lot. You did that whole project. No matter how it ended—you still accomplished it.”
Kate closed her eyes and shielded her mouth with one hand. Her chest was getting hot and tight, like she was having a heart attack.
She had been in California barely two months, and already the entire geography of her life had quaked and shuddered, rearranged itself into lean new valleys whose emptinesses she had yet to learn.
“I know I need help,” she said through her fingers. “I can do that. I’ll start medication again. I’ll find a new psychiatrist. But I just can’t … I can’t go back, Louise. It has to be different this time.”
Louise was quiet for a minute, thinking.
“Okay,” she said. “So you stay with us.”
Kate shook her head. “No, I can’t do that to you. I know I haven’t been an easy guest.”
“You stay with us,” Louise repeated more firmly, “but only if you get help. Only if you work on it.”
Kate knew what this meant. Therapy, appointments, medication, conversations … all of it expensive, all of it probing at this hard hot thing inside her. The thought threatened to overwhelm her. She stared out the headlights sifting by, blurry and flat against the peony sky. Everyone inching back home.
“Okay,” she said at last. “Thank you. Yes.”
“Good.” Louise gave a single, decisive nod. “We’ll call your parents when we get home. Now let’s go.”
She fished the keys out of the center console and handed them to Kate, who took them with a wet laugh.
“And remember, Katie,” Louise said as Kate turned the key in the ignition. “If you were easy, I wouldn’t love you so much.”
MIRANDA
SERIES 2, Personal papers
BOX 9, Diary (1982–1993)
* * *
NOVEMBER 15 1993
Theo, in my own way, I love you.
You were worth the slow death.
You will be worth the fast one, too.
30.
KATE
SIX MONTHS LATER
When one of Kate’s four roommates brought the embossed envelope up to her little garret room in the house in Potrero Hill, Kate assumed it was Natasha and Angela’s wedding invitation and slit it open without checking the return address. Inside was a heavy silk card:
THE MIRANDA BRAND PAPERS
A Semi-Private Auction Event
March 9, 2018
Behind the card was a handwritten note from Hal asking if Kate would call him back to discuss her attendance. Kate wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of talking to him again, but she did as he asked.
“I know there are certain possible buyers who would be very interested in having you there,” Hal said. “There will be a cocktail hour after the actual sale, and you can talk to them about your experience working with the collection, your sense of Miranda. We’re trying to translate any residual interest in the papers into the artwork, because we’ll keep selling that off as well, though of course in much smaller batches, as we don’t want to oversaturate the market.” He added, in a tone of great dignity, “I should say that for someone with so little experience, you did a marvelous job handling the prints.”
“Thank you,” Kate said, rolling her eyes. “But I’m not sure I can make it.”
Hal paused. “I’m not the only one who wants you to attend,” he said. “Theo’s the one who added you to the list.”
Wrong of her heart, after all this time, to give a little thump. She and Theo hadn’t spoken since the summer. Her final paychecks had been deposited into her account on schedule. Recently, she had been getting the agreed-upon bonuses as Hal started to sell off the prints. Sometimes she caught herself studying the transaction record as if it were a coded message from Theo, a bizarre expression of vestigial affection, and she had to remind herself that the payments were contractually obligated and most likely executed by some overworked assistant at his company. This invitation was the first actual proof that Theo even remembered her existence.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Kate said.
* * *
With no obvious seasons to guide her (“we have seasons,” Frank would protest when she said this, “they’re just more subtle”), Kate had tracked the fall and winter in other units. Three months with Frank and Louise. Hours spent finding a new psychiatrist, dealing with the insurance paperwork, starting new medication, talking to a therapist, then another therapist, then the same one again, three times a week for eight weeks. Menial work. Devastating and boring in equal measure. The same drive to the same office to answer the same questions and cry into the same tissue box before handing over her