When We Were Friends (30 page)

“You told them Jacqueline got stolen in front of Macy’s!”

She ignored this. “Or do anything to hurt my baby. And if you told them how David abused us, that’d be an added plus. Maybe you could say you saw my beat-up face and suggested I should hide Jacqueline from him, but that I told you I’d never do something illegal. Or do you think that’s too much?”

“Are you drunk?”

“Just tell them as little as you can, it’s—” She sucked in her breath. “Oh fuck, hold on.”

“What? What’s going on?”

She didn’t answer for a full minute; all I could hear was a rapid shuffling and background voices before she whispered, “I’m by the men’s room in an Italian restaurant. I don’t want to use a pay phone out in the open anymore. I don’t know if they’re following me, David’s thugs. Or the FBI, they could be following me to trace my calls.”

“What if they followed you to the restaurant?”

“They didn’t, I was standing here looking at the door for the past half hour to make sure before I called. This has been such hell, Lainey. You know they’ve come to search my home? Barged into my house! They took my computer, a journal—”

“A journal!”

“It was old, from a year or two ago. And it talks about David’s abuse, so it can only help. But there were also letters from that guy I told you about, Kemper.”

I felt my skin flush cold. “Letters from when?”

“A couple months ago was the last one. I told you how he knows some of what David did to me. He helped me out after David broke my arm, and last year he started pleading with me to leave David, but I was pregnant with Jacqueline and I was sure things were going to change after she was born. So I started avoiding him, but he kept writing me these insistent letters, urging me to get away. I wish to
God I hadn’t saved them, but I thought they might help me decide what to do, whether it was safe to trust him to help me once I can leave here. And so of course now the FBI’s seen the letters, they’re really interested in him.”

“But that’s good, right? It’s distracting them.”

“It’s not good.” She paused, then said, “I refused to give them any information on him, tell them how to reach him, which I’m sure makes us both look really suspicious.”

“Like he’s hiding Molly?”

“So I can accuse David of kidnapping, yeah, maybe. Like I’m just waiting till the three of us can escape together. That or maybe they think he acted on his own, took Jacqueline to protect her and then wrote the note you left at Six of Swords, to let me know he has her.”

“So why don’t you just let them find him? They can see he
doesn’t
have her!”

Sydney hesitated, then said, “Because. Because he knows about you, Lainey.”

I felt a band of terror tighten round my chest. “What?”

“I wanted to feel him out, see whether it was safe to trust him, and I ended up telling him what I’d done. He was shocked, he refused to play any part in this, but he did promise he wouldn’t go to the authorities voluntarily. Which I believe, because he understands what’s at stake, but I don’t know what would happen if he was actually called in for questioning.”

There was something strange in her tone, a tremor that might’ve been fear or anger. Or deception. It was impossible to tell which. I strode to the window, my stomach twisting, almost expecting to see flashing lights. “You think he’d tell the FBI I have the baby?” I slammed my hand against the wall. “How could you have given him my name!”

“They’re not going to find him! And actually, actually if the detective asks you about him when they call, how about you say I haven’t been in touch with him for months? That he kept writing me off and on, but our friendship kind of fizzled out. I need them to stop looking for him.”

My knees started to buckle and I reached for the armchair to keep myself from sliding to the floor. “I have to leave here,” I said. “I’m getting rid of my phone, I won’t talk to the FBI, and tomorrow I’m taking Star and the baby and leaving.”

“Lainey, no! You have to talk to them! Don’t you realize if they can’t reach you they’re going to look for you in Virginia and find out you’ve left?”

“And if your friend tells them I have the baby, they’ll trace my cell phone records and look for me here! Did you forget there’s a huge reward for information on Molly? How long do you think this guy will be able to resist the temptation to become a hero and, as a fringe benefit, also rich? Dammit, Sydney, I really didn’t need one more thing to worry about. Now I have plans to make, I can’t talk to you!” And then, I hung up. And then freaked out.

