Kitty, however,
was coping with her own sense of rejection.
In her four and a half years at the University of Wisconsin, she hadn’t seen one sign of anyone from the Interior. If she didn’t still have the bracelet, she
might have convinced herself that she’d dreamt the whole thing up. She had even started to wonder if the
bracelet came from some rummage sale she’d been to with her mother, and that she’d
spun a fantastic story around, in her need to feel special. The more time that passed since her last
visit, the less real the Interior seemed, and the less she remembered about it.
Sometimes in her dreams she could
hear the King talking to her but, of course, she never saw his face. Nor could she recall what the apartment
looked like that she’d stayed in during her convalescence. The much-faded scar where the Minister’s
knife had gone into her side failed to jog her memory. Even when Kitty went to visit the Minister’s
grave, she found no marker, presumably because no one had known who he
was. Its absence only heightened her
sense of unreality. Not for the first
time did she wish Jack could remember his trip there, if only for someone to validate her experience. But she seemed
fated to just forget more and more about the Interior until, somehow, it would
cease to exist in her memory at all.
