You Will Know Me(69)

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Katie whispered, her mouth pressed against the phone. “Slinking into our lives with your snakeskin shoes and your big checkbook and your—”

“You wanted that checkbook, didn’t you?” she said icily.

Downstairs, Katie thought she heard footsteps. She thought about the door to the garage. About what else might be in there. Glass fragments, the microscopic residue of paint—flakes and chips too small for the eye to see. But they would see.

“This isn’t about your maternal vanity,” Gwen was saying. “It’s about your daughter.”

In her head, Katie was screaming.

The water running, she leaned down as close to the rush of it as she could and said through gritted teeth, “Go to hell. You go to hell.”

But nothing ever touched Gwen.

“Because, Katie, there’s nothing on God’s green earth I wouldn’t do for my child,” Gwen said, the bastioned fortress in the center of an impassable moat. “That is something Eric and I agree on. Don’t you? What kind of mother wouldn’t?”

What kind of mother. To say that to Katie, who had given every waking hour and every sleeping hour to her daughter. Who sat in that gym every day, spent hundreds of hours in backless bleachers, elbows perpetually rubbed raw from all the bleacher leaning. Who drove as many as thirty hours a week, who spent hours hunting for lost grips or a favorite leotard, every leotard costing more than any item of clothing Katie had. Who hadn’t had a professional haircut in four years, who’d never been on a trip alone with her husband at all, her only vacations consisting of free hours torn from tournament weekends, her shoulder bag filled with water bottles and ibuprofen and gluey hair gel and sharp bobby pins and lucky grips and the right kind of energy bars you could only get online and the right kind of athletic tape and the lucky socks and the lucky hairbrush and Devon’s inhaler and her backup inhaler, her hands resting on Devon’s weary shoulders as they tromped through the museum, the science center, the amusement park in the forty-five minutes they had before prac—

“I refuse to deprive my daughter of the opportunity to achieve her dreams,” Gwen continued, unrelenting. “I will not give up on her. Will you give up on Devon?”

“You’re lucky I didn’t call the goddamned police,” Katie said instead, jaw grinding. “You took my daughter.”

“The police?” There was a brief pause, then Gwen’s voice returned, grim and precise. “You don’t want to call the police.”

Something in her tone. Something with portent. Whatever it meant, Katie could not hear it now.

“I’ll do whatever I need to do to protect my daughter,” Katie said, and hung up.



Walking down the stairs, she dragged down the hems of the capris, smoothed her hair.

“I’m sorry,” she said, returning to the living room, blood high and with new purpose, “but it’s not a good time.”

The detectives looked up at her, half rising, then sitting again.

“We get that a lot,” Renton said, trying for a smile.

Instead of sitting, Katie rested her hands on the back of the wing chair, hiding her shaking legs behind it.

“We already told Officer Crandall everything we know. And we’re a sick house.”

We’re a sick house. Her words sounded funny to her, but they seemed to have weight, impact. That big way of talking, she’d never tried it before. Nothing on God’s green earth I wouldn’t do for my child.

“Mrs. Knox,” Furey said, his neck less pink now, expression oddly tender, “we do understand. We’re here to help you.”

She felt very tall, the detectives slunk so low on the ancient Sears sofa. She straightened her back. She would be ready this time.

“We reviewed security-camera footage of the gym lobby,” Renton said. “And you can clearly see Miss Belfour following your daughter into the locker room.”

“She was hunting her,” Katie said, “like my daughter was some kind of animal.”

“But you should know Miss Belfour’s injuries far outweighed your daughter’s,” Renton added.

“My daughter’s strong. She knows how to defend herself. Thank God.”

Her spine tight and taut, nothing they said touched her. It was like the rival gym parents at the meets, the way they would talk, trying to diminish Devon’s achievements, cast doubt. Noting the extra time Coach T. gave her, the special privileges. You had to be above all of that. Or trample it under your feet.

“And you,” Furey said, lifting his pen in the air, pointing it in her direction. “You too, Mrs. Knox. You defended yourself. Are those from Miss Belfour too?”

She followed his pen to her forearm, bare. The brown serrations etching that fish-hook scratch, elbow to wrist. Conscious of the gaping armholes of Eric’s shirt, air hitting skin, their eyes on her. Her marks.

“Of course they are. You see what Hailey’s capable of, then,” she said, discreetly displaying her forearm. Furey looked at it, noted it.

“Mrs. Knox,” Renton said, “have your daughter and Miss Belfour been involved in any back-and-forth? A kind of feud? There was talk of texts exchanged. Girls can—”

“No. Absolutely not. And, by the way, Hailey’s not a girl. She’s the adult who attacked my child. A minor. That’s what we’re talking about, right?”