The Forgotten Hours

by Katrin Schumann

  A. My parents rented a house.

  Q. To clarify, this was from July through to August of 2007, yes? Your parents rented a house at Eagle Lake Park, and you were there during those months?

  A. That’s right.

  Q. Okay, go on.

  A. So they rented a place, and I spent a few weeks there, like, maybe four, five weeks total?

  Q. Thank you. You knew the Gregory family well. Would you agree with that assessment?

  A. I knew the kids well. I mean, I still know them.

  Q. Katherine and David, right? You would say you were friends.

  A. Yes, that’s right. David’s still just a kid, I mean—

  Q. The girl, Katherine, she’s your age.

  A. Yes. And yeah, we were friends.

  Q. And what about the victim—

  THE COURT. Counselor, please.

  PROSECUTOR. Sorry, Your Honor, my mistake.

  Q. The alleged victim, what about the alleged victim? You were friends with her, too, Lulu Henderson.

  A. Yeah, sure. We all hung out together.

  Q. And before we get to the night in question, just tell the court about your relationship with the defendant. You interacted with him on a number of occasions, is that right?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Can you characterize your relationship?

  A. I’m—sorry . . . I’m not really sure.

  Q. You don’t understand the question?

  A. I didn’t have a relationship with Mr. Gregory. I mean, I barely knew him except from seeing him around the clubhouse, you know?

  Q. We don’t know. We need your clarification. The clubhouse? What is that?

  DEFENSE. Relevance? Your Honor? Is any of this relevant?

  THE COURT. I’ll allow it. But get to the point, counselor. It’s getting late.

  PROSECUTOR. I’m establishing the setting. What happened prior to the rape. Excuse me, the alleged rape.

  Q. Okay, son. Tell us what you mean by “the clubhouse.”

  A. It’s a place where we met at night. During the day, too, actually. To play Ping-Pong, you know? Drink shakes and just hang out.

  Q. And the defendant?

  A. Oh, Mr. Gregory, yeah. He was there a lot, too, mostly weekends. There’s a bar area where the adults can have drinks. He was very active.

  Q. Can you qualify what you mean by “very active”?

  A. He was always there.

  Q. Yes. Go on.

  A. Uh, he was sort of a drinker, I guess.

  Q. So this place, this clubhouse, drinks were served there? Beer and such? And Mr. Gregory was an enthusiastic participant, is that a correct characterization?

  A. Yes, ma’am.

  Q. Would you say he was often drunk?

  DEFENSE. Your Honor! The kid was fifteen years old; how would he know?

  A. Sixteen. I was sixteen.

  She put the paper down on the desk. Really? The prosecutor didn’t know what she was talking about. Just because people drank at the clubhouse didn’t mean they were drunks.

  THE COURT. Don’t interrupt, son. Ms. Sofigny will address you directly when she asks you a question. Okay, this is about establishing mood; I get it. Let’s move on. The facts are what we’re trying to get at here, counselor.

  PROSECUTOR. Yes, Your Honor.

  Q. Would you say that Mr. Gregory often appeared to have had a lot of alcohol when you encountered him at the clubhouse at night?

  A. Yes, I guess. But so did everyone.

  Q. Can you speak up, please?

  A. Yes, he was often drunk.

  Q. Let’s go back to the night in question, the night of August 31, 2007. Tell us what happened that night.

  A. We were hanging out; people were swimming. There was a party, a square dance. And a big storm.

  Q. You were with the alleged victim at one point, isn’t that right?

  A. Yes, but, I mean. I was with everyone, on and off.

  Q. Okay, so it was a party night, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. Did you encounter Mr. Gregory during this period?

  A. Yes, I did.

  Q. And what did he say to you?

  A. He—well, he wanted to go swimming. Skinny-dipping, in the lake.

  Q. Uh, hold on. You are saying Mr. Gregory, the defendant, he wanted to swim naked with . . . with the children?

  A. Everybody does it. You’re making it sound, like, I don’t know.

  Q. Did this happen? Did Mr. Gregory, a man of forty-five, swim naked with all of you? With underage girls, with Ms. Henderson—

  A. No, no, I mean, I don’t know. But it was normal. And I left for a bit, so I don’t know if he even went swimming in the end. I’m not saying he did that. Maybe he didn’t; I don’t know.

