You Will Know Me(46)

“Teddy, you have to go. Now.”

He nodded firmly, squeezed his bloodshot eyes, nodded again. But he didn’t get up.

“But, Katie, I do need to tell you: At the hospital, Hailey wasn’t making any sense. She was talking about how the fight started. She started saying some kinda…raw things about…I mean, you must be wondering too.”

“You bet we’re wondering, Teddy. We’ve known Hailey for years. We—”

“I mean about Devon. She had some things to say about Devon. About Ryan. Some stuff that kinda rocked me back on my feet.”

“What?”

“Well,” he said, shifting uncomfortably, “you know how young women can be.”

Then the side door slammed and Katie jumped up.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

It was Eric, standing in the doorway, keys still in hand, eyes bleared.

“What did you say?” he demanded, and Teddy rose.

“Eric, he just—”

“Katie, don’t you talk to him.”

Katie looked at Eric. Something in his eyes she had never seen before.

“Teddy, you need to leave. You just do.”



Briskly, she walked Teddy outside, afraid Eric might follow.

“Teddy, what did Hailey say?” she asked. “What did she tell you?”

“Listen, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Let’s just wait. Let everything calm a little.”

“Then you better go.” They both stood a moment on the front lawn, jungly with ground ivy.

“Katie, listen, you know Hailey,” he began, voice trembling. “You know her heart. You always understood her—”

“I don’t know her heart,” Katie said coolly. “She came after my daughter. What would that do to you?”

Teddy nodded, kicking the curb at the foot of the drive, just like a little boy might. “I’d be the same way. I’d be like Eric. I’d be worse. You know I love your daughter.”

Katie folded her arms, glancing back at the house, Eric’s shadow in the front window.

“I’m tired and life is a son of a bitch,” Teddy said, looking off into the distance, the neon-banded lights from the corner drive-through, cars chugging into the lot all night. Thumping bass, the drunken chirrs of girls.

“We never know,” he said, “none of us, what love’ll do to us.” He smiled a little. “Make us buy a swimming pool, just so a niece might keep coming by.”

Katie felt something inside herself open, her face red-rushed with shame over it. It felt like he had poked a hole in her.

“Or maybe we do know,” he said, walking backward down the front walkway, the deep slope of the unmowed lawn.



“What was he thinking, showing up here?” Eric kept saying, over and over and over, pacing in the living room.

“He shouldn’t have come.”

“After what she did to our daughter.”

“I know.”

“And you,” he said, freshly outraged at the thought. “What she did to you.”

It was the first time Eric mentioned it. Katie looked down at the spindle scratch on her arm. Felt the pulse over her brow where, she guessed, Hailey’s hard knuckle—or was it Devon’s, accidentally?—had pushed.

“No one ever wants to believe bad things about their own family,” Katie said.

He was standing by the front doorway, and those car keys still in his hand, like he was going to leave. For a second, she wondered if he would.

“How did it happen?” he asked, as if to himself. “How did this happen?”

She wasn’t even sure what he meant, but there was something in his face. She’d seen it before, years ago, during the pureed-pear-smeared chaos of new parenthood. This dangerous and endangered creature had landed like a bomb in their lives—his life—and he’d stand at the nursery door at the end of a long day and she couldn’t get him to come inside, to join her at the rocker, or he’d stand over the crib rail. His face stiff and eyes distracted, he’d linger in the doorway, I don’t want to wake her. But Devon was always awake, bantam arms swatting at Katie’s chest. Come on, Eric, Katie would urge, hold her, smell that sweet smell. But it was as though he were frozen there, and he never moved at all.

But that was a long time ago, before everything.



That night, tucking Drew in, feeling his forehead, she tried to explain what had happened, that Hailey was upset and had been mean to Devon.

“Oh. I thought Devon did something wrong,” Drew said, his throat clacking wetly. “I thought she was in trouble.”

“No,” she said, worried about the rash, his skin mottled-looking. She was going to call the doctor in the morning. “Sleep snug, okay?”

“She looked like she looked when she drove the car that time.”

“Honey, you were dreaming, remember? Just like when you thought she was flying.”

“But she can,” he said. “She can fly, Mom.”

“You poor tucker. Call me if you need more throat spray.”

“It makes my mouth feel like a seashell,” he said. “Like something died inside and took all the feeling away.”



On the way back, she stopped at Devon’s room, peeking behind the nearly closed door.