The Forgotten Hours(49)
“So, Katie. Here’s the problem.” Herb knits his thick brows together. This part she will remember clearly. “Once Protective Services becomes involved and a claim is filed, it sets in motion a chain of events that can’t be stopped, not even by a full retraction of the accusation. Your friend was a minor, and she stated that an adult molested her. She said, in fact—just to be precise,” he continues, “that she had been, uh, penetrated.”
“What, I mean, how do you mean? At knifepoint? And I slept through it all—seriously?” Katie lets out a snort. “Rape?”
“To be clear she did not, at least not originally, use that word. Rape. And no, there was no violence involved.”
“I don’t get it.” Katie is stunned. It’s as though the world is spinning in the wrong direction. “What exactly is she saying?”
“In New York State, a girl under the age of seventeen is considered incapable of giving consent. The Deloitte County prosecutor has decided to press charges, and there’s going to be a trial. Eventually. It will be held in Blackbrooke, where the alleged incident took place.”
Herb stands with the fingers of one hand resting on the edge of the desk. “And because you were in the room when she says the offense took place, you are going to have to take the stand in your father’s defense. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Katie?”
She nods again, biting her lip. This can’t be for real. “I think so.”
Now he smiles. “And that’s good, very good for us, actually. About you being in the room. We’re very lucky she admitted it. We’ve basically got this thing tied up. Now, why don’t you tell me what you remember? Try to be as exact as possible.”
And that is when the idea is born. That she has some control. That she can think back, play the night over and over again, piece together the details and make sense of this. The movie, the storm, the sleepy end-of-night warmth in the den, while outside—
“You watched the entire film with the two of them?” Herb says. “From beginning to end? And then you went upstairs to bed, with Lulu? You were awake?”
“Of course I was.” She tries to remember the end of the movie, what happened. A pinkening sky, a face in the window? An itchy blanket. Her mother looking for David. What had William Hurt’s fate been? She vaguely remembers being embarrassed by the story; it was kind of cheesy. Did Lulu like it—hadn’t she said it was one of her mother’s favorites? Katie had been sleepy, yes, but she probably hadn’t totally fallen asleep. She would have definitely known if something weird had happened between Lulu and her father.
“I was awake the whole time, and nothing happened,” she says quietly. “Nothing.”
Would I have known? The question sits like fragile china way up at the very back of a shelf in a corner of her brain; Katie looks it over, examines it, and then puts it carefully and completely out of sight. It is not possible. It is absolutely not possible that she would not have known.
Herb tells her that she may never contact Lulu again, under any circumstances.
“But what about . . .” She is thinking of the summer. It’s as though her mind hasn’t quite caught up with reality. What will happen now?
“If you contact her, it’ll be disastrous, Katie—and your father will not be able to recover from it. Am I being clear? There can be no calling, no emails, or anything whatsoever. You will do the case irrevocable harm.”
So—there will be no more Eagle Lake, at least not with Lulu. It’s over. She feels the backup of salty tears in her throat, finally seeing the divide between before and after. Until then, she has never thought of the future in that way. She and Lulu had such ordinary dreams, as girls do. They assumed that one day they would live together, get an apartment—maybe somewhere far away like California or Texas. They could go anywhere. They’d share clothes and give each other makeup and boyfriend advice, spend weekends drinking with impunity on some rooftop deck overlooking the city lights. They’d argue about paying for utilities and buy each other gifts when they were feeling down. She thought the future was something that unspooled like a ball of yarn in front of you, bouncing along, unimpeded.
Now she glimpses the path ahead of her and understands that whatever happens, her future is going to be one that does not contain Lulu. It hardly seems possible: she will never see her or talk to her again. Katie blinks rapidly, eyes stinging, as though she is drowning.
22
Whenever the phone rings, Katie jumps. It is never, ever for her. Her father hangs on it like a teenager, pacing, skin coated with sweat, snapping the cord impatiently. Her parents live on the phone. They talk and talk and talk, and Katie shuts it all out. Once, when they are both out of the house, Katie dials Lulu’s phone number.
The phone trills in the distance until Katie remembers about caller ID and slams the handset back on the cradle. She knows she’s not supposed to contact her, but she also knows that no one understands what’s happening to her: she hates Lulu, but she also doesn’t. It’s impossible to just switch feelings off. She wants desperately to know what Lulu is thinking, to understand her, but what Katie wants doesn’t matter.
School happens around her and to her—SATs, college applications. In many ways, from the outside everything is almost exactly as it was before. Except for the once languid, childish months at the lake during summertime; those are over. For the first time in Katie’s living memory, the Gregorys spend the summer in West Mills. Only once do they fight about this.