The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [148]
He nodded, glad for her, not trusting himself to speak. He had sometimes imagined, theoretically, the possibility of having the house to himself: walls that might come down, space opening up, this duplex reverting in slow stages to the elegant single-family home it had once been. But all his conjectures had been about space and air, easily put aside for the pleasures of hearing her footsteps and soft movements next door, of waking in the night to Jack’s distant cry.
There were tears in his eyes. He laughed.
“Well,” he said, taking off his glasses, “I guess this was bound to happen. Congratulations, of course.”
“We’ll visit,” she said. “You’ll visit us.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll see a lot of each other.”
“We will.” She put her hand on his knee. “Look, I know we never talk about it. I don’t even know how to bring it up, really. But what it meant to me—how you helped me—I’m so grateful. I will be forever.”
“I’ve been accused of trying too hard to rescue people,” he said.
She shook her head. “In many ways, you saved my life.”
“Well. If that’s true, I’m glad. God knows I’ve done enough damage elsewhere. I never could seem to do Norah much good.”
There was a silence between them, the distant drone of a lawn mower.
“You ought to tell her,” Rosemary said softly. “Paul too. You really must.” Jack was squatting on the walkway now, making little piles of gravel, letting stones sift and cascade from his fingers. “It’s not my place to say anything, I know that. But Norah ought to know about Phoebe. It isn’t right, that she doesn’t. It isn’t right, what she’s had to believe about us all this time, either.”
“I told her the truth. That we’re friends.”
“Yes. And we are. But how could she believe it?”
David shrugged. “It’s the truth.”
“Not the whole truth. David, in some weird way we’re connected, you and I, because of Phoebe. Because I know that secret. The thing is, I used to like that: feeling special because I knew something no one else did. It’s a kind of power, isn’t it, knowing a secret? But lately I don’t like it so much, knowing this. It’s not really mine to know, is it?”
“No.” David picked up a lump of dirt and crumbled it between his fingers. He thought of Caroline’s letters, which he’d carefully burned when he moved into this house. “I suppose it’s not.”
“So. You see? You will? Tell her, I mean.”
“I don’t know, Rosemary. I can’t promise that.”
They sat quietly in the sun for a few minutes, watching Jack try again to turn cartwheels on the grass. He was a towhead, agile, naturally athletic, a boy who liked to run and climb. David had come back from West Virginia set free from the grief and loss he’d locked away all those years. When June died he’d had no way to give voice to what had been lost, no real way to move on. It was unseemly, even, to speak of the dead in those days, so they had not. They had left all this grieving unfinished. Somehow, going back had allowed him to settle it. He had come home to Lexington drained, yes, but also calm and sure. After all these years, he’d finally had the strength to give Norah the freedom to remake her life.
When Jack was born, David set up an account for him in Rosemary’s name, and one for Phoebe, in Caroline’s name. It was easy enough; he’d always had Caroline’s social security number, and he had her address too. It had taken a private investigator less than a week to find Caroline and Phoebe, living in Pittsburgh, in a tall narrow house near the freeway. David had driven there and parked on the street, meaning to go up the steps and knock on the door. What he wanted was to tell Norah what had happened, and he couldn’t do that without telling her where Phoebe was. Norah would want to see their daughter, he was sure, so it wasn’t only his own life he might change, or Norah’s or Paul’s. He had come here to tell Caroline what he was hoping to do.
Was it the right thing? He didn’t know. He sat in the car. It was dusk, and headlights flashed off the sycamore leaves. Phoebe had grown