“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mom. I don’t.”
“Stop lying, Devon. Stop.” Her hand reaching out, grabbing Devon’s chin so tightly, clenching her fingers around her jaw. “Stop.”
Like a pin pulled out, Devon’s face seemed to collapse, her whole body sinking into itself.
“Devon. Devon.”
She covered her face with one hand, turning away.
It all felt unfair. There’d been no ramp-up to it. Her little girl, so unflappable, so self-possessed, never talked about boys, never seemed to look at a boy, and now, like a mask torn away in an instant.
“I loved him, Mom. I loved him so much.”
The words just like Hailey had said, her fist covered in ice, I got so mad I punched my own wall. I love him so much. But Katie recognized the feeling too. The unbearable push of feelings at that age. How she’d looked at Eric and would have done anything at all to have him forever, her own body feeling like it was spinning from her, unstoppable.
You make me crazy, baby. You make me crazy. “I loved him,” Devon repeated, her body so still, her voice so small, “and he’s dead and what if it’s my fault?”
“It’s not your fault, Devon,” Katie said. It seemed like she’d said it a hundred times in recent days.
Devon’s hand fell from her face, a pale smudge in the dark of the garage. There was a long pause, like before a vault sometimes, that strange dead-eyed look, her breath slowed to silence. Breathing throws off your alignment, Teddy always told her. Don’t breathe.
“Devon,” she said, “what is it? You know you can tell me.”
But Devon couldn’t seem to speak, her hand on her chest, a nervous gesture Katie recognized as her own. It was as if something had been undone. All that talking, the saying of things out loud, made them real. When you say it aloud, it becomes real in fresh and horrible ways.
“Devon—”
“He knows, Mom,” she blurted, eyes panicked.
“Who knows?”
“Dad.”
Katie took a breath, the heat of Devon, and the closeness of the car, the smell of exhaust and chemicals. “Tell me.”
“It was a few weeks ago,” Devon said. Her hand on Katie’s arm, she was ready now. “We were driving home from practice. He made me get out of the car. He sat down with me and he was so upset, Mom. He said that he knew, and it didn’t matter how. He said I was throwing my life away.”
Katie watched her daughter, watched her mouth moving, words coming out, but it was like Devon herself couldn’t believe each sentence until she’d uttered it. Her own words terrifying her.
“And he said I needed to know the biggest mistake you can make in life is giving in to sex.”
“He said that to you?” Katie pressed her fingers to her temples as if trying to hold her head in place.
“I told him it was just for now,” Devon kept going. “That it wouldn’t change anything. And he said, ‘All the things you do at your age seem like they’re just for now. But they’re all forever. You live with those mistakes forever.’”
She looked at Katie, her voice relentless, her eyes growing wider and wider.
“And then he said, ‘Devon, there’s a hundred ways sex can ruin you.’”
A bursting in Katie’s eyes, making her dizzy, her mouth thick with alcohol and exhaust.
There’s a hundred ways sex can ruin you.
Had he really said that? And all she could think was What did that mean, to him?
“Devon. Devon, what else?” Because she knew there was more. And she had to get it, all of it.
And then Devon was talking again. Devon wasn’t done at all.
“The day of the funeral, Mom,” she said. “Dad showed up at practice even though I had a ride. And when we were in the car, he…he said this awful thing. I can’t get it out of my head.”
Katie took another breath. She was thinking of him, his hands on her thighs not an hour ago, and wondering what was wrong with her.
“What did he say, baby? Tell me.”
Her head bobbing slightly, Devon turned, and Katie watched as her eyes fixed on the door from the garage into the house. She couldn’t tell what Devon was looking at, Drew’s two-liter bottle, Eric’s Gore-Tex jacket slung there on a hook, dark and swelling.
“He said Ryan got what was coming to him,” Devon whispered, so close to Katie the words vibrated on her skin. “That’s what he said. And he said, ‘What made that kid think he had any right?’”
They locked eyes with each other.
“Devon,” Katie said. “Look at me.”
But Devon couldn’t, and Katie found herself getting lost in her head too. It was as though the garage were this haunted place, the empty spot where Eric’s car usually sat like a stain beside them, like a black pit with no bottom.
“Devon,” she said, forcing the words out, “do you think your father might have done something?”
With unbearable slowness Devon turned.
“Mom…I don’t know what he did,” she said, her face assembling into something grave and hopeless. “Do you?”