina ordered a water, and Landon ordered a beer.

“Would you like to place your orders now, too?” the waiter asked.

Landon and Katrina looked at each other, and Landon shrugged apathetically.

“Sure, we’ll order now,” Katrina said. The waiter pulled a pen from his pocket and held it at his notebook. “I’ll take the spaghetti and meatballs.”

The waiter wrote down the order and turned to look at Landon, who, during that time, had been quickly skimming through the menu again.

“Uhh…” he said hesitantly. “I’ll try the buffalo chicken calzone.”

“Good choice,” the waiter replied as he scrawled down the order. “Food should be out in a few minutes.”

Once he collected the menus and left, Katrina turned to Landon with an empathetic smile.

“I’m always here for you,” she assured him.

Landon looked at her sparkling blue eyes and smiled tenderly, appreciating the support from his old sweetheart.

“Thank you.”
-----
After a very delicious Italian dinner and sharing a guilty plate of tiramisu, the left the restaurant after about two hours of discussing their lives and problems. They decided to saunter around the town and have some more lighthearted chatter and enjoy themselves a bit. They walked into a few stores and eventually ended up walking to the boardwalk, where there usually were a lot of teens hanging around, up to no good.

Although, tonight, the boardwalk was eerily more dead than usual. A few visiting families milled around here and there with an ice cream cone in hand or a beach chair. A small, local band was playing on a small stage to an audience of about twenty or so people, mostly families with small children and elderly couples.

“Where are all the kids?” Landon wondered aloud, looking around. There was almost always a couple making out in a secluded corner, a gang of preppy girls walking around on their phones and gossiping about the boys who lazed on the benches or on the beach. In addition to that, a group of stoners, including Terra on many occasions, would be smoking something on the roof of some building.

Katrina shrugged as she had no idea, but almost on cue, two teenagers, about seventeen years old, came out of a surf shop. They were probably just let of their part-time shift, as one of them was still wearing a hat that read “WaveRunners.”

“How big is it?” one of them was saying.

“It’s pretty big,” the one wearing the hat answered. “That chick who moved here this summer is throwing it. I heard she really knows how to make her guests have a good time.”

Landon stopped and looked at the duo, who got into a car in a nearby parking lot and drove off toward the neighborhoods.

“Did you hear that?” Landon said suspiciously, turning to Katrina.

“Doesn’t she know you’re coming back?”

“I told her I’d be back tomorrow to test her,” he explained.

Katrina thought for a moment. “I don’t think you can trust her,” she concluded.

Landon nodded.

“Well, I have a bunch of teenagers to kick out of my house. Why don’t you head home? We can meet up again later this week… if you want.”

Katrina shook her head. “I… I want to come with you,” she said. “I want to see your daughter again. And, well… I want to keep talking with you.”

Landon looked at her for a moment, trying to read her. He nodded finally and turned back the way they came.

“Just follow my car,” he told her.
-----
When they arrived at Landon’s house after a few minutes, it was utterly obvious there was some kind of soiree going on. Cars lined the edges of the streets, the house was completely lit up, muffled music thumped from within, and the sounds of laughing teens inside and outside the house filled the quiet night.

Landon got out of his car, and Katrina hers, and Landon glared at the house. A few teenagers caught sight of Landon and immediately knew something was wrong, so they fled right then and there, hoping the cops wouldn’t be called. Landon, looking powerful and stern, with Katrina behind him, walked into the house and without missing a beat shouted in a deep, loud voice: “You all have thirty seconds to get the fuck out of my house before I get the cops over here and personally give each and every one of you a citation.”

That was enough to get a few people moving. With some “Oh shit!”s, a few darted out the front door without a trace, but still others gawked at Landon in disbelief.

“One!” he bellowed.

They didn’t move.

Landon pulled out his phone and dialed 911, leaving it on the screen for the partygoers to see.

“Two!”

That was enough. In a somewhat boisterous crowd, every person fought to get out of the house so quick that the place was empty by the time Landon had reached seven.

The damage was no as bad as it could’ve been, thank God. A few beer cans littered the floor, but it looked like nothing in the house itself had been damaged. Still, there was one person Landon needed to find… Where was Terra?

The ground floor was silent, so the two of them assumed she must’ve been upstairs. Fearing what was going on up there, Landon found himself rushing up the stairs and barging into Terra’s room—but it was empty. There was only one room left. Landon hurried over to his own room where he shoved open the door to find Terra in her bra and a shirtless boy on top of her, who turned to look at him.

Immediately, Terra pushed the boy off herself and held covered her body with her shirt.

¨Dad! What are you doing home?!” she demanded.