He explained that he had checked Hailey into Gateways Behavioral Health, the only way to keep the hospital from putting her in the psych ward after she’d tried to climb out of her bathroom window.
“It’s this lying, bullshit eyewitness. It unwound her. And he can’t keep his story straight. First he says Altima, but cops show him pictures and he ID’s a Chevy Malibu. And he’s a trucker!”
“I don’t care, Teddy. I don’t care about this. What does it have to do with what she did to my daughter?”
Shaking his head. “All of this, it’s eating her alive. It’s made her do…shameful things. I just ask that you try to understand that that wasn’t our Hailey there today.”
Katie kept her eyes on the front window for Eric’s return from the drugstore.
“Katie, when she first came to us, Hailey was headed down a crooked road—boy trouble, lots of volatility. We got her to church, got her on the swim team. Didn’t give up on her,” he said, voice cracking with urgency, his fist pounding his knee. “By sixteen, she was a prom queen and junior-class president.”
“Teddy, I know this.”
“And I thought,” he said, “well, I thought: We sealed that up. That’s done.”
Teddy covered his face with both hands and was silent for a moment. But when he lifted his head again, his eyes were dry and filled with surprise.
“I mean, I thought this was what I was good at. Making girls feel loved.”
And, in spite of herself, Katie felt her throat tighten.
And there it was, Eric’s weather-beaten silver Ford, lights flashing up the window.
“Teddy, you have to go. Now.”
He nodded firmly, squeezed his bloodshot eyes, nodded again. But he didn’t get up.
“But, Katie, I do need to tell you: At the hospital, Hailey wasn’t making any sense. She was talking about how the fight started. She started saying some kinda…raw things about…I mean, you must be wondering too.”
“You bet we’re wondering, Teddy. We’ve known Hailey for years. We—”
“I mean about Devon. She had some things to say about Devon. About Ryan. Some stuff that kinda rocked me back on my feet.”
“What?”
“Well,” he said, shifting uncomfortably, “you know how young women can be.”
Then the side door slammed and Katie jumped up.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
It was Eric, standing in the doorway, keys still in hand, eyes bleared.
“What did you say?” he demanded, and Teddy rose.
“Eric, he just—”
“Katie, don’t you talk to him.”
Katie looked at Eric. Something in his eyes she had never seen before.
“Teddy, you need to leave. You just do.”
Briskly, she walked Teddy outside, afraid Eric might follow.
“Teddy, what did Hailey say?” she asked. “What did she tell you?”
“Listen, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Let’s just wait. Let everything calm a little.”
“Then you better go.” They both stood a moment on the front lawn, jungly with ground ivy.
“Katie, listen, you know Hailey,” he began, voice trembling. “You know her heart. You always understood her—”
“I don’t know her heart,” Katie said coolly. “She came after my daughter. What would that do to you?”
Teddy nodded, kicking the curb at the foot of the drive, just like a little boy might. “I’d be the same way. I’d be like Eric. I’d be worse. You know I love your daughter.”
Katie folded her arms, glancing back at the house, Eric’s shadow in the front window.
“I’m tired and life is a son of a bitch,” Teddy said, looking off into the distance, the neon-banded lights from the corner drive-through, cars chugging into the lot all night. Thumping bass, the drunken chirrs of girls.
“We never know,” he said, “none of us, what love’ll do to us.” He smiled a little. “Make us buy a swimming pool, just so a niece might keep coming by.”
Katie felt something inside herself open, her face red-rushed with shame over it. It felt like he had poked a hole in her.
“Or maybe we do know,” he said, walking backward down the front walkway, the deep slope of the unmowed lawn.
“What was he thinking, showing up here?” Eric kept saying, over and over and over, pacing in the living room.
“He shouldn’t have come.”
“After what she did to our daughter.”
“I know.”
“And you,” he said, freshly outraged at the thought. “What she did to you.”
It was the first time Eric mentioned it. Katie looked down at the spindle scratch on her arm. Felt the pulse over her brow where, she guessed, Hailey’s hard knuckle—or was it Devon’s, accidentally?—had pushed.
“No one ever wants to believe bad things about their own family,” Katie said.
He was standing by the front doorway, and those car keys still in his hand, like he was going to leave. For a second, she wondered if he would.