could have gotten the gun up anywhere near high enough.”
“Okay, but—”
“Besides, I think Victor’s right,” Kate continued, a little more loudly. “Would an eleven-year-old really be able to shoot his mother point-blank and lie about it?”
“No, you’re right, you’re right,” Louise said. She exhaled and clapped her hands together. “Well! That’s a relief. So nervous over nothing.”
Kate tugged at the end of her ponytail. “I guess so. But now I feel kind of bad.”
Louise frowned. “Why?”
“For thinking he did it.” Kate gave her a pointed look. “Don’t you feel bad?”
“For what?”
“For spreading the rumor.”
“I didn’t spread any rumors.”
“Aunt Louise.”
With a huff, Louise started walking again, in the direction of home. They walked like that for a while, Louise a pace ahead, Merrells crunching over the maple seeds that littered the sidewalk. The air was bright and clean, and daylilies spiked yellow through the fences, but all Kate could think about was that dim November morning so many years ago—the sticky tumble of Miranda’s hair, the police lights spinning red and blue through the fog.
“The Fourth of July party,” Louise said suddenly. “Is Theo coming?”
“I don’t know. It’s a party, so … probably not.”
“Get him to come. We’ll make sure he has fun.”
“I’m not sure Theo is really a ‘fun’ kind of guy,” Kate said.
“You said you felt bad. I’m giving you a way to fix it.”
Seeing Louise’s profile from this angle reminded Kate of their resemblance. It was strange, seeing your features on someone else. Like looking into a hall of mirrors. One long genetic mise en abyme. Your real self could get lost in all the reflections.
“Okay,” Kate said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
MIRANDA
SERIES 2, Personal papers
BOX 9, Diary (1982–1993)
* * *
NOVEMBER 20 1982
Pottle says I should write about Nangussett. “A step in the healing process.” Unfortunately it’s harder than you would think, to explain how you went crazy. Even flipping back through this book, I can barely piece it all together. The words blur and jump on the page and I get this heavy sick feeling in my stomach and it ruins me for the rest of the day. Focus on getting through the day, that’s what they tell you. Like you’re drunk and stumbling along some policeman’s yellow line and you’re supposed to focus on walking. But the problem isn’t that I’m not focusing. The problem is that I’ve forgotten how to walk at all.
My memory of that night starts with me telling Jake, I have to go in. He said to wait until the morning. His voice was flat and firm. I never wanted to marry a kind man, that was never important to me, but in that moment I wished he were kinder. It was late at night and I had looked at the baby and thought about running a blade through his tiny heart and I knew I could not do this anymore.
So I pretended I was going outside for a smoke and instead I walked to Nangussett, which was only ten blocks away. I started feeling so far away from the baby, and I thought about how I should have taken him with me. Only if I had brought him I would have had to bring so much fucking shit, the pacifier and the toy and the baby jacket and the stroller and the diapers, and then I was thinking this is my whole life now, I will never not have this baby, I will never not have to walk under the burden of endless plastic shit. This is the last time I will leave the house alone. Should I have brought him? Half of me thought he would be safer with me. Half of me thought if I picked him up again I might crush his little skull into the ground.
The whole time I walked, I was scratching at my arms because it felt like there was something stuck inside me and I thought if I opened up my skin it would come out. The scratching hurt so much but once the blood started coming all the pain disappeared. It seemed to take forever to get to the hospital. I went to the emergency room. The woman at the desk had her hair all wound up onto her head like a magical beehive. I told her I needed to see a doctor and she looked at me, then at my arms—I forgot my coat, why hadn’t Jake made me take my coat?—and she called out over her shoulder, “PSYCH EVAL” in