You Will Know Me(30)

“I don’t know.”

He paused for a second.

“She was just confused. Mama T.’ll calm her down before we head over to the station.”

A flinty voice sounded out, “Maybe you should take Ron.”

It was Gwen, standing in the kitchen doorway, her abalone earrings glinting under the incandescents.

“No, no,” Teddy said, shaking his head. “That’s not necessary.”

“Lawyer Ron?” Katie asked. “To sue somebody?”

“Teddy,” Gwen said, fiddling with her earring, rubbing the shell, “he’s the gym’s attorney and he’s in the living room right now eating your chili, drinking your beer. Why not take him?”

Gwen insisted on attorneys for everything—booster tax issues, liability protection, contractor squabbles, labor disputes, for her attenuated divorce, five years of litigation and a million-dollar settlement.

Teddy kept shaking his head. “Hailey has enough to handle now. She doesn’t need Ron Wrigley peering over her shoulder too.”

“She may need someone to protect her.”

There was a pause, Teddy staring down at the kitchen floor.

“Protect her from what?” Katie said. “That’s ridiculous. Why—”

“Hailey has her family,” Teddy interrupted, looking up at Gwen, her mouth just beginning to open. “She doesn’t need any more protection than that.”



Walking to her car, trying to unravel everything, Katie heard footsteps behind her, the skim-skim of espadrilles.

It was Tina Belfour, sailing toward her, serving apron still on, the bright white of her perennial crisp oxford shirt like a flag.

“Katie,” she said, moving very close, in the way she liked to talk, a woman’s woman, a Southern expat, crinkle-eyed, always a flicker of a smile no matter what words came from her mouth, “did Hailey say something to you?”

“She was trying to. She seemed very upset.” Katie paused. “She seemed angry.”

“Don’t pay her any mind,” Tina said, walking alongside Katie, even increasing their pace. “The doctor gave her some pills and she’s not herself.”

“I understand,” Katie said as they arrived at her car. “Give her my love, okay?”

Tina smiled, those white teeth, perfect and even, like the former beauty queen she was.

“You got it, hon.”



Driving home, radio loud, muffler scraping the pavement, Katie tried to shake it off, but there was no shaking it off. Everything had been so exaggerated, stretched like in a carnival mirror—that jagged mouth, those slit eyes, the heave of those swimmer’s shoulders smeared against the smoked glass, Hailey’s muscled arms jerking, head knocking back as she tried to pull the door.

It reminded Katie, fleetingly, of the time her stepdad raged on the front lawn after her mother locked him out. Howling and shouting for hours, chucking pebbles and gravel at all their windows, snagging the screens. Running around looking for something—anything—larger to throw.

And there was something else she’d never seen on Hailey’s face before.

A kind of intensity that reminded her, in some small way, of Devon.



“But Dad,” Devon was saying, her voice high, “look at it.”

Katie found them in the garage. Eric was standing outside his car, apparently back from the shop, leaning over Devon as she sat in the front seat, legs shaking.

“You picked her up from practice?” Katie said to Eric. “I told you she was getting a ride with the Hargrove girls.”

They both turned and faced her in the same moment, their matching gray eyes.

“It’s my hand again, Mom,” Devon said, rising, holding her wrist. “That same spot.”

“Okay,” Katie said, head aching from garage smells—solvent, or aerosol, the epoxy they used on the floors. The musky shrimp smell from Drew’s science project. “Let’s go inside.”



Under the harsh glare of the kitchen light, the wrist looked pink and puffy, a doll’s.

“Can you feel that?” Katie rested her fingers gently on Devon’s skin, hot to the touch.

“It’s not broken,” Devon said. “I know the difference.”

“Did you have your Tiger Paws on?”

“I told you they make my wrists weaker.”

“But for the vault—”

“Mom, no,” she said, pulling her wrist away, holding it against her flat, hard chest. Looking at it made Katie feel extravagantly bosomy, fleshful. Obscene. “I just need to ice it.”

“Dad thinks you’ve been overdoing it too,” Katie said, in case that might matter more. “We both agreed.”



“What kind of box did they put him in?” Drew asked. “Ryan.”

“A nice one,” Katie said, taking a breath. “Help me set the table.”

Drew was the only one who’d asked about the funeral, wanting to know how deep they had to dig. And if it would be quiet down there, and if Ryan would like it, even though he was dead.

“He likes it, sweetie. I’m sure of it.”

She grabbed the forks, pricking the heel of her hand. She was still wearing her black dress. It felt wet inside.