The Forgotten Hours(83)

All along, she realized, it had been her father who was the outsider, not Lulu. It was her father who had lived a life he had not earned. It had been given to him, and he didn’t even know it for the gift it was. He had always wanted more, too much; he’d never known when to stop, even when it meant hurting the people he loved. The people he was responsible for. Did it mean he was guilty, after all? That Lulu had, in fact, only ever been telling the truth?

It was possible, she realized, to know someone intimately and yet not know them at all.

The paving stones were uneven under her sneakers; the overhanging bushes scratched her bare arms. There was a sudden noise, a cry from the gardens, and she stumbled. Her vision telescoped, and her breath became uncomfortably short. She was hit by a wave of nausea.

When she opened her eyes, an elderly man was peering at her, and she was lying on the ground. She wrestled herself into a seated position; both knees were scraped, and her head was pounding.

“What you doing running around so late, lovie?” the man asked. His breath smelled of liquor, and his face was covered in white stubble that looked like scattered ash.

“I don’t know,” she said, trembling. “I must have tripped.”

“You all in one piece?” He pointed at her knees, where blood was beginning to sprout. “Nasty-looking tumble.”

On her feet again, Katie took a step away from him and was closer to the curb than she realized. He reached out and grabbed her arm as she lurched backward. “I’ve got to get back,” she said. “I don’t know where I am anymore.”

“Bloody hell, and I’m the one who’s been drinking.” The man didn’t let go until she was standing fully upright, both feet planted on the ground. “Go ’round the corner, love. You’re at Camden Hill Square, but if you get back onto Holland Park Ave., you can catch yourself a cab to wherever. All right?”

Back at the hotel her muscles quivered with exhaustion, and her feet were tender, her mind racing like a phantom twin running never-ending marathons. David still wasn’t back. She dialed Zev, not sure what she would say but needing to hear his voice, that silky tone. It went straight to voice mail; she had already messed everything up! Staring at the phone for a while, she tried to decide what to do. She hoped it wasn’t too late, that he would give her a chance to explain her wavering, that it didn’t mean she didn’t love him—in fact it meant the very opposite. That she wanted to be the best version of herself she could possibly be—for him, for their baby—and she hadn’t been sure she was capable of that.

Now it seemed to her that she was a simple person, not nearly as complex or opaque as she had feared. She knew what she believed in, the life she wanted. And she needed to understand the solid, unassailable truth of what her father did or didn’t do, in words that came from his own mouth. Because it seemed likely that she had been very wrong about him, that she had trusted the wrong person. That summer day when she was seven, picking blueberries with her father, she had glimpsed her own singularity, her unbreachable otherness, for the very first time. Now it was this exact self-sufficiency that she had to learn to trust.

When did the damn play end—where the hell was her brother? For hours she lay awake, her body vibrating in the darkness, humming with newfound knowledge she didn’t know what to do with. Finally, rooting around in David’s toiletries bag, she found a bottle of Tylenol PM and took one. As she fell into sleep, she thought of her mother, recasting old scenes when Katie had interpreted her silences as disapproval or disinterest, when in fact they had likely been a symptom of her hidden sorrow. It seemed clear to Katie that her mother must have had suspicions about her husband’s fidelity long before the trial. She hadn’t known how to protect herself, so she’d retreated. And her daughter’s slow but decisive turning away from her must have seemed like yet another unearned betrayal.

Shortly after six in the morning, she flicked her eyes open, and it was as though she hadn’t slept at all. David was in the bed next to hers, deeply asleep. She went downstairs to the coffee shop in the lobby and dialed her mother’s number in Canada.

“Mum,” she said. “I know all about Dad. I wanted to say . . .” She gulped in a breath that failed to feed her lungs sufficiently.

“Katie? Do you know what time it is? Are you still in London?”

“Mum, listen, I want to say that I’m so very sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Darling, slow down. I don’t know what you’re talking about. What are you sorry about?”

“I talked to Grumpy, and he told me about the investigator. I know that he, that Dad cheated on you. That he lied. I know that things weren’t the way they seemed.” Katie closed her eyes. “I know why you left him—he cheated on you. He’s a liar.”

“Oh, Katie! No. I didn’t want that,” her mother said. “What was he thinking, telling you? I didn’t want you to know that stuff, ever. I thought, you see”—she hesitated, made a strangled sound—“I thought you and David might be the only people left who really loved him anymore. I just couldn’t take that away from you.”





38

Katie carried the knowledge of her father’s betrayals with her like a sack of rocks. Every time she moved, even when it was simply to take a breath, her insides ached. She began to worry about the seed planted in her womb; it seemed possible that even this early, when the embryo had just attached to her uterus—its nervous system forming, its heart—it could absorb what was going on in her own body and mind. Could you inherit your mother’s pain in this way, through osmosis—could it become part of you?