“Jesus, Hailey, what do you—”
“Your daughter’s a fucking animal.”
There was a click, and silence.
Seated on the edge of the bed, Katie stared at her feet on the bedroom carpet, trying to catch her breath, trying to control herself.
There were all kinds of troubling ways grief could work on people. Probing with hard fingers, scraping underneath old scars. Maybe Hailey needed a focus, she told herself. A gathering point. Though why she had landed on Devon, Katie couldn’t guess.
Except she could. There were many things she’d had to get used to as Devon’s mother, like when a competing gymnast said something about her daughter, calling her Boulder Shoulders, Bitchface, Ice Dyke, or when that science teacher accused her of cheating: “No one who misses that much school could score this high on a test.”
But those remarks were easy to dismiss, the anger fleeting, a hot wave that came over her and settled, Eric calming her, reminding her that some people would always be jealous of Devon, the way they were jealous of all beautiful and brilliant things.
From Hailey, though, it was different. Those words, the sharp thwack of them—they were words she’d never heard Hailey use. It was like a Disney princess hurling foul epithets, oozing dirty talk. And the words made no sense. They seemed to spin from some far-off place and now latched hard in the center of her.
“Mom?”
Jolted, Katie looked up to see Devon in the doorway, showered, ponytail wet and sleek.
“Why were you yelling?”
“Was I?” she said.
“Who was that on the phone? I thought I heard you say ‘Hailey.’”
“No. Yes.”
“Why were you yelling at her?” Devon asked, her fingers running slow down her ponytail and landing at the bottom. “What did she want?”
“I don’t know,” Katie said. “She wasn’t making any sense.”
Everything felt backward. Katie was seated, still in her bathrobe, dripping all over the bedspread, as Devon loomed in the doorway, T-shirt straining over her muscled arms. Questioning her. And Katie was lying.
“Mom,” Devon said, eyes downcast, “what about the purple car that guy saw?”
Katie looked at her, not sure what to say. “Who told you about the car?”
Devon didn’t say anything.
“Did your dad tell you?”
Devon paused, then shook her head. “Everyone knows. Everyone’s texting about it.”
“Honey,” she said, “all we know for sure is that Hailey’s not herself right now.”
“Kind of like Grandma?” The last few visits with Katie’s mom had spooked Devon. Once, she forgot Devon’s name and called her Marie, and then another time, which alarmed them all, she thought a leaf on the sidewalk was shrieking at her. Accusing her of things. It says I steal!
“If she calls you again,” Katie said, “tell me right away.”
“She can’t,” Devon said. “I blocked her.”
This sensible, sensible girl. A girl who knew how to protect herself. Never a daredevil, never stunting without a safety mat, without spotters. A girl for whom instability was the ultimate enemy. Who’d never known divorce or slamming doors or slamming fists. A girl whose home was a peaceful sanctum, even the basement padded. A life that had to be made safe because of the risks she put her body through. She was the most dangerous thing in her own life. Her body, the only dangerous thing.
“Good, Devon.”
“Dad told me to.”
Katie looked at her. Of course he did. “When?”
“This morning, before he left. He said to block her.”
Again, the feeling that, when it came to Devon, she was no longer at the center of things. That she was on the outside, rapping on the glass.
“Teddy, I’m calling about Hailey.” She didn’t even know what she was going to say, but she couldn’t stop herself. The minute she dropped Devon off at school, she pressed the number.
“Katie, dear,” answered Teddy, his voice gruff and creaky, wind whining in the background. “Don’t listen to what you might hear, okay? Or read.”
“Teddy, this isn’t about that eyewitness. It’s Hailey.”
“I can’t talk now,” he said. “I’m waiting for Ron.”
“Ron Wrigley? The attorney?”
“I think that’s him pulling up now.”
There was a rustle and then he hung up.
All day the picture kept returning, the picture of Hailey as Katie had always known her. That thick mane of yellow hair pushed back as she grasped those tumbling seven-year-olds by the waist, guiding all their landings. And especially that sunny, capable smile of hers.
Each time the picture returned it became stranger.
To imagine a darkness at the center of that bright-lit, summer-skinned, effortless girl was very hard. But she’d seen it, the contorted face on the other side of the patio door. And now she’d heard it too.
Of all the girls she’d guess to have a secret self inside, Hailey would have been the last, or close.