IT’S A WEEK before the fifth anniversary of the murders, and a crowd has gathered in the ice cream shop parking lot, anxious to get on with things (with what exactly is unclear, even to Kate, who has helped organize the gathering). The ice cream shop itself is encircled by a temporary metal fence. Workers have gutted the building. The smell of diesel exhaust is in the air. A backhoe and a dump truck idle behind the gate, waiting for the word.
A number of people in the crowd wave photos of the girls, and signs that read JUSTICE DENIED and NEVER FORGET. Hollis Finger is among them, his clothes already lightly dusted with crumbled drywall and ash, the unseasonable heat rising through his shoes from the asphalt. Television news crews and newspaper reporters crouch under the pecan trees and sit at the picnic tables in back. They talk among themselves, unsure what to do. Is this a protest or a memorial? they wonder. Later, under the tree, Rosa Heller, the reporter, will approach Kate. They’ll talk about the tip line, the donations to the charity that Kate and Meredith’s father have started in the girls’ names. Kate will stumble over her words, her tongue thick in her mouth. A tribute to their memory, Kate hears herself saying. Rosa will remember being startled by pecans plunking off the picnic table beside them.
The firefighter, Jack Dewey, is there too, near the tree in back. Kate recognizes him from the TV interview of a few nights before: his crew cut, his hands in his jean pockets. First responder. Discovered the victims. A bare foot sticking out of the water. I have a daughter, he’d said. He paused and studied the ground. The TV reporter in her red scarf was nodding, encouraging him, wanting desperately to finish his sentences. I have a daughter, he said again, who was lost for a while, who disappeared. But then she came back. He tried to find the words on the ground. Not a day goes by, he said, looking up, when I don’t think of those girls. They are a great comfort.
Kate thinks she imagined Jack Dewey’s last sentence. But she hears it over and over again in her head. They are a great comfort.
From where Hollis stands, he can see the shop’s flung-open front doors, the yellow police tape still clinging to the glass. A gaping mouth. Every once in a while a helmeted worker emerges from the dark opening, blinking in the sunlight as if waking from a dream.
15
KATE’S HEART SHAPES itself around a lack. A never-will-be. It doesn’t grow fonder. It doesn’t grow colder. It doesn’t forgive. It doesn’t even seek to be filled. It only sends itself away and then returns to itself. She doesn’t know why. The girls won’t tell her yet. So she waits.
In her dream, it’s a surprise.
The doorbell rings and rings but it sounds like the buzzer on the dryer. First she thinks it’s the newspaper reporter, Rosa, from the anniversary vigil. But it’s the girls, home for Christmas, something Kate’s forgotten about. She’s a bit panicked because the house is a wreck. In fact, it’s been recently sold. Boxed up and hauled away by college boys to a new condo downtown, though she knows this happened years ago. How did she forget to tell the girls about the move? she wonders. Mom? Where are our beds? She sees their fallen faces in the entryway. They won’t even look her in the eye. But they’re wearing tank tops, shorts, and flip-flops, their toenails newly painted seashell pink, and they’re not at all ready for bed. The resiny sweetness of their sunscreen is in the air. And she knows it’s not Christmas at all but the end of summer, Labor Day, the weekend before school starts. They’re supposed to be with her in Galveston, at her mother’s place. Her memory lapse is unforgivable. In ancient times people used different rooms in their houses, nooks and crannies, even furniture, to store memories so they wouldn’t forget. Kate learned this in Latin class. That was how these people memorized speeches. She knew that every ancient woman’s bottom dresser drawer held a revolver in a leather pouch, a vibrator, and hair-trigger memories that sprang out when least expected. Jesus, Mom, the girls say. A little too much information.
They are sitting together, the three of them, on hard plastic chairs in a small room—a room off the kitchen with a tiny window in the door that Kate had somehow forgotten. Inside the room, it smells of men and confused intentions. For some reason Kate can’t touch her girls. Then she realizes it’s because they are still tender from their sunburns. She hadn’t watched out for them, reapplied sunscreen when they went back into the water. This too is unforgivable. She worries that later, without their beds to curl into, they will want to leave.
So when do we meet the new guy? her girls ask. And the waffle cone smell—freed from the small, soon-to-be-forgotten crevices of the house—is so thick that Kate can taste it at the back of her throat.
16
They were daughters.
They were loved.
They were innocent.