me. Like from a hundred feet away, he could see deep into the cold staves of my brain and see how my mind buckles under the weight.
My killer child: the child who killed me. Who tore my world out and threw it down the sink. Nine months sucking at my very blood, pounding his feet against the walls of my stomach.
I have failed him in every way.
There was one moment today where he might have made a goal. The ball was between his feet. His sweet knee socks. The hard plastic plate bent around his shin. And his eyes, Jake’s eyes, cutting across the sky at me. Wanting something I don’t have and don’t know how to give.
Is it any surprise he missed?
APRIL 29 1993
I haven’t seen Jake start that painting yet.
24.
KATE
Kate stopped speaking mid-sentence. She had glanced over at her aunt to see that Louise was eyeing her with a strange, uncharacteristic solemnity. Her hands were frozen in the act of cutting, her fork and knife hovering over the cooling tuna casserole.
“What is it?” Kate asked.
“Nothing.” Louise didn’t move. “I’m just having trouble following what you’re telling me.”
Kate felt impatient. “Okay, which part?”
“Well, this diary you’re talking about,” Louise said. “It’s Miranda’s diary? She wrote it? And you saw it, but now it’s gone?”
Kate hadn’t planned to tell Frank and Louise about everything that had happened at Kid’s trailer. But as soon as they sat down to dinner, Frank had asked her where she had taken the car, and suddenly it seemed so stupid to lie. Louise was her aunt, and if she spread the story around town, so what? By the time it got back to Theo, Kate would have figured out what had happened to Miranda, and she would have told him herself. She was so close, she knew it: she could taste the discovery on the back of her tongue, a rusty, musky taste, like old blood.
She only needed a little more information, and if anyone could get it for her, it was Louise.
So Kate had launched into it. She had explained about the photographs she had found of Kid and Miranda, and what Kid had said about Jake and about the police, and somehow the diary had come up. But now, seeing Louise’s confused face, she was starting to regret it. It was too complicated to explain in one go. Louise wasn’t keeping up.
“Theo took the diary away before I finished it,” Kate said. “But I don’t know if he knew I had been reading it. He could have moved it for any reason.”
“Aren’t you two, you know, hanging out?” Frank asked.
“Yes. Anyway”—this to Louise—“the more important thing is what Kid said today. About how maybe Jake was hurting Miranda. Have you ever heard anyone say that?”
“No,” Louise said. “And I haven’t heard anything about this police business. But you know, I would take what Kid says with a grain of salt. He has a bad attitude.”
“I checked his story,” Kate said. “He was at his dad’s funeral when Miranda died, just like he said.”
Using an NYU Law alumni log-in Natasha had given her years ago, she had searched the obituaries of Iowa newspapers from the week of Miranda’s death. Thomas Wormshaw had apparently been enough of a figure in DePront, Iowa, that The DePront Daily News had described his funeral in detail, right down to his son’s emotional eulogy.
“But you’re right,” Kate went on. “I do need more information. I was thinking of going back to Victor’s house tomorrow afternoon, actually. You could even come with,” she added generously.
Louise looked over at her husband, obviously trying to communicate something, but Frank had his phone out and was typing something on the screen. Kate was quickly learning that Frank had the basic emotional response of an ostrich. Any sign of discord only made him crouch lower over whatever tech device was closest to hand.
“No, thank you,” Louise said to Kate.
“It won’t just be about Kid’s interrogation,” Kate reassured her. “I’ll ask him about that, obviously, but mostly I want to push him again on why they didn’t investigate Jake. Last time he went on and on about what a good guy Jake was, but was that all? Did they have any evidence that let him off? What if Miranda was—”
“No more Miranda, okay?” Louise said loudly. “Please. Let’s just change the subject.”
Kate felt like she had been slapped. She drew back and stared at Louise. Louise stared down at her food. For a long moment,