Blood Memory

“What did he tell him?”

“Tom wouldn’t go into specifics with me. But he did say he thought your dad was a good soldier and a good man. That’s really what got me thinking. If Tom Cage thought your dad was a good guy, it’s hard for me to picture him as a child molester. I’m not saying he couldn’t have been. Dr. Cage may have looked at your dad, seen a troubled veteran, and blinded himself to other flaws. But Tom wants you to come talk to him. I think you should hear what he has to say.”

“I want to. God, I wish it were morning already. I’m not sleepy at all.”

“You won’t have to wait long.” Michael reaches out and flicks off the room light. After a couple of seconds, the window changes from black to blue. “You’ve been asleep for six hours.”

Dawn is breaking. I can’t believe it.

“Cat, there’s something else I think I should tell you.”

“What?”

“Your grandfather could be telling the truth about your father abusing you, but lying about killing him.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are other possibilities for the person who pulled the trigger.”

For some reason, it takes me a moment to grasp what Michael is saying. But then I have it. “My mother?” I whisper.

He nods. “Easy to imagine. She denies the abuse for several years, but then one night she unexpectedly walks in on it. Maybe she’s drunk or stoned on prescription meds. They argue, she grabs the gun from over the fireplace and kills him.”

“With me in the room?”

“We don’t know that you were in there. Afterward, your grandfather moves Luke’s body to the rose garden and invents the story of the intruder to protect his daughter. If you ask me, in that scenario, your grandfather’s a hero.”

“Who else could have done it? Pearlie?”

“Sure. Same psychological process as your mother’s, basically. Years of denial-or maybe even years of conscious knowledge-but then she finally snaps and kills him. Your grandfather might carry Luke’s body out to the rose garden to protect a maid who’d worked for his family for fifty years. She was also your primary caregiver.”

“You’re right. God, I understand why everybody freaked out when I started talking about doing a forensic investigation of that bedroom. Who knows what kind of evidence a team would find in there?”

Michael watches me as though he has something else to say, but he’s silent for some time. At length, he says, “I just think you should be aware of what you could find before you go tearing down this road after the truth. Like Pearlie told you…some things it’s better not to know.”

“No. I have to know.”

“The truth shall make you free?”

“That’s what Dr. Malik said last night.”

Michael shakes his head. “I wouldn’t use Malik as a guide for anything. And remember, those last possibilities only come into play if your father was your abuser. If your grandfather was molesting you, then your dad caught him in the act and Kirkland murdered him to keep him quiet. No other option.”

I suddenly feel like I need ten more hours of sleep. “I have no idea what to do now.”

“You need to find out who was actually molesting you. Forgive the crudeness, but my money is on your grandfather.”

Something in the tone of Michael’s voice pushes me to anger. “You’ve made your point, okay? But amateur detective work isn’t going to cut it. You say my grandfather loved money and did unnecessary surgery to get it. That’s unethical, but what does it have to do with child abuse? Louise Butler told me a story about Grandpapa beating a horse half to death. That makes me hate him, but does it make him a child molester? Hitler loved animals. My dad killed people, you know?”

“During wartime,” Michael says softly.

“Yes, but his unit committed atrocities, including rape. And he had sex with a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old girl on the island. The point is, none of this is conclusive. I need hard evidence.”

“What about your bedroom? That’s the source of all this.”

“It can’t tell me what I need to know. Say I find Grandpapa’s blood, and Daddy’s. It can’t confirm one story or the other.”

“What if there’s something besides blood in there?”

This gives me pause. “Like semen?”

Michael nods. “Wouldn’t semen be conclusive?”

“If we could get viable DNA after all this time, yes. But semen isn’t as resilient as blood over so many years.”

“But it’s possible. Is the bed the same one you slept in as a child?”

A strange coldness comes over me as I recall my conversation with my mother after I first arrived in Natchez. “No. Mom had to get rid of the mattress because of urine stains. She said I wet the bed a lot as a child. But I don’t remember that.”

“Enuresis,” Michael murmurs. “That’s long been linked to sexual abuse. Sometimes it’s a cry for help.” He sits on the end of the bed. “You have no concrete memories of abuse?”

A hysterical laugh bursts from my throat. “What does it matter? Dr. Malik suggested I have dissociative identity disorder. I think Kaiser believes that, too. We’re talking about multiple personalities, for God’s sake. So what I think I know, I may not. And the real truth may be locked inside rooms in my head that I can’t even get into-not as me.”

Michael shakes his head. There’s something like grief in his eyes. “Is that how you feel? That there are parts of your mind you can’t reach?”

“Sometimes. But it’s not really like other rooms, or a hidden personality. Yes, I have blackouts. Yes, there are blocks of time I can’t account for. But I’m certain that’s the drinking, not DID. It’s more like depth, you know? I feel that the truth is buried in my mind, but it’s too damned deep. It’s like free diving. Four hundred feet is the holy grail for a woman. I want it so bad. But it might as well be the Mariana Trench. I just can’t hold my breath that long, can’t swim that far down. My true memories live at four hundred feet, and I’m not strong enough to get there.”

“It’s not a question of strength,” Michael says. “When you first spoke to me about repressed memories, I didn’t give much credence to the idea. But the more I’ve read on the Internet, the more I believe it. I was on Medline earlier. There’s a lot of evidence that during severe trauma, information is encoded in an entirely different way than at other times. They’ve found physiological changes in the amygdalae of people with severe PTSD. Apparently, the neurotransmitters get all out of whack during that kind of trauma, and memories get pushed down into holes and blind alleys. They only make themselves known when that person finds himself-or herself-in a similar situation to the one in which the trauma occurred. Child abuse victims having sex as adults, say. Or combat veterans walking near a car that backfires, or under a news helicopter that flies too low. Those triggers bring back the emotions that were experienced during the trauma, but not necessarily the memories themselves. That’s called body memory. It’s fascinating, really.”

“I’ve definitely experienced that. Especially during sex.”

“What was tonight’s nightmare about?”

I close my eyes and the vision is there, as though engraved on the backs of my eyelids. I relate the dream of the truck, the pond, and Daddy walking on water.

Michael shakes his head. “I’m no expert on dream interpretation, but walking on water is definitely a Christ image. Does Dr. Goldman interpret that kind of thing?”

“Sometimes. I’m sick of talking about all this, Michael. I want to do something.”

“I know. Forgive my amateur detective work, but-”

“I’m sorry about that. I’m just really antsy. I’m getting a little crazy.”

“Just a couple of questions.”

“Hurry.”

“What was your father’s childhood like?”