You Will Know Me(37)

Of all the moms, he said, winking, you’re the nicest.



Stepping from the shower, she heard the trill of her ringtone.

The opening thumps of “Assassin’s Tango.”

A number she didn’t know.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Knox.” The voice was brittle and low and she didn’t recognize it. She wasn’t even sure if it was male or female. “Why won’t your daughter talk to me?”

“Who is this?”

“You can tell her for me that I know everything.”

“Hailey,” Katie said, just realizing it. “Hailey, what are you—”

“You can tell her I’m watching her. I know all about her. She can’t hide from me.”

“Hey, calm down,” Katie said, trying to keep in mind what Tina had said about her niece, all the medication.

“I won’t calm down,” she said, that surly tone, clenched jaw. “People have been telling me my whole life to calm down.”

“Hailey, you’re going through a lot right now.”

“I am, Mrs. Knox. I’m going through a lot, and thanks to that stunted freak daughter of yours, that little monkey—”

A lurch in her chest, her voice rising. “Don’t you dare talk about—”

“I thought you were my friend.” Her voice hard, hammering. “I thought you were a nice lady. Maybe you are. But I’m telling you this: you have no clue about that thing under your roof.”

“Jesus, Hailey, what do you—”

“Your daughter’s a f*cking animal.”

There was a click, and silence.



Seated on the edge of the bed, Katie stared at her feet on the bedroom carpet, trying to catch her breath, trying to control herself.

There were all kinds of troubling ways grief could work on people. Probing with hard fingers, scraping underneath old scars. Maybe Hailey needed a focus, she told herself. A gathering point. Though why she had landed on Devon, Katie couldn’t guess.

Except she could. There were many things she’d had to get used to as Devon’s mother, like when a competing gymnast said something about her daughter, calling her Boulder Shoulders, Bitchface, Ice Dyke, or when that science teacher accused her of cheating: “No one who misses that much school could score this high on a test.”

But those remarks were easy to dismiss, the anger fleeting, a hot wave that came over her and settled, Eric calming her, reminding her that some people would always be jealous of Devon, the way they were jealous of all beautiful and brilliant things.

From Hailey, though, it was different. Those words, the sharp thwack of them—they were words she’d never heard Hailey use. It was like a Disney princess hurling foul epithets, oozing dirty talk. And the words made no sense. They seemed to spin from some far-off place and now latched hard in the center of her.

“Mom?”

Jolted, Katie looked up to see Devon in the doorway, showered, ponytail wet and sleek.

“Why were you yelling?”

“Was I?” she said.

“Who was that on the phone? I thought I heard you say ‘Hailey.’”

“No. Yes.”

“Why were you yelling at her?” Devon asked, her fingers running slow down her ponytail and landing at the bottom. “What did she want?”

“I don’t know,” Katie said. “She wasn’t making any sense.”

Everything felt backward. Katie was seated, still in her bathrobe, dripping all over the bedspread, as Devon loomed in the doorway, T-shirt straining over her muscled arms. Questioning her. And Katie was lying.

“Mom,” Devon said, eyes downcast, “what about the purple car that guy saw?”

Katie looked at her, not sure what to say. “Who told you about the car?”

Devon didn’t say anything.

“Did your dad tell you?”

Devon paused, then shook her head. “Everyone knows. Everyone’s texting about it.”

“Honey,” she said, “all we know for sure is that Hailey’s not herself right now.”

“Kind of like Grandma?” The last few visits with Katie’s mom had spooked Devon. Once, she forgot Devon’s name and called her Marie, and then another time, which alarmed them all, she thought a leaf on the sidewalk was shrieking at her. Accusing her of things. It says I steal!

“If she calls you again,” Katie said, “tell me right away.”

“She can’t,” Devon said. “I blocked her.”

This sensible, sensible girl. A girl who knew how to protect herself. Never a daredevil, never stunting without a safety mat, without spotters. A girl for whom instability was the ultimate enemy. Who’d never known divorce or slamming doors or slamming fists. A girl whose home was a peaceful sanctum, even the basement padded. A life that had to be made safe because of the risks she put her body through. She was the most dangerous thing in her own life. Her body, the only dangerous thing.

“Good, Devon.”

“Dad told me to.”

Katie looked at her. Of course he did. “When?”

“This morning, before he left. He said to block her.”

Again, the feeling that, when it came to Devon, she was no longer at the center of things. That she was on the outside, rapping on the glass.