The Forgotten Hours(25)

Running her fingers through everything, she alighted upon a thick, cream-colored business card with raised black script on it that read Hugo Montefiore, 12c Elgin Crescent, Chelsea W12 9EU, with a London telephone number scribbled on the back. Odd, she thought, holding it close. The number 8 was made up of two circles, one on top of the other, just like her mother used to write them. Katie tucked it into her back pocket, figuring she would ask her grandfather if he knew what it was about. Over the years, they’d spent a lot of time together at the lake, of course, but she wasn’t aware of him playing any special role during the lead-up to the trial or afterward.

There were other letters in the box too. Letters with her father’s spiky writing on the envelopes. The back of each of them bore a faint stamp:

THIS CORRESPONDENCE IS FORWARDED FROM A NEW YORK CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION. THE CONTENTS MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE BEEN EVALUATED, AND THE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SUBSTANCE OR CONTENT OF THE ENCLOSED MATERIALS. IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED UNWANTED CORRESPONDENCE FROM THIS INMATE, CALL 1-866-956-8745 TO STOP FUTURE CORRESPONDENCE.

Love letters from prison, dozens of them, all addressed to her mother. Katie’s hands trembled as she slipped the papers from their envelopes. The first one was dated a week after they took him away.

You looked back at me when you were leaving today, and I couldn’t read the expression on your face. What did you expect from me, to be superhuman like your father? One thing I am not is anything like your father.

And then another letter, just one day later:

I miss the kids so much it’s killing me. Give them both big hugs from me.

A few months later, in December, he wrote:

We need to talk about your father. I know you don’t want to, Charlie, but we need to. I could see it written all over your face yesterday. It’s going to kill us if we can’t talk about what he’s doing to us.

Katie wondered what her dad could possibly have meant by that. How had Grumpy been involved? A disorienting sense of all that she couldn’t possibly know or understand overcame her again. It sounded as though her grandfather had done something to her parents, to his own daughter. It didn’t make sense.

John wrote about his bunkmate, the books he was reading. He asked for crossword puzzles. Again and again, he wrote that everything would be all right. Katie’s head throbbed with an incipient headache. Her father had been so wrong about it all working out, but how could he have known? She felt caught in some way she didn’t fully understand, but it was a familiar feeling, like being in a very small room with one very small window. That window was high up, the walls were close in, and she could touch each wall with her hands. If only she could clamber up to the window, she could free herself from this feeling of claustrophobia.

She rose and unlocked the cabin’s back door to get a breath of fresh air. She was being so stupid, so dramatic—she was neither trapped in some tiny room nor helpless. The need to talk with someone was overpowering, but David didn’t seem ready, and Charlie had already declared her unwillingness to be an emotional touchstone. Katie checked her phone and saw that it was evening in London. She dialed her grandfather’s number in the assisted-living facility. As the roar of an overseas connection came over the line, she felt instant relief.

When she was little, her grandfather’s dispassionate focus on her, his many cozy rituals, had made her feel cherished. Each night when she stayed over at his house, as she often did in the years before David was born, Grumpy would tuck her into bed and recite “For Want of a Nail.” He loved the singsong cadence that emphasized the poem’s circular mystery. Once she was older and had learned the words by heart, they’d each trade off saying the lines one at a time. Then as they got close to the end—“for want of a message the battle was lost, for want of a battle the kingdom was lost”—they’d both take a deep breath and shout the final line: “and all for the want of a horseshoe nail!” He’d peck her cheek afterward in a cheerfully complicit way that suggested she understood its meaning, but in reality she had no idea what the poem was about. It wasn’t until years later that she even heard about the “butterfly effect,” the idea that failing to anticipate or do something tiny—forgetting some seemingly insignificant thing, like a horseshoe nail, for example—could lead to ever-increasing disasters. But she didn’t need to understand the poem to love the chanting, the way it made her feel part of something bigger than herself, something grown-up and mysterious.

“Grumpy! Is it too late to call?” she said when she got through to his room. Cradling the phone awkwardly between chin and shoulder, she managed to strike a match and light a cigarette. “They put you to bed right when the sun sets over there, don’t they?”

“Right after tea, dear,” he said. “They seem to think we need a solid sixteen hours.”

She took a deep drag.

“You smoking again?” Grumpy asked.

“No—well, not much. Not really.”

“I thought runners don’t smoke.” He chuckled faintly. “You are so like your mother. So stubborn.”

“Don’t say that. I’m nothing like her.”

“It’s a compliment, dear. Your mother’s a tough little thing, if ever there was one.”

“And anyway, Mum quit smoking,” Katie said. She wasn’t hungry, but she felt the need to consume things, to fill herself up in some way. Pacing the flagstones, she picked a fleck of tobacco from her bottom lip. “Grumps, you’ll never guess where I am.” Then, in a falsely bright voice: “I’m at the cabin.”