She looked down at the deep blue sheets coiled on the mattress, which sat on the floor exotically, summoning up bohemian memories of youth, a youth like Katie dreamed up as a girl, beaded-curtain doorways and those Technicolor saint candles in glass jars.
There was no furniture other than that mattress and a table lamp on the floor, an open book beside it, its red cover bent back. She wondered if it was the novel he’d always kept in his back pocket. She found herself wanting to touch it.
She hadn’t known him at all, really, but that made it sadder somehow.
“He’d had his trouble,” Helen was saying, “but he was figuring things out. He finally had a steady job. Still couldn’t afford cable or a cell phone. You try to help, but they don’t want their moms’ help, do they? He had his own journey.”
“This must be so hard.”
Helen skittered her fingers along the window blinds, peeking through the dust-laced slats. “There’s a lot I’m trying to figure out now. Like that girl of his.”
Katie looked over at her.
“He always had a weakness for girls like that,” Helen continued. “Handfuls. I’d only met her twice, but I don’t think Ryan was too serious about her.”
Katie hesitated, then finally said, “They were pretty serious. I heard he’d bought her an engagement ring.”
Helen’s head jerked up. Then after a pause she sank down to the mattress, laughing a little, a kind of laughing.
“Isn’t it a strange day,” she said, “when you realize you have no idea what’s going on in your kid’s head? One morning, you wake up and there’s this alien in your house. They look like your kid, sound a little like them, but they are not your kid. They’re something else that you don’t know. And they keep changing. They never stop changing on you.”
Katie almost said something but stopped herself. She didn’t want to be one of those smug parents, like Gwen, like Molly, who claimed to read their daughters’ expressions with one hundred percent accuracy. But she could: the particular twist of Devon’s mouth that meant frustration. The shake of her elbow that meant her wrist was throbbing. The twitch over her left eye that meant she was afraid.
“I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” Katie said instead, touching the window blinds, warm in the sun. “Losing your—”
“You keep losing them nonstop, don’t you?” Helen said. “Where’d you get that idea, anyway? About the ring?”
“Someone saw him at Ahee Jewelers the week before.”
Helen shook her head. “Ah, well, Katie, I don’t see him buying any ring. He couldn’t pay his water bill. He didn’t even have a credit card.”
“Oh,” Katie said, not sure what else to say, and not sure why she was here. She peeped through the bedroom door, checking on Drew, his tiny head behind the sofa back, those little ears red as Swedish fish.
Behind her, Helen was sliding open the closet door, a waft of fabric softener and old smoke. Bending down, she lifted something off the floor.
“Here,” she said, handing it to Katie. “Here’s why I asked you to come.”
It was a vinyl gym sack Katie recognized dimly, one of those tournament giveaways a few months back. Gingerly, she slid its pull string. The room dark, the navy bag dark, she couldn’t see anything except a flash of red.
Her hand inside, the familiar feel of Lycra.
A leotard. A competition one.
Red and black, with a swirl scoop neck. A spray of crystals up one shoulder. They’d paid extra for the crystals. Eric said it would be worth it. The light would pick up the sparkle.
Katie hadn’t seen it since the charity invitational in Inverness six weeks ago. Devon had scored a 38.5. They’d played “Eye of the Tiger” when she came out on the floor to take her medal.
She looked inside the neck hole, and there it was: D. Knox, the same iron-on label she used with all Devon’s travel leotards.
She held it for a second, something sick in her stomach.
Helen’s fingers appeared on its edges, lifting it so the light caught it.
And Katie could see the slight tear in the seam at the crotch and then, turning it, a pale, scaly stain on the back. Her stomach turned hotly, hand slapping over her mouth.
“What did he do—” Her voice thundered from her, surprising her.
“No,” Helen said loudly to match Katie’s sudden loudness. “That’s not what this is.”
“I know what I’m seeing,” said Katie, trying to control herself but her voice whirling and whirring.
“You know Ryan.”
“I don’t. I don’t know him.” The words came out in sharp sputters. “Except I know that he’s been arrested. He had drug problems. He had a violent girlfriend. That’s what I know. And now I know he did something to my daughter.”
Helen reached out and touched her arm lightly.
“Listen, listen,” she said, “no one likes to imagine their daughter’s been—”
“Stop it!” Katie said, or heard herself say, her face crowding with heat. “Stop it. I know my daughter.”
“And I know Ryan,” Helen said, grabbing the leotard from Katie’s hands and turning it so Katie could see the inside.