The Forgotten Hours(47)
She had never admitted to anyone, not even to herself, that her anger hadn’t been as pure as she had wanted it to be. Now she thought of the article and the expert witness who hadn’t taken the stand. She wondered about this issue of dissociative memory, whether it could be true. With those thoughts, a tug of pity pulled at her. Lulu may have lied, and she may have destroyed their lives, but she’d been just a kid. Katie should never have sent her that email.
After a little more sleuthing, she found a phone number. There it was, just like that, a bridge she could walk across. She jumped up from the table as though it were on fire. Was it betraying her father to call? In the bathroom, she stared at her face in the mirror and saw a girl who was still afraid to make a move. It wasn’t the person in the picture Zev had sent her. That picture had been of a woman with a backbone. Someone who wasn’t derailed by a messy life.
Screwing her eyes shut, she thought about the reporters who had been calling, claiming that Lulu had spoken to them. It wasn’t fair that they knew more than Katie did. She had given Jack the upper hand by approaching tentatively, allowing him to back away from her, and she didn’t want to do that again. The old rules about who you could and couldn’t contact didn’t count anymore. But she felt nauseated, so utterly drained that her body shook as though she were standing outside half-clothed. Opening her eyes, she grimaced into her reflection: she was going to call. Now. If she hesitated for another second, she would never do it.
The phone was slippery in her fingers as she dialed. A woman picked up, her voice loose and distracted.
“Hi, I’m looking for Lulu Henderson,” Katie said, going back to the kitchen, heart hammering, and pouring herself a glass of water. “Is this the right number?”
“Yeah, this is Lulu. How can I help you?”
It seemed an absolute miracle that at this very minute, Lulu stood in some room in some house in New Hampshire, holding a phone to her ear, and that she was about to have a conversation with Katie. All these years she had calcified in Katie’s memory as the girl from that last summer—billowing, frizzy hair, a light rash of pimples on her chin, full lips pulled into a mischievous smile. It was impossible to believe she existed now, an adult, a changed woman.
“It’s Katie Gregory.”
There was a pause, a sharp inhalation. “Well, fuck me. No kidding. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
Anger and confusion had been backed up inside Katie for so long that she’d forgotten that Lulu would be angry too. It was impossible now to launch in as she’d thought she would: It’s been so long, I wanted to say sorry for the email I sent you, I know you’ve had some really awful experiences, awful, I understand better now, I think. Nothing is as straightforward as I thought . . . Instead there rose within her a hot tide of defensiveness, automatic, entirely out of her control.
“You talked to a bunch of reporters,” Katie said. Her will met Lulu’s aggression, and the two instantly were at war. “How you could perpetuate this, this horror show, after my father spent six years of his life in jail! I want to—”
“You’ve got some nerve. Why shouldn’t I talk to whoever the hell I want to talk to? At least they take me seriously.”
“You don’t think we took you seriously? You kidding? Didn’t you already get what you wanted, Lulu?”
“What I wanted? I didn’t want any of this.”
There was a pause, during which it felt as though the conversation could go in several very different directions, and then in the background, Katie heard an odd noise, a sort of snuffling or hiccup. She stilled her breathing to listen more closely and realized that it was the sound of a hand over the receiver, and behind that, the sound of a person crying.
“Hold on—we started out wrong. That isn’t what I meant to say.” Katie held her breath, waiting, shocked that Lulu carried her emotions so close to the surface. “Lulu? You still there?”
There were more muffled, choking sounds, and then the line went dead.
21
A constant dripping in the hallway. Buckets in the kitchen, in the basement. Her parents cursing the winter storms, the ice dams. The weather creeps its way inside the West Mills house, transforming itself into icy rivulets, gathering quietly, a secret army bent on invasion. New York State experiences record snowfall, and the house groans under the pressure: waterfalls pooling in the cracking windowsills, water dribbling through kitchen light fixtures, seeping through the bedroom walls. Bloated plaster and grim mouths.
By April, the skies clear, a sudden pulling back of the offensive; yellow crocuses pop on the lawn. But something isn’t right. John brings the Falcon out of the garage to give it its first waxing in the weak sunshine. There is a forced quality to his joviality. When Katie is in bed, just before falling asleep, she can hear him fighting with her mother behind closed doors. There is talk of money, voices snapping and stinging.
Katie has things on her mind. She is working so hard, driven by a desire she’s never felt before. She has started to notice the interconnectedness of all things, how history and science and philosophy and mathematics are all linked in a complex and infinite web in which she can lose herself for hours. She discovers that she is exceptionally good at algebra. The juniors in her advanced class are standoffish, a year above her, but she is cool under pressure, tests well. At times, while poring over a textbook or writing an essay, she feels a sense of excitement overtake her, and she can barely keep still. The energy is all directed back inside her, like blood rushing to her brain, feeding her curiosity. It is this discovery—the deep energy of engagement—that teaches her how to shut off those things she does not want to know about.