The Herd(94)
I kept crying in lieu of answering. A nurse pushed a new mom in a wheelchair past. I glanced down in time to see the newborn huddled against her chest, its cheek a flash of shiny pink.
Finally I shook my head. “Thanks for telling me.”
“All right.” Ratliff planted her hands on her hips. “We’ll be in touch about having you come in for formal statements. You can go back to your sister now.” A soft smile. “She needs you.”
* * *
—
The second I stepped into Katie’s hospital room and pressed the door closed behind me, I began to shake, huge full-body tremors as if my body temp were plummeting.
“What is it?” Katie called, trying to sit up again.
I crossed to her bed and perched on the edge. Took her hand again, pressed it between both palms. In a whisper: “Mikki told them about Jinny.”
“No. Oh my God. No. I can’t lose y—”
I shushed her. “She didn’t mention me. Or Gary and Karen. She’s taking the entire fall.” I swallowed hard, felt my hands still quivering around Katie’s. “Except Cameron. She brought him into it. I don’t know why.”
She leaned forward and murmured, “But won’t he tell the truth?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. We all loved Gary and Karen. Maybe they had a pact—protect the Walshes above all else.” I dabbed my sleeve against my tears. “They’ve been through enough—and they’re about to have their dead daughter’s name raked through the mud. They protected us. Why send them to jail now?”
“But what about Cameron?”
“It’s his choice.”
She thought about it. “Won’t they know from the blackmail payouts?”
“Mikki didn’t mention that either. If Daniel doesn’t tell them about the one letter he saw, then…I don’t think anyone will know.” I swallowed. “I mean, if Jinny finally gets justice, I think that’ll be the end of it. I don’t see why her mother would keep blackmailing us.”
She gazed at me for a moment, then looked away.
“Katie?”
“Uh-huh?”
My voice was so quiet it wafted like candle smoke: “You can’t tell anyone about Jinny.”
She stared out the window, at the naked branch bowing in the wind. Finally she turned to me. “Who’s Jinny?”
CHAPTER 28
Katie
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 6 P.M.
The press had a field day, of course, but Hana handled it all with aplomb; it was the week between Christmas and New Year’s, that dark week when no one’s paying much attention to the news anyway, so it all blew over surprisingly quickly. The Herd was set to reopen January 21, after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, with Stephanie (finally back from Goa) as acting CEO and a search underway for a new leadership team. And the Fort Greene construction and Titan acquisition were soldiering on, on delayed schedules; Hana mentioned that a conference room in the Fort Greene Herd would be named after Eleanor, which, ’kay.
After rehearsing her speech with Mom and me, Hana told Stephanie she’d stay through February to help with the reopening, and then she’d drop the Herd as a client—but she’d remain a member, she kept saying, and she was happy to help them find new representation. Stephanie, Hana reported afterward, said supportive things and seemed unsurprised.
Stephanie also let me know that my application would be processed in time for the Herd’s reopening. I laughed when I saw the email—in all the drama, I’d almost forgotten that my membership was still pending. I thanked her but said I wouldn’t be joining. There were other coworking spaces, other networking opportunities, other places where passionate women and marginalized genders could come together, and if there weren’t, maybe someday we’d make one.
Hana got Mom an Airbnb in her building, and I think all three of us were surprised by how well it went; Hana and I felt lazy and heartsick and Mom filled the caretaker role, heating up canned soup and picking up supplies at a bodega, a word she never tired of saying aloud, in her Midwestern accent, bo-day-gah. I realized that, in all the years since we’d grown up, Hana and Mom had really only seen each other in Kalamazoo, in the high-stakes crucible of holiday dinners and the awful period when Mom was starting treatment. Mom still criticized Hana (Don’t you ever clean inside here? she’d hollered once, her head stuck inside Hana’s microwave, and for a split second Hana’s face revealed a desire to turn the appliance on), but my sister seemed much more eager to laugh, change the subject, and move on these days. As if she no longer needed Mom’s elusive approval. Here, with our own quarters to which to retreat, we all seemed okay.
Some nights I dreamed of the moment I lost consciousness just inside Mikki’s bedroom door. I couldn’t remember it, but in the dream I sensed a swirling Jacuzzi of searing pain and confusion, and then the light changing from blue-gray to yellow-white. From there, the dream always skated off somewhere that only made sense in REM logic: me naked in Chris’s bedroom and the ambulance making all that noise and light, or me wearing a snowsuit and playing with school-age Hana in the woods beyond our home in Kalamazoo, or me showing up for my interview at the Herd, my very first day, realizing at the last second that I was supposed to wear heels, only I’d forgotten and pulled on boots.