You Will Know Me(67)

Or was he thinking of Devon and Ryan? Was he thinking of them constantly since he’d found out?

I thought she’d want me to pick her up by now, he’d said, watching Katie mop the briny water from the counter, the kitchen floor, the dining-room table, even the back of Drew’s neck.

They have to sit for three days, Mom, Drew had said. To see how many die.

She told him to put the hatchery in the basement or the garage, or it’d get knocked over and she’d be cleaning up salt water for days.

Then she began gathering laundry, handwashing Devon’s competition leotard in the sink. The TV was on downstairs, somewhere.

But where was Eric? The TV on, everyone’s computer humming. The blip of cell phones. Everyone in a different corner. He must have put Drew to bed. She didn’t remember that.

There was a whole pocket of the evening she couldn’t be sure Eric had been there at all.

The next time she looked at her watch it was nearly eleven, and she ran down the basement stairs to throw a clot of crusted dishrags in the washer, the final load.

And she’d finally heard the door from the garage slam, heard Devon pounding up the stairs, the shower turn on. She’d knocked on her bedroom door at one point. Said good night.

Night, Mom. Night.

She and Eric often didn’t go to bed at the same time. They almost never did.

Then, the part she remembered, two a.m., a tunnel of sleep and Eric reaching over, pressing against the small of her back, his fingers digging into the base of her spine, then climbing under her T-shirt, urgent and insistent.

Her demon lover.

What had he just done?

She felt her stomach turn.



I promise im ok. Really, mom.

Katie sat on the edge of her bed, phone in hand. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock in the morning and she was already so tired she couldn’t imagine standing, or putting on clothes.

I’ll get you after last period. DO NOT leave with anyone else.

Ok.



“This is Mrs. Knox. I’m calling to make a special request. Devon’s father—he’s on medication. Back pain.” It was so easy to lie. “He’s not supposed to be driving, but he’s very stubborn.”

“Sounds like my husband,” the school secretary said with a sigh.

“If he shows up, I don’t want him to leave with Devon.”

“Mr. Knox? Really?”

“He just doesn’t seem to be able to take it easy,” Katie said, forcing a wry tone. “It’s strong stuff he’s on. And he just can’t be trusted right now.”

“Of course, Mrs. Knox.”

“He’s not himself.”





IV

But I sometimes wonder, to this day, if courage is just another word for desperation.

—Nadia Comaneci, Letters to a Young Gymnast





Chapter Seventeen



She didn’t hear the car pull up the driveway.

She was on her hands and knees in the garage, looking for more paint chips, for glass.

All she could see was the long trail of rock salt from Drew’s first, failed science project.

The garage door was open only a foot when she spotted the cuffs of a man’s suit pants. A pair of scuffed wingtips.

The shoes paused a second, then kept walking.

A second later, the doorbell rang.

Katie looked down at herself, the T-shirt she’d slept in, her bare legs, knees covered in garage-floor grime. Dirt-and dust-flecked.



Through the frosted panel on one side of the front door, she saw the car in the driveway. A black Dodge.

Moving to the other panel, she spotted the two men on the porch, both in suits. One had a phone clipped to his belt.

Had they heard her in the garage, seen her feet?

The buzzer became a knock.

She could hear the crackle of a two-way radio through the door.

“Ma’am” a voice came. “Ma’am, I’m Detective Renton. This is Detective Furey. Can we speak to you?”



Three minutes later, after throwing on a pair of Devon’s workout capris swiped from the laundry basket, streaking a dish towel up and down her arms, across her face even, she opened the door.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “My son is very sick.”



“We’re sorry to bother you at home, Mrs. Knox,” said the younger one, Detective Fury, or Furey—had that really been his name?

The detectives settled into the slow-sinking sofa across from Katie in the wing chair, which still seemed to bear the scent of Gwen from days before, tuberose and musk.

The chair she and Eric had once copulated on. That’s the word that came into her soiled brain. Copulated. Animals.

But she needed to focus. She needed to—

“Is Mr. Knox here?” Detective Renton asked.

And there it was.

“He’s at work.”

The way they were watching her, she wondered how tight the capris were, how her face looked. Her hands went to her forehead, the slick of sweat there. Had she even brushed her teeth?

“What I can help you with?” she said. “What is it you want?”

“Mrs. Knox, are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said. Breathing from the center, like Coach T. always told Devon to do. Breathe, focus, let go. Breathe, believe, and battle. “But my son has scarlet fever. You probably shouldn’t be here.”