‘Well, maybe she deserves a second chance. I don’t know. I can only tell you I never understood Karla at all until she told me. She made sense, after that. So… I guess you have to know. Anyway, if there’s anything gonna happen for us, I want it to be clear-the past, I mean.’
‘Okay,’ I relented, sitting in a chair near the door. ‘Go ahead.’
She sat on the bed once more, drawing her knees up under her chin in the tight wrap of the towel. There were changes in her, and I couldn’t help noticing them-a kind of honesty, maybe, in the way her body moved, and a new, almost languorous release that softened her eyes. They were love-changes, and beautiful for that, and I wondered if she saw any of them in me, sitting still and quiet near the door.
‘Did Karla tell you why she left the States?’ she asked, knowing the answer.
‘No,’ I replied, choosing not to repeat the little that Khaled had told me on the night that he walked into the snow.
‘I didn’t think so. She told me she wasn’t going to tell you about it. I said she was crazy. I said she had to level with you. But she wouldn’t. It’s funny how it goes, isn’t it? I wanted her to tell you, then, because I thought it might put you off her. Now,
I laughed. It was a small chuckle, at first, but it rolled and rumbled helplessly into a belly laugh. I doubled over, leaning on my thighs for support.
‘It’s really not that funny, Lin.’ Lisa frowned.
‘No,’ I laughed, struggling to regain control. ‘It’s not… that. It’s just…
She stared at me, rocking slightly as she hugged her knees. She wasn’t laughing.
‘Okay,’ I exhaled, pulling myself together. ‘Okay Go on.’
‘There was this guy,’ she continued, in a tone that made it clear how serious she considered the subject. ‘He was the father of one of the kids she used to baby-sit for, when she was a kid herself.’
‘She told me about it.’
‘She did? Okay, then you know. And nobody did anything about it. And it messed her up pretty bad. And then, one day, she got herself a gun, and she went to his house when he was alone, and she shot him. Six times. Two in the chest, she said, and four in the crotch.’
‘Did they know it was her?’
‘She’s not sure. She knows she didn’t leave any prints there, at the house. And nobody saw her leave. She got rid of the gun. And she scrammed out of there, right out of the country, real fast. She’s never been back, so she doesn’t know if there’s a sheet on her or not.’
I sat back in the chair and let out a long, slow breath. Lisa watched me closely, her blue eyes narrowing slightly and reminding me of the way she’d looked at me on that night, years before, in Karla’s apartment.
‘Is there any more?’
‘No,’ she answered, shaking her head slowly, but holding my eyes in the stare. ‘That’s it.’
‘Okay’ I sighed, running a hand over my face, and standing to leave. I went to her, and knelt on the bed beside her, with my face close to hers. ‘I’m glad you told me, Lisa. It makes a lot of things… clearer… I guess. But it doesn’t change anything in how I feel. I’d like to help her, if I could, but I can’t forget… what happened… and I can’t forgive it, either. I wish I could. It’d make things a lot easier. It’s bad, loving someone you can’t forgive.’
‘It’s not as bad as loving someone you can’t have,’ she countered, and I kissed her.
I rode the elevator down to the foyer alone with the crowd of my mirror selves: beside and behind me, still and silent, not one of them was able to meet my eye. Once through the glass doors, I walked down the marble steps and across the wide forecourt of the Gateway Monument to the sea. Beneath the arched shadow I leaned on the sea wall and looked out at the boats carrying tourists back to the marina.
