him anyway. Kids act weird, she said. She thought it was a waste of time. I didn’t push it. It wasn’t my place, first of all. I was just supposed to be following orders. But also … I had sons. Whenever I looked at Theo, I saw them, and I thought … if they had grown up differently, if they hadn’t had a good mother—what might they do?”
Kate was speechless for a moment. Then she shook her head. “At your house, you told me Theo couldn’t have done it.”
He lifted his shoulders, dropped them. “I didn’t want to accuse anyone without proof. Especially with your aunt sitting there. I know she likes to talk.”
“But he couldn’t have done it.” Her voice came out high-pitched. “He was shorter than Miranda.”
“So?”
“So, you showed us the angle the bullet went in. He couldn’t have reached that high.”
Victor looked bemused for a second. Then his brow cleared.
“I guess I forgot to say,” he said. “When the shot was fired, Miranda was kneeling on the ground.”
There was a sharp pressure on Kate’s ribs, as if someone had sat on her chest. It took her a moment to realize it was because she had stopped breathing. She inhaled a lungful of the chalky, red-scented tennis court air, then another.
That day walking out of Victor’s house … crowing to Louise that Theo was innocent, that he couldn’t have done it … it had all been wrong. All of it. Her self-satisfied smirk. Thinking she was such a great investigator. Her softening toward Theo. Trusting him. All of it wrong, wrong, wrong. And the worst part was, if she had just let slip to Victor what she was thinking, or if she had somehow known what to ask him to get that vital piece of information, she could have avoided the entire mess. All this time, she thought she had figured out something no one else had figured out. But she had been pursuing a fact that wasn’t a fact. A phantom.
“I still don’t know how he would have gotten the blood off him,” Victor said, “or how he could have lied so easily. That’s why I say it’s an instinct. Not an answer.”
“B-but—” She heard a voice, it was her own voice, stuttering, stumbling, rumbling. “But why would he do it?”
Meaning Theo. Not that she thought he had done it. Killed Miranda. Did she think that? She didn’t know. Again she had that sick, winded feeling, like all the unknowns were flooding her system.
“You must have thought he had a motive,” she insisted.
Victor glanced over her shoulder at Frank, then lowered his voice. “My theory was jealousy.”
She didn’t follow. “Jealousy over what?”
This time, the pity on his face was unmistakable.
“Miranda was pregnant,” he said. “Three months along. She and Jake were going to have another child.”
MIRANDA
SERIES 2, Personal papers
BOX 9, Diary (1982–1993)
* * *
OCTOBER 14 1993
I was supposed to be at the Guggenheim today for my retrospective.
I dreamed of this moment when I was younger, back when my ambition was a pure and glittering thing. Hard as a diamond, impossible to cut.
I thought I would glide into the room and bow to the applause and revel in the knowledge that I’ve made it, really made it. That I am seen. That I am known.
But that was a dream. For a week I’ve woken up dizzy and drained. Yesterday almost threw up twice. I forget to do the dishes. I keep thinking the lights are dimming. I can spend hours staring at a slide, lost in the absolute blackness of a silhouette, or the sharp afterglow the light box leaves on the insides of my eyes.
This is the true Miranda Brand.
An ulcer of a person, an acid wound.
No one would want to toast to that. Not to the huge balloon of me. Oozing and sliming. They would eye me and laugh.
They would say, Women like you always end up like this.
OCTOBER 24 1993
I cannot have this child.
I cannot have this child.
I know it like I know the shape of a sunburst in the lens. Like I know the dial beneath my fingers. The cowlick on my own son’s head. The developer on my hands, eating the skin away.
For two months, the creature has been growing inside me, without me knowing.
There is nowhere to go from here.
I try to see paths out, but they all dead-end. They all end dead. Abortions require cars, friends, time, healing, secrets. Jake will find out. Jake will know. And if I have the