Long Bright River(47)

—I thought you’d be happy, I said.

Kacey looked genuinely puzzled. Why would you think that? she asked.

You don’t even like me, I wanted to say. But it felt too maudlin, too self-pitying and morose, and so instead I told her I had to get going, that my plan was to return and tell Gee that night. Somewhat formally, Kacey held the door open for me as I passed. I looked back at her, just once, searching her face for signs of the old Kacey, the ghost of the child who once depended on me so entirely. But I could find no trace of her.





The house I bought was ugly and old, but it was mine. Most importantly, there was no shouting or fighting inside of it. I came home from each shift and stood for a while just inside the front door, leaning against it, my hands on my heart, letting the peace of that house settle onto my shoulders. Telling myself, You are alone here.

The empty house had a warm and pleasing echo. I was slow to decorate, wanting to be careful in my selections, spending the first months after the move with only a mattress on the floor and several cheap chairs I picked up on the street. When I began to buy furniture, I did so carefully. I went to antique stores, to secondhand shops that would give me good deals on objects I thought beautiful. The charms of the house were beginning to reveal themselves to me. There was a strange stained-glass panel to the right of the front door, with red-and-green flowers outlined in lead, and it brought me satisfaction to know that someone else had once valued this house as much as I did, thought well enough of it to include such a small and beautiful detail. I stocked my refrigerator with plentiful, healthy food. I listened to music in peace. When I finally purchased a real bed, I spent money on it—the only luxury I permitted myself. I made it as comfortable as I could, selecting a queen-sized mattress from the Macy’s in the old Wanamaker Building. From the same store I purchased bedding that a saleslady promised me was the finest I’d ever sleep on.

Simon and I now had a private place to go. At last, he sometimes stayed with me all night. When he did, a deep and pleasant calm came over me. I hadn’t slept so well since Kacey and I were small. Since my mother was alive.



* * *



—

During the several years that followed my departure, I saw both Gee and Kacey only on occasion. Each time, Kacey looked worse and worse, and Gee looked older. I never asked Kacey what she was doing, but still, she volunteered a profusion of information that I largely took to be false: I’m going back to school, she said on several occasions. I’m going for my GED. (As far as I know, she never even took a course.) And then: I’ve got an interview lined up tomorrow. And then: I’ve got a job. (She didn’t.)

What she was actually doing in those days was difficult to determine. I don’t believe she had begun, yet, to do sex work; in any case, I still didn’t see her on my shifts. In a moment of clarity, once, Kacey told me that time spent in addiction feels looped. Each morning brings with it the possibility of change, each evening the shame of failure. The only task becomes the seeking of the fix. Every dose is a parabola, low-high-low; and every day a series of these waves; and then the days themselves become chartable, according to how much time, in sum, the user spends in comfort or in pain; and then the months. Confounding all of this are periods of sobriety, which occur voluntarily on some occasions—when, for example, Kacey checks herself into Kirkbride, Gaudenzia, Fairmount, other cheap and local rehab facilities with dubious success rates—and involuntarily on others: when Kacey finds herself in trouble, and then in prison. These periods, too, become part of the pattern: waves of sobriety, followed by relapse, followed by larger waves of active use. Always, the constant baseline is the Ave, the feeling of family and routine that it offers.

These ups and downs might have gone on indefinitely if Kacey’s poor decision making hadn’t gotten in the way. In 2011, she let a boyfriend convince her to help him steal a television from his parents’ place. The parents, not wanting their son to go to prison, blamed the theft on Kacey. And Kacey took the fall. By then, she had a long track record, and the judge came down on her hard.

She was sentenced to a year at Riverside.

Some might have found this regrettable. I didn’t. In fact, for the first time in a long while, I had hope for her.





NOW





The Monday after Thanksgiving, the same young detective, Davis Nguyen, comes into the common room at morning roll call, looking tired. He’s wearing an expensive-looking suit today, tailored differently from the baggy suits the older detectives wear: it’s slim and cut short, and beneath it his socks show, ever so slightly. His hair is cut in a style that I’ve seen on the kids in Northern Liberties and Fishtown, the sides buzzed to nothing, the top flipped at an angle. How old is he? Late twenties? He might even be my age, but I feel like he’s from a different generation. Probably, he went to college for criminal justice. In his hand, I notice, is a cup from Bomber Coffee.

—A little news, Nguyen says. We might have a lead on the Kensington homicides.

In the room, a small murmur.

He bends over the computer. Pulls up a video on the screen in the main room.

It’s footage from a private security camera set up by a homeowner, not far from the lot off Tioga where Katie Conway’s body was discovered.

In it, a young girl walks, in grainy black-and-white, across the screen. Five seconds later, a man—hood up, hands in pockets—does the same.