How long did I have before the FBI called? I pulled out my bags and started throwing clothes in without folding, sitting on the suitcases to zip them, catching fabric in the teeth. When I was done I called a realtor I’d spoken to yesterday, and arranged to see one of the furnished homes she’d told me about. A tiny cabin, cheap, bare-bones, the type of place whose walls probably held more mouse droppings than insulation. But whose barrenness and remoteness would make it feel safe, in the way Star’s Feng-Shui’d bedroom gave her the illusion of control.

After hanging up I scrubbed my hands viciously against my scalp, fighting back the threat of tears. And then I rose to tell Star that we were leaving.

“You didn’t tell me.” Star sounded strangely flat, sitting in her bedroom wrapped in a blanket and clutching a plastic cup of water. I knelt by her chair and she looked down at me, eyes pleading. “I thought this was it until we could finally go back home,” she said. “How could you not tell me? What were you planning to do, hit me over the head and drag me to the car before I knew what was happening?”

“I didn’t want you worrying. I have the whole thing planned out, I have maps, I know the motels we’ll stay in—”

“Where? Motels where?”

“Just a couple of stops on the way to Montana,” I said. “We’re going to Montana.”

“Montana?”
She said this the way one might say the word
Ebola
, her voice strangled and high-pitched. And then, under her breath, “Okay, okay, okay …”

I reached for her hand. “It’ll be nice there. I’ve talked to a realtor and there’s this really sweet-seeming town with pretty cabins you can rent by the month.” As I said this, I realized exactly how badly thought out this plan was. Live in some cabin? In the middle of a state where I had no job, no friends and which I knew nothing about other than 1930s scenes from
A River Runs Through It
? “The thing is, Ma, I don’t think we’re safe here anymore. Sydney says she told that
Kemper guy I have the baby, and if the FBI finds him, what’s to stop him from giving them my name?”

Of course this was not even close to the right thing to say, and Star wrapped the blanket tighter around her and stared fixedly out the window, her eyes filling.

I brought Star’s hand to my cheek, its cold clamminess like a hunk of raw meat against my skin. “You can do this, Ma. Just think, a week ago you were sure you couldn’t leave home. But you made it out here and you’re doing great.”

“Listen.” Her voice was hoarse. “I think you should leave me here. It’ll be so much easier without me; you have Molly to worry about, so you shouldn’t have to worry about me too.” She raised a shaking hand to wipe briskly at one eye, and then the other. “It makes much more sense.”

“Ma, you can’t stay here. I’m not asking Alex to take care of you.”

“It’s okay.” Her eyes were still on the window. “I wouldn’t want him to. He won’t have to.”

“What’re you saying?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again and shook her head.

“What’re you trying to say!”

“Nothing, really nothing. Don’t worry about me, okay? Just do what you have to do; I’ll be fine. I can call Pamela to bring me home or something.”

Something
. I stood there watching her, only too aware what that
something
might mean. The week after Nana Sterling had died when I’d still been home from the funeral but preparing to return to the city, she’d sat like this staring out the window.
I’ll be fine!
She’d said it then too.
You have fun up there, make friends, do everything you’ve dreamed of so I can think about you and smile when my mind wants to go other places
. And I’d believed her. I had left. And just a few days later she’d swallowed a full bottle of pills. Of course I couldn’t leave her alone now. I couldn’t ever leave her.

From my bedroom Molly started to cry, and I felt a swirl of frustration. All the years in high school I’d needed Star to protect me but had kept all the jagged edges inside me, knowing she wouldn’t save
me from them but would let them cut her too. I knew the frustration was unfair; I’d been working to forgive Sydney for her weaknesses that were a hell of a lot less forgivable. But the difference was that Star was my mother and she should be the one comforting me. It was her job!

I stood and set a hand on her shoulder, gripped it perhaps too hard. “Don’t you realize I’ll worry ten times more about you if you’re not with me? You’re coming with us, Ma. I’ll do whatever I can to make it easier for you, but this isn’t a choice. Besides, I’ll probably have to find a job, so I’ll need you to watch Molly.”

