The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [152]
He didn’t understand; it was late in the afternoon and Norah should be home. If she did not come soon, he would simply leave.
There was a yellow legal pad on the desk by the phone, full of cryptic notes: Call Jan before 8:00 reschedule; Tim’s not sure; the delivery, before 10:00. Don’t forget—-Dunfree and tickets. He tore this page off carefully, neatly, arranging it in the center of the desk, then carried the pad back to the breakfast nook, sat down, and began to write.
Our little girl did not die. Caroline Gill took her and raised her in another city.
He crossed this out.
I gave away our daughter.
He sighed and put the pen down. He couldn’t do this; he could hardly imagine anymore what his life would be without the weight of his hidden knowledge. He’d come to think of it as a kind penance. It was self-destructive, he could see that, but that was the way things were. People smoked, they jumped out of airplanes, they drank too much and got into their cars and drove without seat belts. For him, there was this secret. The new curtains stirred against his arm. Distantly, the tap in the downstairs bathroom dripped, something that had driven him crazy for years, something he had always meant to fix. He tore the page off the legal pad into small pieces and put them in his pocket to discard later. Then he went out into the garage and rummaged around in the tools he had left until he found a wrench and a spare set of washers. Probably he had bought them one Saturday for just this reason.
It took him more than an hour to fix the faucets in the bathroom. He took them apart and washed sediment from the screens, replaced the washers, tightened the fixtures. The brass was tarnished. He polished it, using an old toothbrush he found stuck in a coffee can beneath the sink. It was six o’clock when he finished, early on a midsummer evening, sunlight still pouring through the windows but lower now, slanting on the floor. David stood in the bathroom for a moment, feeling deeply satisfied by the way the brass was shining, by the silence. The phone rang in the kitchen and an unfamiliar voice came on, speaking urgently about tickets for Montreal, interrupting itself to say, Oh damn, that’s right, I forgot you were off to Europe with Frederic. And he remembered too—she’d told him, but he’d let it slip from his mind; no, he’d pushed it from his mind—that she had gone to Paris on a holiday. That she had met someone, a Canadian from Quebec, someone who worked out at the boxy buildings of IBM and spoke French. Her voice had changed when she spoke of him, somehow softened, a voice he’d never heard her use before. He imagined Norah, holding the phone with her shoulder while she typed information into the computer, looking up to realize that it was hours past dinner. Norah, striding through airport corridors, leading her groups to their buses, restaurants, hotels, adventures, all of which she had so confidently arranged.
Well, at least she would be happy about the faucets. And he was too—he’d done a careful, meticulous job. He stood in the kitchen, stretching his arms wide as he prepared to finish his run, and picked the yellow legal pad up again.
I fixed the bathroom sink, he wrote. Happy Birthday.
Then he left, locking the door behind him, and ran.
II
NORAH SAT ON A STONE BENCH IN THE GARDENS AT THE Louvre, a book open in her lap, watching the silvery poplar leaves flutter against the sky. Pigeons waddled in the grass near her feet, pecking, shuffling their iridescent wings.
“He’s late,” she said to Bree, who sat beside her, long legs crossed at the ankle, leafing through a magazine. Bree, now forty-four, was very beautiful, tall and willowy, turquoise earrings brushing against her olive skin, her hair a pure silvery white. During the radiation she’d cut it very short, saying she didn’t intend to