The Fall of Never(34)

But those were just excuses. “You never came to see me in three years. You could’ve at least done that.”

He just stared at her. For one reeling moment, she thought he was about to agree with her and admit his fault. But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything. Just stood there staring at her, as if trying to see past the woman she had become to the small and frightened child she had once been.

Finally, he said, “Did they at least help you?” His voice had taken on a hushed quality. “Did they at least get you beyond whatever you needed to pass over?”

“I…” And what was she about to say? The truth: “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know,” her father mumbled.

Yet maybe she did know, at least a little bit. During her time at the institution, she did not cooperate with the doctors and nurses, did not try to weed out her fears and the reason for her emotional breakdown. Instead, she focused all that anger on her parents—the parents who had locked her in such a hell hole, the parents who did not come to visit in the three years she’d remained caged up like some psychopath, like some animal. There was no getting better at the institution; rather, she just got angrier.

No, she thought, that’s not completely true. I did get better, in a sense. I got better at forgetting.

Forgetting.

The cloudy veil.

“The police mentioned something about a diary,” she said to him. “It seems Becky mentioned something about me, about having been in some sort of contact with me.”

“The police thought you might know of someone she’d been seeing, someone that would give them a lead.”

“I want to see the diary.”

“Your mother put it away.”

“I want to see it.”

“Were you in contact with her? Did you call her regularly? Or perhaps write letters back and forth? Maybe on the computers down at the library in town…”

Kelly shook her head. “No,” she said, “I hadn’t spoken to her. Not since I left this place.”

“But her diary—”

“I want to see it.”

He pressed his lips together until they turned white. Then he released a gust of pent-up breath. “You’ve eaten?”

“Not since this morning.”

“Have Glenda fix you something,” he said. “Then go upstairs and get some rest. The diary will be on the nightstand beside the bed.”

“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Right.” And he examined her again, up and down, as if for the last time. He looked tired and somewhat withdrawn, like a field worker after a long day in the sun. Wordlessly, he moved past her and toward the doors. “I’m tired now.”

She watched him go. And realized he looked nothing like the melancholy figure in the Maccinetti painting after all.



The kitchen was dark and empty, Glenda having already gone off to bed. She wasn’t very hungry, not really, but opened the refrigerator and peered inside. The refrigerator light illuminated a tall figure standing stock-still against the far kitchen wall, staring at her.

She jumped back, startled. “Jesus Christ.”

It was Kildare, dressed commonplace in a pair of nondescript slacks and a freshly pressed Oxford. “Miss Kellow,” he said. His voice was like an iceberg—only the sharp point of his emotions on the surface, and everything else hidden beneath. “I startled you?”

“Goddamn you did,” she said, shutting the refrigerator. “I didn’t see you there.”

“Is there something I can get for you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “How long have you been here?”

“Ma’am?”

“How long have you been in this house? How did you meet my father?”

“You were just with him not five minutes ago,” Kildare said complacently. “Did you forget to ask him that yourself?”

She was being jumpy. She knew that, couldn’t help it. Her mind slipped back to the scene in the woods earlier that day, and the image of the injured dog limping through the underbrush…then her agonized collapse to the ground, the uncontrolled release of her bladder…

“It’s late,” Kildare said, his voice a thousand steel razors, and moved past her and into the hallway. “Goodnight, ma’am.”

She watched him walk until his form was eaten up by the shadows in the hallway.

Upstairs, she stood outside Becky’s closed door again, tried the knob. This time it was unlocked. She peeked her head in. The room was dark, the window beside the bed closed. In the silence, she could hear her sister’s labored breathing from across the room.

Sleep well, Little Baby Roundabout, she thought, closing the door and stepping back out into the hallway.

Something moved by the stairwell—she saw it out of the corner of her eye. A person, no doubt. Kildare? Had he followed her up? She went to the stairwell, peered down over the railing and saw nothing. It was as dark as a well.

Now we’re seeing things, too?

Damn it all, she should have called Josh before it got too late. Would he be asleep now? Should she even bother? All at once she felt very alone and near the point of both physical and mental collapse. Josh was someone she could talk to—not her mother or her father. Not Kildare.

There was a telephone in her bedroom. She sat on the edge of the bed, picked up the receiver, considered dialing his phone number.