Star turned her head, the first time in this whole conversation that she’d looked at me. Her face was vacant, her mouth half open. I wanted to shake her, to slap her, but instead I said, “I’ll help you pack tonight. I want to have us in Toledo by tomorrow, so we have to leave early.” And then I walked out to the hall and forced myself to breathe. Oh God, how was I going to do this? How could I possibly make it work?

I went to my bedroom and unstrapped Molly from her carrier, where she’d been sleeping. I needed to get out of here so I could think, needed to walk away all the tangled fears and rages and frustrations, not just at my mother but at the entire situation. I lifted Molly and put her in the Björn.

The afternoon air and the feel of Molly against me helped to calm my nerves, but as I walked down the street and entered downtown, all I could feel was a sense of mourning. The last time I’d see these trees, these houses, the stores with their racks of hand-stitched quilts and blown glass; it felt like I was leaving home.

I stopped in front of the old stone church, its rough gray walls and simple stained glass making it seem almost handcrafted. I hesitated, then climbed the front steps, expecting it to be locked, but the door creaked open and we entered the dim interior.

I walked up to the altar, looking down at the Jesus carved into its front surface. I touched Him gingerly, then pulled my hand quickly away. My relationship with God had always been a bit unsettled. Star believed He was really the collection of all souls, past and present throughout the universe, a collective unconscious working together to create the greater good. Which was nice to say but too vague for me to conceptualize, so all my life I’d tried to believe in the white-bearded sort of God, watching over me. Someone who was, perhaps, in touch with my father.

But I’d never prayed to Him; I had absolutely no idea how to ask for help, knowing there were so many people, starving, dying, broken, who needed Him so much more. And yet now here I was, doing what even the faithless usually did in the end when God felt like the last resort. Hoping He’d understand.

It was so quiet, my footsteps muffled, damp-feeling as if the church hadn’t seen the daylight in centuries. I walked around the perimeter studying the dusty paintings on the walls, the statues of saints and apostles. And then I sat with Molly on one of the wooden pews.

“Tell me what to do?” I whispered, and then I wrapped my arms around Molly and closed my eyes. She was my dream, the one I prayed for and the prayer itself. Was it right to pray I’d never lose her? If there was a God judging good and bad, right and wrong, cursing the sinners and protecting the saviors, what would He say seeing this moral gray area where innocent people were hurt by Molly’s disappearance, hospitality was abused, unforgivable lies were told and yet a baby was saved?

Undoubtedly He’d realize the selfishness behind my selflessness, would probably see better answers that I would’ve thought of if I’d just been a better person. But I wanted to believe that in spite of it all He’d understand I was trying to do the right thing, that I’d been forced to make my choices from a place of longing and fear, not ingredients with which to make rational decisions. And I tried to believe that whatever I might do next, He’d protect me.

I imagined Him now watching us from above, nodding his omniscient head. Conspiring with me and Sydney on how to do things right, helping both of us to make the right decisions. And forgiving me.

That night after putting Molly to bed, I sat with Alex in the living room. Both of us had books in our laps, but even after the light grew too dim to read by, neither of us reached to turn on the lamp. Star hadn’t come down for dinner, and when I’d brought up a plate for her she’d rushed past me into the bathroom, retching. After helping her to bed I’d given her a Xanax, then slipped the bottle into my pocket, hiding it, just in case.

Now out of the corner of my eye I watched Alex close his book, a finger marking his place, then turn his gaze to the unlit fireplace and hold it there, unspeaking. What was he thinking? He’d been acting somewhat strangely all evening, his glance darting toward me when he thought I wasn’t looking, talking much less than usual, letting me start each conversation. I hadn’t told him yet that we were leaving, partly because I knew the words would cement the future, and also because I didn’t want to ruin our last night together. But had he somehow sensed it?