When We Were Friends (28 page)

“She didn’t say much, just that she’d try and call you in the next week or so, and I should tell you she said ‘Hi.’ ”

I raised my eyebrows. “Hi?”

“Yeah, exactly. Maybe there’s a wealth of emotion behind it that we’re missing.”

I leaned back in the chair, staring down at my knees. “Well I guess there’s no right thing she really could say. I’m sure she feels guilty for pulling me into this, and she’s probably overwhelmed and scared.”

“My vote’s still that she’s not thinking twice about what you’re going through. But okay, maybe I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.
She looked overwhelmed, I’ll give her that much, all fidgety and like she hadn’t slept or showered in days.” Pamela kicked her heel back forcefully against the chair leg. “I don’t know, Lainey, the thing that gets me most is how she seems to believe this is all completely justified. She’s not totally heartless; like I said she obviously loves Molly. But she’s completely self-serving, like toddlers who think the world revolves around their need for juice and their bathroom habits.”

I remembered the day in fifth grade when Sydney had broken her collarbone, and she’d had to call my mom to bring her from the hospital. The silence of the meals I’d eaten at her house, napkins folded in our laps, knives and forks set down between each bite, the horror on Sydney’s face when she’d spilled a glass of milk, and her mother’s snapped but distracted reprimand. She’d
needed
to think of herself first.

And with those memories, I decided to work on forgiving Sydney, not just for this but for everything. Maybe people had to be taught empathy, the way I was now trying to teach Molly to talk. Sydney had had no examples to follow, and so the necessary neurons had never developed. The fact that she loved Molly enough to risk her own future was, if you thought about it, rather miraculous.

“Whether or not we like her is completely beside the point right now,” I said. “I just have to believe she’d never do anything that would lead the authorities to Molly.”

Besides, it wasn’t being used that bothered me most. I wasn’t scared what would happen to me, I was scared what would happen to Molly once Sydney took her.

I thought of the disregard Sydney had shown everything precious while we were growing up: fancy clothes muddied and torn; a portrait of her I’d painstakingly painted for her eleventh birthday, which I’d found a month later defaced with a tiara and pink cheeks. Our friendship. And maybe she loved Molly, but I still couldn’t believe she had any idea how to love her enough.

•   •   •

It was the middle of the night before I had a chance to turn on Alex’s computer to check for stories.

It seemed like the focus was shifting onto the possible involvement of Sydney and David’s acquaintances and coworkers, and I tried playing the whole story from the authorities’ point of view: add Sydney’s lie about the kidnapping to her claims of abuse, of having left the baby at David’s, David’s cocaine possession and a ransom note from someone Sydney knew. And what did it add up to? A mess, that’s what, direction and misdirection, the truth hidden somewhere in the tangles. Impossible to tell whether it was hidden deeply enough.

And then I found the article in the
New York Post:

I closed the article and turned off the computer, then sat in the desk chair with my hands clasped between my knees. I sat there, dizzy and nauseous, for five, ten, twenty minutes, and then I rose and went to Pamela’s door.

She answered, bleary-eyed, wearing what looked to be one of Craig’s T-shirts. She must have read something in my face, because her expression immediately sharpened and she backed into the room and closed the door behind us before speaking. “What is it?” she said.

“The investigation.” I sank into the armchair, staring dully at the clothes Pamela had strewn over the top of the dresser. “I just read an update and they’re coming closer. David passed a polygraph and Sydney’s refusing to take one, and doesn’t that mean they’ll realize she’s involved? How long can she keep refusing?”

“I don’t think they can force anyone to be polygraphed, and they definitely can’t use it to prove guilt. I think it just shows them where to focus their investigation, and it’s probably also a scare tactic.” She sat cross-legged on the bed, pulled her T-shirt over her knees and after a minute she said softly, “Didn’t you realize this was going to happen, Lainey? Sydney can’t get away with this forever, and when they find out you have Molly, you’re going to look just as guilty.”

“Even more guilty.” I shook my head, my eyes filling. “Sydney isn’t going to tell them this was her idea; she’ll try and use me as her Get Out of Jail Free card. And I don’t even give a damn what happens
to me, I’m scared what’s going to happen to Molly if Sydney’s arrested and they take her away from me. Where’s she going to go? To an abusive drug addict? Or to foster care?”

Pamela watched me without speaking.

“What?” I said, then louder, “What! You don’t think I have a right to worry because she’s not officially mine? You think I should just give her over to the cops, let them do whatever they want with her and just brush my hands clean because the law says she’s not my responsibility?”

“That’s not it,” Pamela said slowly. “Lainey, come on, you really thought you’d be able to keep her?”