  Katie stopped reading, heart pounding in her ears. The questions were so leading. That’s not what had happened; it was Katie’s mother who had been so overheated, who had come out of the clubhouse sweating and wanting to cool off, not her father. Wasn’t Charlie the one who had suggested going swimming? And Jack was right—the prosecutor was making it sound perverted, when skinny-dipping at night was normal.

  Q. Okay, let’s move on to later that night. The party broke up. It was what time? Around one a.m.?

  A. Yeah. There was lightning. A big storm. So everyone went home.

  Q. But you didn’t go home, isn’t that right?

  A. No, I mean yes. But then I went out again, later. I wanted to see Katie one more time.

  Q. Where did you go?

  A. To her house.

  Q. What happened then?

  A. I thought they’d all gone to bed. But there was light coming from the den.

  Q. And what did you do?

  A. I thought maybe they were watching TV.

  Q. Okay, so what did you do?

  A. I didn’t mean to be, like, spying or anything.

  Q. That’s okay. That doesn’t matter. Just tell us what happened.

  A. They were in the den. Mr. Gregory, Katie, and Lulu. I looked through the back window.

  A face at the window in the murky early-morning light—so Katie had remembered that correctly. She was afraid to read on. But she had come here to get facts, to better understand what had actually happened, and that meant she had to keep going, no matter how hard it was. She clamped her teeth together and continued reading.

  Q. And what did you see?

  A. The couch, there was a couch against the opposite wall. Everything was blue—the light, from the TV, it made everything blue. But I couldn’t see very well.

  Q. Just tell the court what you believe you saw.

  A. I saw Katie asleep on the couch.

  Q. There were two couches? Who was on the longer couch?

  A. Lulu. She was on that one. Well, she was sitting, and he was on the floor.

  Q. He, meaning the defendant. What was he doing?

  A. I couldn’t really tell. He was—there was a blanket over his back.

  Q. Just tell the court what you thought you saw when you looked through the window.

  A. I saw a man. It was Mr. Gregory. He was kneeling in front of Lulu. I think she had her eyes closed. I couldn’t really see much. He was, like, kind of bending down in front of her.

  Q. Did it look as though Mr. Gregory was committing a sexual act?

  A. It could have been. She was facing him. There was a blanket. And that’s all. That’s all I saw.

  Q. Thank you.

  A pulse at her throat, blood rushing through her veins. Pain in her bones, everywhere. Was this “evidence”? She couldn’t be sure what she was reading, what it really meant. She had thought she’d find a definitive answer, a word or an explanation that would illuminate the truth. Instead, she was flooded with dread and confusion. What had her father been doing?

  Cross-Examination

  Q. Were you drinking the night of August 31? What had you had to drink that evening?

  A. Some beer. The older kids, they had vodka.

  Q. You drank beer and vodka that night
? Even though you were not of age.

  A. Yes.

  Q. Had other kids been drinking too? Underage teenagers?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Lulu Henderson, for example. She was drinking alcohol?

  A. I’m not sure. I can’t be certain.

  Q. And Katherine Gregory? She was drinking?

  A. Yes. A little.

  Q. Okay. In terms of your own behavior. Can you tell the court how much? Approximately how much alcohol or marijuana had you consumed that night?

  A. Not very much. I mean, I was totally clear headed. It was late too. Everything had worn off.

  Q. So you were drinking beer and vodka all night, and it was late, and you decided to go visit Katie Gregory one last time?

  A. Um. Yeah.

  Q. Can you tell us why? Why did you want to go to her house in the middle of the night?

  A. I just wanted to see her again. And I thought Mr. Gregory—I don’t know. I thought he might, I guess, be angry about things? I was worried about Katie.

  Q. Why would Mr. Gregory be angry?

  A. Because we had been gone for, like, a while, Katie and me. We weren’t supposed to be alone together, you know? I think he saw us earlier, kissing.

  Q. You’d broken the rules, you’d been drinking, and then you went to see if everything was all right, and you say you saw Mr. Gregory through the window with Lulu Henderson, but it was dark, and you couldn’t really see what was happening.

