Downstairs on the porch Madame Love Rawlins gives Kat a vial of citrusy oil (for mental clarity) and another hug.
Kat turns to leave but Madame Love Rawlins takes Kat’s face in her hands and looks her in the eyes.
“Be brave,” she says. “Be bold. Be loud. Never change for anyone but yourself. Any soul worth their star-stuff will take the whole package as is and however it grows. Don’t waste your time on anyone who doesn’t believe you when you tell them how you feel. On that Tuesday in September when you think you have no one to talk to you call me, okay? I’ll be waiting by the phone. And drive the speed limit around Buffalo.”
Kat nods and Madame Love Rawlins stands on tiptoe to kiss her on her forehead and Kat tries very hard not to cry and succeeds until she is informed that she is welcome for Thanksgiving or Canadian Thanksgiving and whatever her winter holidays of choice are because there is always, always a winter solstice party.
“You think you don’t have a house to go home to but you do now, understand?”
Kat can’t stop the few tears that manage to escape but she coughs and inhales the bright spring air and nods wordlessly and she feels different than she did when she arrived. For a moment as she walks back to her car Kat believes, truly believes that this woman sees more than most, sees far and sees deep and if she believes Zachary is alive then Kat believes that, too.
Kat puts her sunglasses on and starts the car.
Madame Love Rawlins waves from the front porch as the car drives away. She goes back inside, kissing her fingertips and pressing them against the photo of the curly-haired boy before returning to the kitchen to pour herself another cup of coffee. The borzoi yawns.
The sky-blue car heads out the winding drive and into its future.
excerpt from the Secret Diary of Katrina Hawkins
Okay, we’re going to do this longhand because I don’t trust the Internet anymore.
Not that I ever trusted the Internet.
But this has gotten weird.
Not that it wasn’t weird before.
But whatever.
I’m going to put all the stuff I’ve learned so far in here so I don’t lose it again. I took my notes off my laptop, I deleted the files but I’ll transcribe them here before I shred the printed copies.
They wiped my phone somehow, so those notes are lost and gone and probably partially forgotten. I’ll try to re-create what I remember here, in as close to chronological order as I can.
I got a burner phone for emergencies.
I want to keep as much as I can all in one portable place that I can have with me at all times.
Just you and me now, notebook.
I hope I can read my handwriting later.
I hope wherever this all leads it’s worth it.
Whenever that happens.
* * *
—
Funny thing: When grown-ass people up and vanish and there’s no obvious evidence of foul play no one goes all full-blown detective step-retracing or anything.
So I did.
Partially because I was annoyed at how “people disappear all the time” it got and partially because I think I saw Z more than anyone those last few days.
The police wanted to know why Z was in NYC and I knew it was that costume party (I told the police that, they said they’d look into it but I don’t know if they did, they looked at me like I was making things up when I said Z borrowed my mask) but it all seemed last-minute and unplanned so I tried to do some extra step-retracing from the couple of days before.
He seemed…I don’t know. Like himself but more extreme. Like he wa