I hugged my knees, staring fixedly at the wall, and she hesitated before rising to set a hand on my shoulder. “Lainey …”

“What am I going to do, Pamela?” My voice broke. “I’ll run to Montana, and then what? Sydney’s going to want her back, I realize that, but is it going to be in two months? One? Less? How can I figure out how to feel if I don’t even know how much time I have left?”

Pamela knelt in front of my chair, looked up into my face and then laid her head in my lap without speaking. Not speaking because there was no answer, because she knew this wasn’t a fairy tale, and that it probably wouldn’t have a happy ending.

And yes, of course I wasn’t stupid. I knew it too.

Pamela pushed away the money for gas I tried to stuff into her purse. And then she took my hand and pulled me down the front path, out of earshot of Alex who was standing by the door with Molly. “I’ll tell her Molly’s doing good,” Pamela said under her breath. “I’ll stop by tomorrow and tell her that.”

“Tell her she’s doing
great,
” I said. “How now she seems like she’s probably happier than ever in her life, and how she’s learning all kinds of new things.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll say she’s learned how to read and do long division, and that not only did she tell me she’s happy, she said it in Greek.”

I smiled. “I’m going to miss the hell out of you.” The past couple of days, here with the people I loved best in the world, I’d started to feel more grounded than probably ever in my life. Despite all the fear of what would come next and knowing Star was hovering on the brink of internal combustion, I’d felt somehow like everything was as it should be.

Pamela pulled me into a one-armed hug. “No you won’t, not really. I don’t agree with any of this, and I don’t know how to hold my tongue so I’m just getting in the way, like an alarm clock kicking you out of your dream.”

The phone rang, and I turned to watch Alex rush inside to get it,
Molly in his arms. Pamela was probably right, in a way. Without her here I could immerse myself back into this life. She was the one continually reminding me it would be over soon.

After she’d driven away, I stood awhile gazing down the street. And realized I didn’t care if this wasn’t real. In a way my happiness was just like Star’s fear, maybe grounded in mental illness, but that didn’t make the feeling itself any less genuine.

I shoved my hands into my pockets, breathing in the honeysuckle scent of the new garden. I should sketch this, try and capture the bright splashes of color. I could even make a mural from it someday, in my own house. So I could sit by it and remember.

I made a box with my fingers and thumbs and held it against one eye like a camera frame, and then I went inside for my sketch pad and pens. Alex was on the phone in the kitchen, speaking in low tones. I stood in the entryway a moment, trying to listen to his voice under the sound of Molly’s babbling, then realized what I was doing and turned away.

Upstairs, Star was in her bedroom standing at the window. The blinds were down, the room dim and dusty feeling. “So that’s it,” she said when I entered. “Stranded.” She smiled widely, but I could see the strain behind it.

“You made it,” I said. “You took your biggest fear and stomped on it.”

“Well I wouldn’t say I stomped on it, I’d say I slithered underneath it. From prison A to prison B, except here …” She gestured at the lawn, the miles of woods beyond. “Here, I’m alone with myself and my patheticness. There’s no TV and I don’t even have my people. What am I going to do all day except tear out my hair strand by strand?”

By
people
, she must mean her clients, the women who came weekly for readings or personal horoscopes and sometimes stayed an hour or more to chat, only then handing over their tens and twenties, furtively like they were paying a hooker for an evening of pretend love. Star thought of these women as her friends. “You’re not
alone, Ma, and we’ll find stuff for you to do. Like did you see the library downstairs? You could read for a decade and still not run out of books. And we’ll find you new people. I’m sure there’s folks here who’d be interested in a reading.”

“They’ll probably be weirdos,” she said.

I raised my eyebrows at her, and she glowered back. “Okay, I’m not listening to this,” I said, bending to the corner for my supplies. “I was going to work on some sketches outside. If you want, I’ll sit right there in the garden so you can see me.”

“I used to watch you playing in the backyard while I was cooking,” Star said, “to make sure you stayed safe.” She turned again to the window. “There’s irony there somewhere.”

I knew I should probably find something comforting to say, but there was no way really to do it without sounding even more patronizing. So I just squeezed her shoulder and went downstairs.

There was nowhere to sit except on the ground, so that’s what I did, sat on the stone path with my sketchbook on my lap, surrounded by the flowers. It was such a startling transition, slapped from the dimness of Star’s room into this vibrant kaleidoscope, black-and-white to Oz, that for a full minute I was paralyzed, like an overstimulated baby. I sat unmoving, gazing at a gardenia, thinking only: RED.

“Leah!” I looked up to see Susie Greer waving from the road, holding the hand of a thin, balding man in a purple tracksuit. “Look at this!” she said. “All it took was a woman in Alex’s life and he gave his home a face-lift.”