The Forgotten Hours(3)
Katie snorted. “And you’re on my father’s side? Right.”
“No, that’s what I’m telling you. We don’t take—”
“And anyway, it’s not a national story,” Katie said. “The jurors deliberated for five days. There was nothing clear cut about his case. There was zero evidence.”
“That’s my point, Katherine.”
The fake chumminess. The use of the wrong name. Panic began beating its ragged wings. “Why are you dredging this up, then?”
“Listen, we’d like to hear your thoughts. We’ve already spoken to your friend Lulu Henderson.”
Her friend Lulu. Lulu had turned out not to be who Katie had thought she was. The nauseous sensation in Katie’s stomach jumped to her throat.
“You’re going to be getting other calls,” the reporter continued. “Everyone’s interested in these guidelines—the new sentencing guidelines. Whether public perception is influencing judges. We’d like you to tell Spotlight your story.”
“I can’t help you. And don’t call me again,” Katie said, hanging up.
She yanked out the phone plug. Outside, rain began to fall. She covered her face with her hands and started breathing in and out slowly. Time seemed to collapse in on itself. She was slipping into an adjacent world in which her memories of that summer were suffocatingly close, colors and shadows and smells emerging into spectacular focus—all the things she had been trying to forget.
What had Lulu gone and said now?
Her old friend loomed large in her mind, sucking up all the oxygen. Lulu, with her kinked dark hair. Curvy hips and blunt fingernails. Those eyes with their piercing gaze and array of fine black lashes.
Katie grabbed her cell phone and punched in her brother’s number. Uncertain fingers, wrong number. She took another deep breath. Slowly this time she tapped in the digits, and voice mail kicked in. It was still early; David would be dead asleep.
“Call me back,” she said, her breath hot in the receiver, sweat prickling her lip. “It’s urgent.”
Calling her mother wasn’t an option. Charlie DuRochois—formerly Charlie Gregory, born Charlotte Amplethwaite—lived in Montreal now, ensconced in a house on the water with a man she’d met online a few years ago. His name was Michel (pronounced Michelle, like a girl’s name), and he was about as different from Katie’s father as you could get. Slim and wiry, fluid movements like a dancer’s. A silky mustache on his upper lip. It would be funny if it weren’t so painful: her beautiful British mother choosing this stranger over her own flesh and blood. Deciding she’d had enough and divorcing her husband while he was in prison, right when he’d needed her the most. Charlie hadn’t had the patience to wait it out.
“I’m sorry,” she’d said, staring at Katie and David, who was chewing on his fingers just as he had done when he was little. Couldn’t her mother see how badly they all still needed her? She seemed to want to say more, but she didn’t, and the children once again found themselves wordless in the face of her Anglo-Saxon reticence. “I just can’t take it anymore. I’m done.”
A mother, done? Done with being there for her family—was there a worse sin?
She didn’t want to call her grandfather in England either; it didn’t seem fair to drag him into all this, even though he never failed to cheer her up when she was down. She couldn’t call her father; she’d have to wait until their scheduled call tomorrow. And she wasn’t sure that he was the right person to talk to, anyway. He’d tell her something she couldn’t quite believe—he’d tell her the reporter was right, that she’d listen to their side of the story, that Katie should talk to her, that it was an opportunity to be seized. Her dad always put a good spin on everything. Like the time her mother had returned from the hairdresser, tears in her eyes, her chestnut hair razored off in hideous chunks, and he’d told her it made her look like Mia Farrow. And when Katie had almost failed chemistry in ninth grade and he’d insisted it was for the best, that at least she now knew where her strengths lay.
Or maybe he’d tell her to just ignore the calls, that she should trust everything would work out—which she’d want to believe, of course, all the while knowing with a sick tug in her stomach that this wasn’t ever going away. That no matter what she did or what the truth was, this would always be hanging over them, a multicell thunderstorm that only ever quieted down in order to build up energy for the next round.
The streets were damp, the sidewalks pocked with puddles that shone like oil slicks. The sun streamed down, the smell of wet garbage enveloping her as she ran across town toward the Greenway. At first she was chilled, but she warmed up quickly, running flat out until she could barely catch her breath. Baffled tourists stood in her way, clipped by a shoulder.
As she ran, she became lost in thought, remembering when she’d gone blueberry picking at Eagle Lake with her father late one summer. She had been maybe seven years old. It was before she had met Lulu. She’d been feeling cranky, and he was always up for an adventure. As they wove through the underbrush, he pointed out a pair of broad-winged hawks swooping and parrying in the air, courting. He held her hand, his fingers huge, palm warm and scratchy, telling her a story about a princess who felt lonely despite all her servants and the hustle and bustle of the court. Even though her father was always doing something or going somewhere, he was surprisingly patient when it came to his children. For them, he had infinite time. For them, he would do anything.