She waited a minute, Devon’s phone like a hot iron in her hand, but it was taking too long.
Hurrying down the nubby carpeted steps into the basement—the chalky smell of the mats, the gust from the laundry room, the churn of the treadmill—she could feel Devon even before she saw her. The energy she held so tightly until she let it thunder forth: a soaring vault, an epic tumbling pass, a delirious aerial on the beam.
At the foot of the stairs, Katie stopped, watching her daughter run, her face bone-white under the gooseneck light looped around one of the posts.
“Mom.” She looked up, surprised, hands reaching for her headphones. “What is it? Did something happen?”
“Has Hailey been trying to call you?”
“Hailey?” she said, eyes scanning the room quickly, the floor beneath her, her book bag.
Looking for her phone, of course. A classic teenager move, but not one Katie was used to from Devon, who barely seemed to notice her phone other than to look at TumbleTally after meets. Who’d never been like the other girls Katie saw at Devon’s school, with their glittered fingernails clawed over their phones, trapped in a constant storm of entanglements and betrayals.
“Yes, Hailey,” she said, waving Devon’s phone. “Several times.”
“What? No.” Slowly, Devon untangled her headphones from ears, the cords caught, her fingers gently pulling them apart. “You have my phone?”
“It was on your bed, flashing.” The lie came easily.
“Oh. And you started looking through it?”
“No,” Katie said, noticing something in Devon’s expression, a sense of the breach. It was unfair, to feel like an invader. She, who sewed cotton gusset into the crotch of Devon’s competition leotards if they were cut too high for underwear. She, who, like every gymnast mom, was so acutely attuned to her daughter’s body, hands on her thighs, massaging a groin pull, that sometimes she felt it was her own.
“I just saw the missed calls. That’s not the point, Devon. Why is she calling you?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t answer.”
“You have no idea?” Katie wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t believe her.
“I guess she’s sad and calling a bunch of people. Everyone said she was acting funny at the funeral. I didn’t answer. I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”
“I’m sure she’d appreciate whatever you had to say,” Katie said. It made sense, her daughter’s life so blessedly untouched by the loss of a grandparent, or even a pet. By the time Katie was Devon’s age, her uncle had died in a fall, her mom had burned through two marriages, she’d moved six times. “But you and she—you aren’t close. Why you?”
“I don’t know. She probably won’t call again. There’s lots of people who know her better than me. Like you.”
“What? I’m not close—Devon, if she calls again, you tell me,” Katie said, but Devon had already slid her headphones back on and started running again.
Katie sat at the kitchen table, waiting for that morning’s tarry coffee to heat. Gwen had finally released Eric, but now he was upstairs checking on Drew.
The vinyl place mat bore the imprint of Eric’s jottings, the ballpoint pressed so hard. Rows and rows of numbers, mysterious hieroglyphics (Eric’s perpetual vault-table doodle), and something that had been crossed out vigorously, over and over again.
She held it up to the light without knowing why. All she could see was a doodle, a pair of slanty eyes, a V between them, like a cartoon owl.
“Poor kid, his throat looked like a slab of raw beef.” Eric’s voice startled her, her hand dropping the place mat quickly, face flushing. “What’re you doing?”
What had she been doing?
Before she could answer, Eric’s phone lit up once more.
They both looked down and saw the name: Gwen.
Exchanged looks.
“Not a chance,” Eric said, hands in the air.
The phone stopped, but seconds later, Katie’s leaped to life.
Gwen.
“It might be important,” Eric said gently.
“Things are happening here. Did you know Hailey’s been calling our daughter over and over?”
“What?” he said, his face very still.
They both watched as the phone finally stopped.
Then the text message came:
There’s a witness.
“Gwen, it’s really late,” Eric said into the phone.
“Put her on speaker,” Katie whispered.
He set the phone down, and Gwen’s voice filled the kitchen.
“Somebody saw the car. A trucker. Apparently he called the day after the accident, but he’d been on the road. He finally showed up at the station yesterday to make a statement. He didn’t see it happen, but he saw a car speeding past. Up by the highway, just before the turnoff to Ash Road.”
“So have they found the driver?” Eric asked, standing up and walking to the sink.
“No. But the guy said it was a woman. He didn’t get a good look at her, but she was driving very fast. Like she had someplace she needed to be.”