“Jesus,” said Katrina, in a more muted voice. “Teddy was my boyfriend, for my whole senior year,” she said. “He came to see me almost every weekend. I knew all those boys. Not biblically, of course, which certainly seems to be the implication there, but I knew them.” Through the receiver, Diana heard her swallow. “I thought they were my friends.”
“I understand,” Diana said. “The summer I knew Poe, I thought he liked me. That he wanted me to be his girlfriend.” Even now, her naivete burned at her, like a throatful of acid. “And that’s why I’m calling. I wanted to ask someone who knew him, back then.”
“But that’s the thing. I barely knew Poe. I mean, I knew him as one of Teddy’s friends, but I didn’t really know him.” Katrina’s voice was becoming increasingly higher, more distressed. “I certainly didn’t realize that I was a joke to them.”
“I’m sorry,” said Diana, and listened as the woman breathed. When Katrina spoke again, her voice was clipped, angry and direct.
“So what, then?” Before Diana could answer, Katrina said, “You want to know if Poe’s capable of raping someone. Because that’s what happened, right?”
Diana shut her eyes. “Yes.”
Katrina gave a mirthless laugh. “I guess anyone’s capable of anything, right? That’s our lesson for this evening. And I know it’s not your fault, but to tell you the truth, I wish you hadn’t called me. I could have probably died happy not knowing what they’d said.” There was a beep, letting Diana know that the call had been ended.
Diana sat back on the bed and opened her notebook. The Mount Katrina joke had made her furious, but, still, nothing had upset her as much as the news of Hal Shoemaker’s wedding, to the other Diana. Especially not after it turned out that the other Diana, thirteen years Hal’s junior, was also one of his classmates’ sister. She flipped to the page where she’d written it, word for word:
Your faithful correspondent is delighted to report that late bloomer Hal Shoemaker, aka the Last Man Standing, has finally tied the knot! Hal got hitched at the Four Seasons in Center City, Philadelphia, where he practices law, to Diana “Daisy” Rosen, a college student, and little sister to none other than our classmate Daniel Rosen. Danny played inadvertent matchmaker when he recommended Daisy’s services as a cooking instructor to Hal, who was looking for help for his father, Vernon Shoemaker （Emlen Class of 1963）。 Other Emlen classmates in attendance at the wedding included Danny’s brother, David （Class of 1985）， Gerald Justin, Bryan Tavistock, Crosby Wolf, Richard Rutledge, and Brad Burlingham.
“She’s his sister?” Diana had blurted, drawing stares from a few nearby students. She’d gotten up to take a turn around the library, attempting to make sense of it. Danny had witnessed her rape. He’d known about it and kept quiet. And then he’d served his sister up, on a platter, to the boy who’d done it. It didn’t make sense.
Diana paced and fretted, mumbling to herself （out of earshot of the students）， then dove back into her research. By the end of the afternoon, she knew that Daniel Rosen was married to a man. He and his husband lived in a small, artsy-looking town in New Jersey, across the river from New Hope, Pennsylvania, and he worked as a school counselor in Trenton.
Bradley Telford Burlingham, the one who’d held her wrists and laughed, lived in Baltimore. He’d matriculated at Trinity College, but Diana couldn’t find any evidence of his having graduated. He’d gotten married in his late twenties, in Baltimore, his hometown, and he and his wife had started a family. There’d been a daughter, Lila, and a son, Austin. He’d popped up at the class’s tenth reunion, and again in 2003, having lost most of his hair and gained at least thirty pounds, in a picture with five Emlen men on a fishing boat, each of them holding a giant fish by its jaws. Hal Shoemaker was one of the other men, which meant he and Brad had stayed friends. How touching, Diana thought. Google had filled in some of the blanks, and LinkedIn had helped, too. Brad had held almost a dozen different jobs, mostly in marketing, in all kinds of different businesses. His current address was a not-especially-impressive-looking two-bedroom apartment in a neighborhood called Roland Park.
She would start with him, Diana decided, and work her way up to Hal. She would pay Brad a visit, look him in the eye, let him see what he’d done; let him live with that knowledge, and the knowledge of the world his daughter would eventually inherit, the world he’d made for her, and the rest of the girls and women.