You Will Know Me(16)

Katie felt a jag in her chest.

Ryan. Hailey’s sweet Ryan. He’d been in the stands just the night before, cheering the squad on. He’d been in the background for so much of their gym life, which was their life, for the past two years. He was the one who once opened Katie’s car door with a coat hanger to retrieve her keys. Who’d rescued Devon’s retainer from the bottom of the tumbling pit. Who danced with all the moms at that booster tiki party a few months ago—remember that? He’d even danced with Katie; the chip in one of his front teeth when he smiled. When he dipped her, everyone whooped, Katie’s hair grazing the confettied floor.

Several parents began eyeing the bleacher steps anxiously but not moving, not yet. Forbidden from the floor during practice, they were helpless, like spectators behind glass.

Katie’s eyes fixed on Devon, on the tight braided knot at the back of her head. Her rigid neck.

Two rows behind, the booster parents drew closer.

“Terrible,” said Molly Chu, hands pressed to her cheeks. “Just terrible.”

“I wonder if someone was drinking. Or texting,” whispered Becca Plonski, the social chair. “Or drinking and texting.”

“God,” Katie said, “his parents. I don’t even know where his family is.” She vaguely remembered Hailey saying his mother lived on the other side of the state somewhere.

“Gwen, did you know already?” Molly asked. For the past year or more, Ryan had been working as a line cook at one of her Weaver’s Wagon restaurants. You could see him through the kitchen window, under the bank of heat lamps.

“No,” Gwen said, shaking her head, tapping her manicure on her phone case, watching Bobby as he tried to comfort Amelise, the other skills coaches. “No, I did not.”



“We don’t know what happened,” Bobby said, clearing his throat over and over. “He was by himself when it happened. And he died over at St. Joe’s. Teddy’s there with Hailey now.”

Down on the floor, the girls began clumping together, their leotarded backs hunching forward, shuddering like red birds.

Fourteen-year-old Jordan Siefert’s palms were pressed against her eyes, her sparrow’s body trembling.

Off the beam now, Lacey Weaver had sunk to the mat, was sitting on her hands and staring up, searching for her mother.

“Mom,” a voice said, and it was Drew, beside her, fingers on her arm.

But at that moment Devon’s seal-slick head finally turned and Katie could see her profile, a faint quiver of her chin.

“Mom,” Drew said again, tugging on her sleeve, “shouldn’t we call Dad?”

Katie looked down at her son, that grave face, his long-lashed eyes.

Nine years old going on ninety.



He was only a few blocks away, catching up on work e-mails at a diner.

“Eric,” she whispered into her phone, “can you come here now?”

“I’ve still got another couple hours to go on this job—”

So she told him.

“Oh God,” he said, after a long pause, a long breath. “Ryan. That poor kid.”



Moments went by without anyone knowing what to do, Coach T.’s absence creating a formless confusion, Bobby V. fiddling with his clipboard, checking his phone, avoiding the parents’ glare.

“Bobby,” Gwen shouted down to the floor, “are you going to keep us in the Mama Cage forever?”

Bobby looked up, scratching his neck anxiously.

“I guess you all can come down here, comfort your girls,” he said.

Spry Gwen was down on the floor in seconds, and the stands started unfilling with worried parents.

Taking two steps at time, Katie hurried down, but Devon was nowhere to be found amid the satiny nuzzle of leotarded girls and all those identical ponytails.

“I never would’ve gotten to Level Seven without Hailey,” little four-foot-seven Cheyenne Chu was saying softly, a hand dragging along the suede-topped trainer block. “She was the best tumbling coach I ever had.”

Her mother, Molly, palms still planted on the sides of her face, seemed unable to speak, staring plaintively at Katie.

“Honey, nothing happened to Hailey,” Katie said, touching Cheyenne’s jutting shoulder. “She’ll be okay.”

But it was hard not to worry for Hailey, Coach T.’s heart’s darling. Soft lilt and side-tilting head, she’d become more than a tumbling coach. She pitched in at the fund-raising car washes, sometimes bringing soy lattes for the parents who’d driven far. Laughed with the girls, gossiped with parents, even told the occasional salty joke. And, after every meet, could be seen dangling one of those long tan swimmer arms around her uncle’s neck and kissing his leathered cheek.

“There she is,” Drew said, startling Katie, who’d almost forgotten he was beside her. “There’s Devon.”

He pointed to the far side of the gym, Devon lingering by the chalk bowl, face red from the dust.

Just as she was about to push through the scrum, Katie felt a hand on her arm.

“I think he was going to propose.” It was Becca Plonski, standing behind Katie, so close her fleece collar tickled Katie’s neck. “I think he bought a ring.”

“No,” Katie said. “I don’t think so.” She wasn’t sure why she said it. Or why she thought she might know better.