I answered honestly. I told her what I’d read on the Internet. But I could so easily have lied! Yes, my dear, I know he’s passed, I could’ve said, and then pat-pat-patted her hand. Did I tell the truth because I didn’t want to deceive her? Or because I thought my honesty would inspire her own? It must be quite a struggle for a good detective to understand herself.
“I guess you think she’s innocent,” she said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Otherwise you wouldn’t have her in your house.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She’d pose no threat to me.”
“Why are you being so nice to me? If you’re friends with her, and you know what happened? Don’t you think I’m bad? I’m the one that went to the police.”
“I don’t think you’re bad. No.”
“Well, I’m here to apologize,” she said. “When I woke up I realized it. That’s what I’m hoping will happen.”
In her voice there was a combination of defiance and tears, an alarming intensity of emotion. I should’ve been able to offer more comfort. Instead I waited a few minutes, then asked what she wanted for dinner. I took her to Pearl’s. I ate plain poached salmon and a little white rice. She had chicken in a sauce. I insisted she eat dessert.
She came for forgiveness, the poor, poor child. That is not what I expected. Forgiveness is a terrible thing to want, because of all things on earth it is the hardest to get. We’ve gone to great lengths in search of it. We’ve invented whole religions. And yet no god truly forgives. Otherwise why would there be hell? Ask and ye shall be, we say. But we cannot believe it.
Step One
Zoe could easily be mistaken for a student here, and so there’s no reason for her to feel like a conspicuous interloper as she walks into the campus bookstore. She lingers near the entrance, touching the books on display. She keeps her head down, hoping the girl behind the cash register won’t ask if she needs help. She’s avoided all nonessential interactions with other people for so many months now that she’s grown terrified of them. Interactions. People. She feels an immense gratitude toward Margaret, for seeming to understand that. For knowing what to do.
Step one: buy a toy for Milo, if she can find the toys without asking where they are.
Two older women come in, talking loudly, then hushing their voices as soon as they’re inside. Professor types in cardigans. She’s noticed that female professors really seem to favor cardigans, even when the weather’s a little too warm for them. She’s listening to their talk only because they’re too near to avoid it, but it’s kind of interesting to hear one of them telling the other how much she hates one of her students, which she does in a normal voice, except at first she whispers his name, after that saying only he. Suddenly she breaks off her complaining and says, “Oh my God! I finally saw Jennifer!”
Zoe goes still.
“You did? Pretty great, right?”
“So great. She’s amazing. She really did get that knot out of my shoulder.”
The other woman sighs. “I have to book her again.”
“I already made another appointment. I wanted to do it, like, tomorrow, but I made myself wait two weeks, because it does cost money.”
“Did she have any mystical visions?”
The first woman laughs. She says, “No, not really,” but it’s obvious this is a lie.
The second woman says, “She’s really intuitive. She knew immediately about . . .” The women are walking as they’re talking, and Zoe doesn’t catch the rest. Did the second woman know the first woman was lying? Or could she really not tell? Maybe it would be better to go through life not being able to tell.
Zoe is angry. Maybe that’s strange. She’s grown used to feeling what she’s probably not supposed to feel. She’s out of step with what’s normal. It’s not for these women to talk about her mother, with Zoe standing there a stranger. Her supposedly amazing mother. She and her mother fled the same history, and how did her mother arrive at amazing? She could follow these women and tell them exactly where her mother came from, if she were the sort of person her mother thinks she is. Instead she picks up a guide to Sewanee hiking, because it’s right in front of her, and pages through it, dimly registering its pretty pictures until the urge to unmask her mother dissipates. That is not what she came here to do.