The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

Author:Kim Edwards
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780143037149
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2006-12-01T08:00:00+00:00

Paul watched his father disappear into the darkroom. Then he got on his knees and began to pick up shards of broken glass. Distantly, trains rushed, and the sky beyond the windows opened up forever, clear and blue. Paul paused for a moment in the harsh morning light, listening to his father work inside the darkroom, imagining those same hands moving carefully inside a person's body, seeking to repair what had been broken.

September 19JJ

I "'' AROLINE CAUGHT THE CORNER OF THE POLAROID BETWEEN

her thumb and first finger as it slipped from the camera, the image already emerging. The table with its white cloth appeared to float on a sea of dark grass. Moonflowers, white and faintly luminous, climbed the hillside. Phoebe was a pale blur in her confirmation dress. Caroline waved the photo dry in the fragrant air. There was thunder far away, a late summer storm gathering; a rising breeze stirred the paper napkins.

"One more," she said.

"Oh, Mom," Phoebe protested, but she stood still.

The minute the camera clicked she was off, running across the lawn to where their neighbor Avery, age eight, was holding a tiny kitten with hair the same dark orange as her own. Phoebe, at thirteen, was short for her age, chubby, still impulsive and impassioned, slow to learn but moving from joy to pensiveness to sadness and back to joy with an astonishing speed. "I'm confirmed!" she shouted now, turning once on the lawn with her arms flung high in the air, causing the guests to glance her way, drinks in their hands, and smile. Skirt swirling, she ran to Sandra's son, Tim, now a teenager too. She wrapped her arms around him, kissing him exuberantly on the cheek.

Then she caught herself and glanced back anxiously at Caroline. Hugging had been a problem earlier this year, at school. "I like you," Phoebe would announce, enveloping a smaller child; she didn't understand why not. Caroline had told her again and again, Hugs are special. Hugs are for family; slowly Phoebe had learned. Now, however, seeing Phoebe rein in her love, she wondered if she'd done the right thing.

"It's okay, honey," Caroline called. "It's okay to hug your friends at the party."

Phoebe relaxed. She and Tim went off to pet the kitten. Caroline looked at the Polaroid in her hand: the luminous garden and Phoebe's smile, a fleeting moment caught, already gone. There was more thunder in the distance, but the evening was still lovely, warm and beautiful with flowers. All across the lawn people moved, talking and laughing and filling their plastic cups. A cake, three tiers and frosted white, stood on the table, decorated with dark red roses from the garden. Three layers, for three celebrations: Phoebe's confirmation, her own wedding anniversary, and Doro's retirement, a bon voyage.

"It's my cake." Phoebe's voice floated over the rise and fall of conversations, the physics professors and neighbors and choir members and school friends, families from the Upside Down Society, all sorts of children, running. Caroline's new friends from the hospital, where she'd started working part-time once Phoebe was in school, were here too.

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