  A. No.

  Q. No, you couldn’t see? Or no, you didn’t look through the window?

  A. I couldn’t really see what was happening.

  Q. It would be correct to say, then, that you are testifying that you did not see Mr. Gregory and the plaintiff engaged in sexual activity?

  A. Um, I don’t know. Can you repeat the question?

  Q. Are you saying that you did not witness any sexual activity between the defendant and the plaintiff?

  A. What I’m saying is, when I looked, I saw them—I thought it was weird—

  Q. We’ve established that you saw them. But were they engaged in sexual activity?

  A. Honestly, I don’t know. I couldn’t see what they were doing—

  Q. No further—

  A. —but it was weird—

  Q. Thank you, no further questions.

  Katie put a hand on her chest, feeling the urgent beat of her heart under her fingers. A tangle of unanswered questions remained. The lawyers didn’t seem to have proven anything with this line of questioning. Jack had testified, but he hadn’t known exactly what he had seen when he’d looked through that window in the den, and it was established that he was unreliable because he’d been drinking. The prosecutor had overreached.

  But at the same time there was no denying the fact that Jack had seen something that made him acutely uncomfortable, that hinted at transgression.

  A terrible thought occurred to her. Was it possible that Jack chose not to remember exactly what he saw? That he lied or obfuscated on the stand to protect her father—and therefore, by extension, to protect her too? Was that why he had tried to write to her about his trouble with telling “the truth”? Christ.

  Just then, a woman poked her head around the doorframe, causing Katie to start. “We’re closing up here,” she said.

  Katie checked her watch. “But it’s . . . it’s . . .” and she realized it was already a few minutes past five o’clock in the evening. “Damn. You’re not open tomorrow, right?”

  “Weekend, hon. We don’t work weekends.”

  She stood, shaky, stretching her legs one after another. Her entire body was numb except for her damn chest, where a battle was raging. The rest of the transcript would have to wait. She thought about Jack’s letters to her, his attempt to make peace when he thought she knew he was a witness. How could her parents have denied her those two letters? All these years, Katie had thought she was alone in her particular brand of pain and confusion, when in reality it hadn’t been like that—Jack had felt it too. He had had questions.

  The bad news was this: He had seen things, things that didn’t seem right. And she was leaving the courthouse with more questions than answers.

  When Katie got back to the cabin, the sun had dropped behind the wall of black pines, and a chill set in. Being alone in the country was a discomfiting experience, and she wished David had been willing to stay over. She had her laptop and another bottle of wine, but when she tried to sit still, the sounds from the woods seemed to amplify around her, and the cold seeped into her fingertips and her toes. If only Jack would call her back, but her phone was silent.

  Breaking out the cleaning supplies, she started in on the kitchen. The radio was tuned to a jazz station, and after a while she switched to Oldies 90.3. Tidying up wasn’t so bad, really. It took her three passes with a mop to get the old linoleum floor to shine again. The kitchen table was scratched up and dusty, but once she’d scrubbed it and applied some Old English, it shone in the lamplight, warm and friendly. She picked some ferns to display on the counter in a small vase. Sometimes she sang out loud, and sometimes she worked in silence, the songs bringing up waves of memories as she worked. When Shania Twain came on, Katie stopped in her tracks, one arm raised above the refrigerator, where she was clearing away years of mouse droppings. Shit, she thought. Shania Twain is not a goddamn oldie!

  18

  John Gregory is a horrible singer. He stands in the West Mills kitchen, “You’re Still the One,” by Shania Twain, playing on the radio. Each time it reaches the chorus, he stops what he’s doing and waves whichever utensil he’s holding high in the air, arching his back and singing in high falsetto, “Looks like we made it; look how far we’ve come, baby!” David and Katie burst into giggles.

  It is her parents’ wedding anniversary, January 14, 2008. Outside it has been snowing lightly for hours, and summer seems so long ago. Charlie’s Union Jack apron is strapped across John’s torso, and he is on his second or third rum and tonic. They are making a surprise dinner for Charlie of beef tenderloin wrapped in phyllo pastry, with sides of carrots and a big salad. John has thrown Charlie off the scent by claiming he has a town basketball game to coach and sending her to a spa. The vent above the oven rattles, and the kitchen windows are steaming up with moisture.

