The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [115]
“Caroline,” he said. “Good God, do you live here? In Pittsburgh? Why wouldn’t you tell me where you were?”
“I wasn’t hard to find. Other people found me,” she said slowly, remembering Al walking up the alley, understanding for the first time the depth of his persistence. For if it was true that David Henry had not looked very hard, it was also true that she had wanted to be lost.
Outside the door there were footsteps, drawing near and then pausing. The rush and murmur of voices. She studied his face. All these years she’d thought about him every single day, and yet now she couldn’t imagine what to say.
“Shouldn’t you be out there?” she asked, glancing at the door.
“They’ll wait.”
They looked at each other then, not speaking. Caroline had held him in her mind all this time like a photograph, a hundred or a thousand photographs. In each of these David Henry was a young man full of a restless, determined energy. Now, staring at his dark eyes and fleshy cheeks, his hair so carefully styled, she realized that if she had passed him on the street she might not have known him, after all.
When he spoke again his tone had softened, though a muscle still worked in his face. “I went to your apartment, Caroline. That day, after the memorial service. I went there, but you were already gone. All this time—” he began, and then he fell silent.
There was a light tap on the door, a muffled questioning voice.
“Give me a minute,” David called back.
“I was in love with you,” Caroline said in a rush, astonished at her confession, for it was the first time she had ever voiced this, even to herself, though it was knowledge she had lived with for years. The admission made her feel light-headed, reckless, and she went on. “You know, I spent all sorts of time imagining a life with you. And it was in that moment by the church when I realized I hadn’t crossed your mind at all, not really.”
He’d bent his head as she spoke, and now he looked up.
“I knew,” he said. “I knew you were in love with me. How could I have asked you to help me, otherwise? I’m sorry, Caroline. For years now, I have been—so sorry.”
She nodded, tears in her eyes, that younger version of herself still alive, still standing by the edge of the memorial service, unacknowledged, invisible. It made her angry, even now, that he had not really seen her then. And that, not knowing her at all, he hadn’t hesitated to ask her to take away his daughter.
“Are you happy?” he asked. “Have you been happy, Caroline? Has Phoebe?”
His question, and the gentleness in his voice, disarmed her. She thought of Phoebe, struggling to learn to shape letters, to tie her shoes. Phoebe, playing happily in the backyard while Caroline made phone call after phone call, fighting for her education. Phoebe, putting her soft arms around Caroline’s neck for no reason at all and saying, I love you, Mom. She thought of Al, gone too much but walking through the door at the end of a long week, carrying flowers or a bag of fresh rolls or a small gift, something for her, always, and something for Phoebe. When she’d worked in David Henry’s office she had been so young, so lonely and naïve, that she imagined herself as some sort of vessel to be filled up with love. But it wasn’t like that. The love was within her all the time, and its only renewal came from giving it away.
“Do you really want to know?” she asked at last, looking him straight in the eye. “Because you never wrote back, David. Except for that one time, you never asked a single thing about our lives. Not for years.”
As Caroline spoke, she realized that this was why she had come. Not out of love at all, or any allegiance to the past, or even out of guilt. She had come out of anger and a desire to set the record straight.
“For years you never wanted to know how I was. How Phoebe was. You just didn’t give a damn, did you? And then that last letter, the one I never answered. All of a sudden, you wanted her back.”
David gave a short, startled laugh. “Is that how you saw it? Is that why you stopped