The Forgotten Hours(16)

The freezer was empty, the ice tray furry. The whiskey tasted cheap, but the metallic zing signaled to her that she could relax: she was safe here. Katie took another deep slug and went back into the somber living room. “So, Davey. You talked with Dad recently?”

“Mm,” he said. “Not really.”

“When’s the last time you visited him?” It was strange that David—the only son, the longed-for second child—had slipped into the contours of his new reality so much more easily than she had. After the divorce and the sale of the house, their mother had put some of their belongings in storage at the cabin before moving with David into a two-bedroom apartment near Clinton Hill. He’d commuted to PPAS, the performing arts school in Midtown. David had spent all those years alone with their mother while she was gone in college—she really couldn’t expect him to feel the same way about Dad.

“What’s up?” he asked. “He finally scheduled for release?”

“Three weeks.”

David smiled. “Fuck me,” he said. “Almost six years. Since I was just a kid. Be weird having him back.”

“Have you heard from anyone? Like, anyone call you about the case?”

“From the parole office, you mean, or who?”

“Reporters,” Katie said. She took a seat next to him on the couch. Her body felt insubstantial, as though she could float into the air like vapor, dissipating without leaving even an odor. “They’re calling me. They want to talk to me about the case. It’s really—I just don’t know what to do. I thought it was all over.”

“Damn.” He leaned forward and studied his hands. “No, haven’t heard a thing. But then I haven’t been great about messages and stuff—and now, you know, no phone. What are you going to do?”

“Why does any of this matter anymore? He’s served his time. You’d think they’d leave us alone.”

He grunted. “Fat chance. But you don’t have to talk to them. They’ll give up eventually. Move on to another story, something more current.”

“It just feels so . . . invasive. And Dad, he asked me to go to Eagle Lake. Get the cabin ready for him.”

“No—no way, not me,” David said. “I’m not going. That place is fucking haunted. I thought Grumpy finally sold it?”

“No, not the cabin,” Katie said. “Look, Dad’s getting out, and we’ve got to figure out how to put our family together again.”

“There’s no going back. You know, rewriting things,” he said. “Whether we want to or not.”

She wasn’t sure she believed him. “Are you even happy he’s getting out?”

“Of course I am.” But there was something about David’s tone that suggested he wasn’t telling her what he really felt. “It’s just, you know. Like I don’t really even know the guy.”

Should have visited him more often, she thought, but she didn’t want to be mean spirited.

The heavy gloom of the apartment made it impossible to tell whether it was day or night, and they decided to take a walk around the block. Katie offered David a cigarette, and they both lit up, walking side by side in the cooling dusk. A light wind blew in from the Upper Bay, tinged with the smell of salt and fish. Surrounded by stunted brick buildings, the neighborhood felt far removed from Manhattan—so quiet, almost peaceful, yet in the silence, an unspoken conversation seemed to be running between the two of them: David telling her to not ask too much of him, to leave him be; Katie asking him to help her figure out what life would look like once their father was a free man again.

David held the butt between thumb and forefinger like a villain in a movie before grinding it out under a pair of canvas sneakers. “Come on; chuck that thing and follow me. We can talk a bit in here. It’s nice.” He headed up the stairs of an old church on the corner of the block. A sign outside read VISITATION BVM PARISH. The wooden front door was locked, and he headed to a side door, motioning for her to come.

Inside, low lights were on, and there was a chill in the air, as though the church were lagging behind by a few months and inside it was still December while outside it was already June. Katie’s heels made staccato taps on the floor. When they were little, she and David had attended the Episcopal church in West Mills with Grumpy and Gram for a while, and she’d loved the weighty silence that seemed oppressive at first but became soothing the longer she sat and waited for something to happen. Usually she’d fall asleep, but Grumpy never woke her. Once Gram died, they stopped going. This church was different, starker, shaped like a ship in back but inverted like an upside-down keel. She slipped into one of the pews, and David took a seat next to her.

“They let me play the organ. No one can actually play that thing anymore; everyone’s dead. It’s an old Midmer-Losh. I come practice almost every day. I love it in here,” he said. They sat in silence for a while. “Remember how Dad used to read to us at night? All those obscure English stories that Mum passed off on him. Way past the time when other parents were all, ‘Go watch TV, and leave us alone.’ I was obsessed with Babar. I think about that time a lot when I come here. It was nice, you know?”

“Yeah, those Uncle Arthur stories,” Katie said, fiddling with the hem of her jacket.

“Enid Blyton. You loved that shit!”