“People love your bread,” Catherine corrected as she reached out and took off Amy’s hat, smoothing her hair. Looking after Amy for three summers had made Catherine feel like something between a mother and a sister; the fierce protectiveness had surprised her in its intensity. She remembered one day last summer, looking for fuzzy caterpillars in the front yard, both of them bent double, intent and squinting, until a sudden chill erupted up Catherine’s arms, down her spine, twisting her around to see a man at her back.
He was older than her, maybe late twenties, with a grimy beard and oddly yellow eyes. Filthy.
“Girl,” he’d said, looking past Catherine to Amy, who was still poking at the grass with a thin stick.
“Amy,” Catherine said, her voice raised, backing up and grabbing her without even having to turn around. “Go inside. Lock the door.”
“Girl,” the man said again. “Pretty girl, aren’t you?”
“Cathy—”
“Now!”
Amy raced up the brick front steps. Catherine heard the door close. Her eyes darted around: no one was outside. But it was the middle of the day. Bright and shining. If she screamed, there were a dozen people who would hear from inside their homes. They’d come. They’d help.
But what if Amy heard her scream? What if Amy came back outside?
Then I won’t scream, she thought. I won’t make a sound.
“Leave,” she told the man, her voice low. “Now.”
He glared at her for a long moment—one that stretched itself across the circumference of the earth until it came full circle—then he spat at the grass by her feet and stalked away, muttering under his breath.
She watched him until he’d reached the street before racing up the steps after Amy, a cry in her throat, his spit on the edge of her sandals, her pink-painted toenails. When she got inside and slammed the dead bolt home, Amy was waiting for her.
Catherine turned back to Amy now, shutting her eyes hard for a moment to block out that memory. She pointed to the screen, scanning the flavor options and trying to smile. “So, that nutmeg-eggnog bread was amazing last year. Can I order some?”
Amy’s eyes widened. “Really? You’d pay?” Then she seemed to think for a minute. “You can have them at three dollars each. Discount, ’cause you’re cool and baked a ton with me while I was learning.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Catherine smiled, teasing. “So, does this mean you’re not still learning?”
“What?”
“You said I get a discount, because—”
“Oh yeah. No, I’m still learning things. But I know a ton already. Like, do you know that people have found evidence that bread is over thirty thousand years old? Yeah, starch residue on rocks they, like, carbon-dated or something. And OMG, I heard this really funny joke.” She sat up a little straighter in her chair. “Okay, so a lot of people think Jesus was all skinny or whatever, but isn’t that amazing since he could make bread appear out of nowhere whenever he wanted? What? Why do you look so weird?”
Catherine blinked and looked away from her, to the iPad. “Never grow up,” she told Amy firmly. “Stay twelve forever.”
“Too late…I’ll be thirteen in March.”
“Jesus.”
“Bam! Garlic knots!” Amy said, waving her arms for emphasis. “Ah, this comedian does it better. Hold on, I’ll bring up the video.” She opened a new tab and pulled up Jim Gaffigan’s page on YouTube and they watched the video together, Amy’s head on Catherine’s shoulder, shaking with laughter. It might have been last summer, or the one before that. Like that night at college had never happened, and the only thing to be scared of had walked away and she’d been able to bolt a door against it.
In the days after Amy’s visit, Catherine picked at the pumpkin bread and scrolled through her phone endlessly. Hania, her best friend from high school, had texted her to meet up after Christmas, and Catherine stared at the message, wondering what to say. Catherine’s roommate, Amber, had been in touch too, saying Cordelia had been saying weird things before she left, had anything happened? Catherine replied she was fine, no worries, but didn’t respond to the texts Amber sent afterward. But it wasn’t strange, was it, not to respond to every single message? It was the holidays; people were busy.
During Christmas Eve dinner, as Catherine sat with her parents at the table, listening to her father’s short, cursory prayer, she had a sudden, vivid image of herself at nine, in that navy checkered skirt she had to wear to church—back when they’d actually attended regularly. Her father across from her at the table, both of them eating after-church donuts taken from the reception hall at First Faith.
They opened presents Christmas morning, then ate turkey and mashed potatoes and rolls in the late afternoon, exactly one uncle, aunt, and cousin joining them from Castle Rock.
Catherine ate her food without tasting it and nodded at everything said to her while only hearing every third word. She was aware of her mother’s gaze on her, and her father’s, too, a flickering awareness, as though she were an elderly relative with low blood pressure and osteoporosis who might lose consciousness at any moment and break in half on the hardwood. It made her miss talking to Amy, to Henry, their expressions uncomplicated and unaware.
When her extended family left, she was exhausted but too conscious of her mother’s worried look to refuse her offer to break open one of the cookie jars for a late dessert. She upended the jar, the undone ribbon cutting a trail through the flour, and mixed in eggs and oil, preheated the oven, laid her head on her mother’s shoulder as they stood in front of the warming door. It made her think of Amy.
“What can I do?” her mother asked.
Catherine closed her eyes. The kitchen smelled like sugar and pine. Every Christmas, the tree was real. Every January second, they left it on the street to be dragged away damp.
Her legs had been wet, sticky. Blood on her inner thighs, trickling down her right one to her ankle. A pain that cut through her in staccato bursts made her want to scream. Bending down in the shower back in the dorms, scrubbing the red off her skin, like erasing a river, using a pad—so normal, it’s normal—her hands shaking on the plastic wrapping, a rustling sound like an animal in the leaves.
* * *
—
What can I do? her mother had asked.
She wanted someone to go into her brain. Cut out the memories—these little fragments that sliced her open.
I don’t want to remember. I can’t do it. If I know more, if I see it, I’ll—