You Will Know Me(48)

Devon hung up.

But all night, Hailey’s voice kept needling her brain.

It was like in a horror movie, when a person you are very close to, like one of your family, changes. A vampire, a zombie, voice dropping low, eyes murderous.

Like how Grandma was that time. Right after they started the dementia meds. You’re as dark as your dad, she’d whispered as Devon leaned over to hug her powdery bones. You’re trying to murder me.

“And then the next day, we all heard about Ryan…the accident,” Devon said to Katie now, grabbing for her pillow, twisting it. “And the calls started, and more texts. So Dad said to block her.”

Katie looked at her, trying to unravel it all. Her daughter snared in such big drama, a seamy love triangle with an unhinged young woman, and Katie never knew it. Freaks with a freak foot. It was too awful.

“Then, today,” Devon said, sitting up to face Katie. “Mom, she must have been hiding in the locker room. She must’ve been waiting for me behind one of the shower stalls. If you hadn’t come…”

There was a pause, Devon’s chin shaking slightly.

“Oh, Mom,” she finally said, turning her face away. “The way she looked. Mom, she wanted to kill me.”

It was a thing you never expect to hear from your child. They had a long moment where Katie wrapped her arm tightly around Devon’s hard, hewn shoulders and neither said anything.

“What happens now?”

“Your dad and I will take care of it. She will never get near you again.”

“Should I have told the police?” Devon asked.

Katie looked at her, the snarl of panic over her eye. “We’ll figure it out.”

“I didn’t want to tell,” Devon said. “I mean, that’s Coach T.’s niece, you know?”

“Oh, Devon,” Katie said, feeling a rush of heat under her eyes. “That’s very generous of you. After everything.”

Sometimes, in the blur and burr of Devon’s extraordinary upbringing, she worried about how Devon would ever learn people skills, social skills, empathy even. But here it was. Devon thinking foremost of her beloved coach. Always thinking of the burdens of parents and parent figures everywhere.

“But,” Katie said, taking a breath, “if anything goes further, we might have to talk to the police about it. This might be evidence.” Evidence. The word heavy on her tongue.

But Devon just bit at her thumbnail like she did before a floor routine. She’d learned long ago how to beat down her fear.

“Are you mad at me, Mom?”

“No,” she said. “No, Devon. None of this is your fault.”

Devon looked at her, big-eyed and immaculate, thumbnail still between her teeth, looking for all the world like Devon at age eight. Or like Devon at thirteen, still carrying that plush tiger in her travel bag, sleeping with it between her legs.

“Mom,” she said, pressing her face against Katie’s shoulder, “I’m really glad we talked.”

It was a full embrace like Devon hadn’t offered in years, not since four-year-old Drew had poured milk in her fish tank and killed all her angelfish, not since she’d left her first gym for BelStars.

“But Mom,” she whispered, her head ducked down toward Katie’s chest. “Don’t tell Dad.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because it’s private,” she said, voice soft, plaintive. “It’s girl stuff. Stuff you share with your mom.”

“Devon, I—”

“And because,” Devon added, breathing in long and hard, “he’d get so mad. Sometimes, he gets so mad.”

“He just wants to protect you,” Katie said, feeling something churning inside.

“Yeah,” Devon said, eyes black, chewing on that nail again. “I know.”



In bed later, everything batting around in her brain, she decided she wouldn’t tell Eric. Not yet, at least. Besides, it was something Devon had shared with her. Mothers and daughters shared things.





III

There is something bad here, growing. Day and night I watch it. Growing.

—Sophocles, Electra





Chapter Twelve



“Oh my God, baby.”

Marbled red, Drew’s skin felt like sandpaper under her hands.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he said. “But it feels weird.”

Pulling off his pajama top, she found dark red lines on his underarms, his elbows, any crease in his soft little body.

Behind her, Eric was already on the phone with Dr. Kemper, his voice shaking and sleep-thick.

“He’s just…it’s like someone took a paintbrush to him. What the hell did you dose him with?”

“I’ll take him,” she said, Drew’s skin bright white under the pressure of her fingertips. “You stay with Devon.”



For twenty minutes she sat with Drew in the car, the parking lot nearly empty, slicked clean from all the rain the night before.

“The Knox I barely see.” Dr. Kemper winked at Drew as he unlocked the front door. “You finally figured out how to get my attention.”

One look at Drew’s face under the exam room’s fluorescent lights was all he needed.