Never Knowing

Evan phoned at lunch as promised, but his cell kept cutting out.

“I’ll call when … off … water.… Following … pod … humpbacks.”

Back in my shop I concentrated on sanding a mahogany Chippendale-style chest. As I smoothed away years of scratches and grooves, I reveled in the fresh wood scent, the rasp of sandpaper. With each stroke my muscles relaxed and my mind began to calm. But then the mahogany wood made me think of Julia’s office. No wonder she didn’t want to talk to me — she was still traumatized by what had happened, and seeing me brought everything back. But she didn’t have to be scared of me. Maybe she was just afraid I might expose her secret? I stopped sanding. If I reassured her I wouldn’t tell anyone …

The phone was on my desk. Julia’s number at the university was still on a Post-it stuck to the base of my computer.

After four rings I got a computer recording: “You’ve reached the mailbox for Professor Laroche in the Art History Department. Please leave a message.”

“Hi, it’s Sara Gallagher. I don’t want to upset you again, I just…”

The silence stretched out. I started to panic. What if I said something wrong? Stop, calm down. I took a deep breath and said, “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry I came to your house like that, but I understand now why you were so upset. I just need to know my medical history. I was hoping we could talk?” I rattled off my number, twice, and my e-mail. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but I’m a nice person and I have a family and I don’t know what to tell my daughter and—” To my horror my voice broke and I started to cry. I hung up.

I just about had to break my hand to keep myself from dialing back and leaving another message apologizing for the first, then another filled with all the things I’d wanted to say but didn’t. For the next hour I went over the call in my mind, my embarrassment greater each time. When Evan finally called last night, I felt so bad for going against his advice, I couldn’t even tell him. He’d checked out the links and agreed that Julia Laroche did look a lot like Karen Christianson, but he still wasn’t convinced the Campsite Killer was my father.

I said, “So what should I do?”

“Only two things you can do — tell the cops and they’ll look into it, or just let it ride.”

“If I tell the police they’ll probably do a DNA test and I’m sure it would come back positive. What if the results got out? He could find me. I don’t want anyone to know about this.” I took a deep breath. “Does it change how you feel about me, knowing who my real father is?” I hated myself for asking, hated how weak it made me feel.

“Depends. Are you going to get him to knock me off?”

“Evan!”

His voice was serious when he said, “Of course it doesn’t change anything. If he is your father, then it’s scary he’s still out there, but we’ll get through it.”

I let out my breath, pulling his words over me like a soothing blanket.

Evan said, “But if you’re not going to talk to the police, then you have to just accept it, forget it, and move on.”

If only it was that easy.

Evan also doesn’t think I should tell anyone other than you — he’s just as afraid as I am that it will get out and all hell will break loose. I thought about telling Lauren, but she likes things light and fluffy — she doesn’t even watch the news. How can I tell her about this? I’m scared to read anything more about him myself.

When I first started seeing you after I pushed Derek — the first man I allowed myself to care about after Jason died — down those stairs, I was afraid I might have some horrible genetic predisposition, but you suggested I might be looking for something or someone to blame, so I didn’t have to take responsibility for my own actions. It made sense at the time. I wasn’t proud of what I did, even if the cheating bastard wasn’t really hurt. But it scared me.

I can still hear the words coming out of Derek’s mouth, still feel the pain of them: “You knew I wasn’t over her when we met.” And he was right. I did know, but it didn’t stop me from going after him. Did I tell you how we met? It was at a party when Ally was a few months old — I hated leaving her, but Lauren forced me to go. Derek was smart and funny, but that’s not what attracted me. The minute he said, “I’m not ready for anything serious right now. I just broke up with a girl,” I was hooked. That was my catnip in every relationship: unavailable with a high chance of breaking my heart. It wasn’t until the brutal ending of that one that I finally realized I owed it to myself — and my daughter — to get some help.

I wish I could say it ended there, but as you know, I bounced from bad relationship to bad relationship for the next few years. I guess that’s why I gave Evan such a hard time when we first started dating. You probably don’t remember the story because I stopped seeing you not long after I met him, but he sent me a message through Facebook. Thinking a man as good-looking as him who also owned a fishing lodge had to be a player, I brushed him off. But he kept sending little How was your day? notes, asking about my work and my daughter, commenting on my status updates. Because I wasn’t viewing him as a potential boyfriend, I’d tell him about my problems, my fears, my jaded view of men and relationships, anything that was on my mind.

One night we talked on MSN until three in the morning, drinking wine, getting half blitzed in our own homes. The next day he sent me a link to his favorite love song — Colin James’s “These Arms of Mine”—which I must have played ten times in a row.

After a month of talking online I finally agreed to go on a date, walking in the park with Moose. Hours sped by without one anxious moment, just laughter and the wonderful feeling of being safe while totally being myself. When he met Ally a couple of months later, they adored each other instantly. Even moving in with each other was easy: if one of us was missing a household item, the other had it. But in those early days I still caused arguments, trying to push him away, testing his loyalty. I was just so scared of being hurt again, so scared of losing myself like I had with Derek — of what might happen if I did.

When I was a kid I felt angry a lot, but I kept it bottled inside, which is probably why I was depressed so much as a teenager. It wasn’t until I began dating that I started losing my temper. But I always managed to stop myself at a certain point — until that moment with Derek on the stairs. When he told me he’d spent the night with his ex-girlfriend all I could feel was shame. All I could think was how everyone was going to know I wasn’t good enough. Then my hands were reaching out and he was falling.

Afterward I was shocked and horrified by what I’d done, even more by how powerful I’d felt. It terrified me — this sense that there was something dark inside me, something I couldn’t control. And I wanted to believe what you said, that it was the same trigger it always was: abandonment issues, intimacy issues, low self-esteem, all of the above. But now we know one of my parents is violent, beyond violent. It’s looking like maybe I was right to be scared.

This morning I was in my shop sanding that mahogany chest, trying to forget everything, and it worked for a couple of hours. Then I nicked my finger. As blood welled up I thought, I have a killer’s blood in me.

SESSION THREE

I’m angry and confused, all right. I’m so stressed out I want to take a baseball bat and smash the crap out of something. I can’t believe it’s been over a month since I was here. I worked all that weekend on that mental exercise you taught me. Imagining how life would be if I wasn’t worried about my family or genetics, what I would