  He plans on glazing carrots in apricot jam and cinnamon, which will take at least twenty minutes. Katie grabs the peeler from David. “Go help Dad,” she orders. “I’ll do this.”

  “Let him finish,” her father says. His cheeks are pink from the steam. “Boys should know how to cook, too, these days.”

  “You want to surprise Mum, right?” Katie looks at the clock over the door. “If so, we’d better get a move on.”

  “Nervous Nelly,” he says, and then to David: “Get me three bottles of wine from the basement. The merlot, okay? In the crates to the left of the boiler.”

  When Katie has finished peeling, John shows her how to chop the carrots into julienne strips and create a glaze. It smells rich and sweet, like dessert. Shania Twain is still playing on repeat. Again and again. The dining room at the back of the house overlooks the yard, a large rounded doorway leading into the kitchen on one end and the vestibule on the other. The oak table is set with the white china from Gram and the silver with the vine pattern on the handles. When a car pulls into the driveway, John waves them over frantically.

  “Holy Mother of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, that woman is punctual,” he hisses, flipping the radio off. Katie dims the lights. They hold their breath as a key turns in the front door.

  “John?” Charlie calls out from the front hall. “Hello? What’s that smell?”

  Katie clamps a hand over her mouth, suppressing a laugh.

  Candles cast fingers of wavering orange light over the table settings. David’s body is rigid with excitement.

  “Hello?” Mum stands in the arch of the doorway. She wears a sweatshirt, and her hair is greasy and tied in a low ponytail. In her arms she holds a pizza carton and a big bottle of
Sprite. Katie waits for a look of delight to cross her mother’s face; why is she always such a downer? “Oh my goodness,” Charlie exclaims. A beat later, she breaks into a smile. “What on earth . . . ?”

  During dinner, John lets the children have wine, and Charlie doesn’t complain. When he brings out the ice cream cake, he places it in front of his wife and sticks a huge spoon in it. Written on the cake in pink cursive is Charlie & John Forever. “All yours, honey,” he says. “You sure deserve it.”

  The planes of Mum’s face are long and angular, and when she is happy, the angles soften perceptibly. In the candlelight she looks almost like a young girl, and Katie wonders if she will look like her when she is grown. She wants to jump up and hug her, but she’s not sure how Charlie would react. Sometimes her mother will stroke her hair, say how pretty Katie is, but she looks sad when she does it. Other times she seems opaque and unknowable, as though her daughter isn’t of interest to her.

  “I’m going to get fat on you—just you watch out,” Charlie says, digging a spoon into the cake with gusto.

  “Fat, thin, whatever,” John says, grinning. He spreads his arms wide. “Don’t matter to me either way, woman, ’cause you’re still the one . . .”

  Charlie rolls her eyes, licking vanilla ice cream from the corners of her mouth with quick darts of her tongue.

  The grown-ups have almost finished a third bottle of wine, and John sends David to fetch another one.

  “Go easy,” Charlie says. “It’s only Tuesday.”

  “And what a lovely Tuesday it is.” John motions to his son to keep going.

  On his way back to the dining room, David calls out, “Wow! Still snowing. Think we’ll have a snow day tomorrow?”

  “It’s, like, two whole flakes,” Katie says under her breath. In the last few months everything David says has been getting on her nerves. “It’s all gonna melt.”

  “Hey, cool.” David comes into the room, two new bottles cradled in his skinny arms. “There’s a police car out there. Maybe the neighbors got murdered or something.”

  “Ugh, please,” Katie says. “That’s so morbid.”

  John shoots his wife a glance and stands up, laying his cloth napkin next to his plate. “I’ll see what’s going on. Finish up, okay?”

  The tenderloin has been massacred and sits in a pool of cooling blood. Katie is sleepy from the red wine. Mum is talking about the gutters, of all things, worrying about whether they’ll withstand a heavy snowfall. “It’s not a good sign that it’s already so cold,” she says. “Anyone know what Farmers’ Almanac predicted?”