One hand on her stomach, Katie felt something pierce her, everything spilling out. She couldn’t answer.
Devon was saying, “Mom, I can’t go inside and see him. I can’t.”
And here Katie was, still drunk on his whiskey, still feeling his hands on her, back to the mattress—what was wrong with her?—a red daub spreading across her collarbone where his hand had pressed, other things she wouldn’t let herself think about at all.
Who was that man? Did she even know? You were mysterious to him and he was mysterious to you. She put a hand on either side of Devon’s face.
“He’s gone,” she promised. “And you’re with me. And everything’s going to be okay.”
Devon looked at her, jaw shaking between Katie’s fingers.
“Mom,” she said, eyes filled with bright tears, “you always give me everything.”
Three a.m., four, sleep never came, not really, her heart pounding, cymbals crashing inside.
The photo on the bedside table, she and Eric in matching BelStars tracksuits, searing red, Eric smiling at the camera, Katie smiling up at him.
Before she knew it, she was dragging her wedding album out from the closet, behind the boxes of baby clothes, Devon’s old leotards. The pictures, fading already, those disposable cameras people used to use, all the blurred, frantic shots that captured the feeling of life better than anything else.
The small catering hall, a raucous and joyous crowd of forty, kegs of summer ale, the DJ with rainbow sunglasses, everyone dancing, their faces glazed with sweat—three old girlfriends came, one by one introducing themselves to Katie. He’s the greatest guy, they all said. The one that got away. A gentleman, a sweetheart, a knight in shining armor. And you did it, you got him, how did you?
And she never knew, not really. Because yes, she was three months along by then, but that wasn’t the reason. She’d already gone for her consultation at the Options Women’s Center, listened to them describe how they would insert a tube, “a suction device that will gently empty your uterus.” But then Eric showed up the night before her appointment, saying he’d been driving around for hours and had come to important decisions about the things that mattered to him and it turned out that the life inside of her, which they’d created, was the Thing Itself, and he’d torn the pull tab from the Schlitz can and promised her everything, always and forever. This must be how life really happens, he’d said, you don’t know what you’re supposed to do, what your purpose is, and suddenly life tells you.
The wedding night, she wasn’t supposed to drink at all, but she’d had three glasses of champagne, and Eric three times that, plus tequila and Mexican cigars, and they both smelled of sweat and crushed flowers and ending up having sex in the backseat of Eric’s car in the hotel parking structure, neither able to remember what they’d done with the key card and not wanting to wait one more second, his arm under her dress up to his shoulder and everything frenzied and luscious.
And the truth was, arm hooked in his, tight, she did think:
I’ve got him now.
Now he is mine.
Chapter Sixteen
Just before five, in the purple dawn, she crept down the hall and checked on Devon sleeping, her head a dark mass on the pillow.
Finally, she fell asleep herself.
Now it was nearly seven, the clock radio droning with weather, traffic, weather, traffic, her face muffled in pillows. Drifting in and out. The tug of forgetting.
The phone ringing. The landline again.
“Did you hear?”
“Hear what?” Katie said, her voice sleep-frogged. “Who is this?”
“It’s Helen Beck. The police called late last night to tell me about the paint chips. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“What? Wait. Helen.” Sitting up now, her stomach churning with last night’s liquor.
“They found some paint chips in Ryan’s clothes. Car paint. And guess what? They’re not purple.”
“Oh,” Katie said, biting down on her finger, trying to wake herself.
“They found just a few. Very tiny.”
“What color, Helen?”
“So I guess that witness was wrong.”
“What color, Helen?” Katie said, head throbbing with the knowing.
“Silver, they said. Or metallic gray.”
“Silver,” Katie repeated.
“I know. Doesn’t narrow things down much. The detective told me there’s more than six thousand silver or gray cars in this county alone.”
“I see them everywhere,” Katie said, her mouth dry.
Silver to match your eyes, she’d said when Eric first drove it home a half a dozen years ago. And he’d grinned. My eyes are gray. But the yellow ring around the center always made them glitter.
“So what does this mean?” Katie asked. “What comes next?”
“The state crime lab might be able to identify the make and model of the car from the samples. Sometimes they can do that.”
“Make and model, that limits it a little, but—”