Then landing, legs fused, on the mat.
Again and again, the frame palsied on that landing, that slightest of ankle rolls, the half step at most. A decade of work, an inch, two, of blue foam.
“That’s always been her Achilles’ heel,” Teddy had said. “That foot. It makes her work the other one too hard. It’s like she can’t bear how wrong that foot is.”
“The foot’s not wrong,” Eric had replied, eyes on the screen. “The foot’s everything.”
Still sitting her car, from the corner of her eye, she saw a blond blur speeding past the Belfours’ side deck, the one she’d stood on after Ryan’s funeral.
Pound, pound, pound across the deck, the sharp twang of the small dive board.
A swelling plunge, a splash from the chemical depths of the Belfour pool.
Exiting the car, Katie walked quickly up the lawn and through the arbor.
Just then, Hailey emerged from the water and climbed, shirt and jeans drenched, up the ladder.
“Hey!” Katie said. “I need to ask you something.”
Sweeping her hair back with her hands, the pectoral fins of a slender dolphin, she looked over at Katie, chin trembling. Katie could see the stippled spot on the scalp where the hair was gone, the purple under her eye where Devon’s teeth had been.
“They’ll see you,” Hailey hissed, eyes darting toward the house. “They see everything.”
Her pink shirt stuck to her brown skin, Hailey sat, dripping, in Katie’s passenger seat.
“Mrs. Knox, I can’t talk to you,” she said, the wetness like a presence, a third thing in the car. “I made promises. I made my promises and I’m taking the pills and I’m moving back home with them. I’m getting my act together. I made promises.”
“Maybe you’ve convinced them,” Katie said, “but I’m not convinced. How do I know you’re not going to wake up tomorrow and call those detectives or come after my daughter again?”
Hailey shook her head, water scattering across Katie’s arm. “I’m not saying a word. I’m never saying anything. What would it get me, Mrs. Knox?”
Katie said nothing for a second, watching Hailey, her eyes pinned, her hands tucked under her soaked jeans. She looked like a teenage girl gone wrong, caught and cowed.
“Mrs. Knox, I don’t know what happened to Ryan,” Hailey said, eyes flitting up the slope to her uncle’s house.
“I didn’t ask—”
“But I do know about Ryan and your daughter, and I’m not talking about it. Not ever. So can I leave now? Can I?”
“But why?” Katie knew she shouldn’t ask. She couldn’t stop herself. “Why would you do that?”
“They took care of me,” Hailey said. “Uncle Teddy and Aunt Tina. When I was Devon’s age, younger, I…You know how babies, when they first come out, you swaddle them? To keep them from scratching themselves, from scaring themselves? That’s what it was like.”
Katie felt her phone vibrating under her hand but didn’t dare look.
“Uncle Teddy, he never missed one of my volleyball games, never missed a swim meet. Put me through State. He believed in me. They both did.”
Katie couldn’t stop looking at the browning half-moon under Hailey’s eyes. Had Devon really bitten her?
“And they’re still here, looking after me, even after everything the last week.” Then a funny look passed over her face, a shadow, something. “I should’ve listened to Aunt Tina. She never trusted Ryan. A whistling girl and a crowing hen always come to some bad end, she said.”
She looked over at Katie, a smile lurking, rueful and sharp-toothed.
“The night it happened, I thought he was going to propose. I thought that’s why he’d picked the nice restaurant. But he’d picked it so I wouldn’t make a scene when he broke up with me.”
“Wait. Wait.”
“I spent the rest of the night sobbing my heart out, then I find out he’s dead. And I want to die from how bad it hurts.” She shook her head, the scattering of droplets, her eyes chlorine red. “Then, the day of the funeral, I get this call. From Ahee Jewelers. They saw my name in the death notice and called me up. Ryan had ordered something but hadn’t picked it up. So I got there and you can guess what I’m expecting.”
Katie took a breath. “A ring.”
“Sure. And what do I find instead?” She reached into the nearly sealed wet pocket of her jeans. Yanking something out, she then slapped it in her other palm. “I can’t seem to stop carrying it around.”
It was a necklace, gold plate. It was cheap, a girl’s mall necklace. A pendant dangling at the end, a tiger figurine.
A tiger like the poster in Devon’s room. A tiger like her lucky stuffed animal, plush and matted.
A tiger for Devon. Its haunches spreading, its legs poised, as if about to vault.
Small as a peanut, Ryan had said to Katie that time, about Devon, but strong as a tiger.