Between Friends Read online

  If I didn’t look in the mirror, we could have been fourteen again. She gently worked out tangles and then began tugging my hair into a French braid.

  “Come on, Al. Go for a ride with me?”

  She avoided my eyes in the mirror. “Maybe.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “Crashing in a ball of fire.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Crashing in the Everglades.”

  “Uh-huh. Anything else?”

  “Crashing on I-75.”

  “I’m sensing a theme here.”

  “The crashing part?”

  “Yes, that seems to come up a lot.”

  “As will my lunch if I get in one of those little planes.”

  “I’d be ever so careful. Come on, please? It’s perfect flying weather.”

  “How do you know you can even get a plane?”

  “I’ll call Keith. Season’s over, he’ll have one open.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What about Letty? Think she’d like to go up?”

  “Oh, I’m sure she’d love to. You kidding?”

  “Well, why don’t you see if she’d like to go, and I’ll pick her up at the store tomorrow afternoon. You can meet us at the field after you close.”

  “She’s staying with Emily tonight,” she said. “They usually go to the beach on Saturday.”

  “We should go down in our bikinis and mortify them.”

  “Please. The only place I wear a bikini these days is at my own pool. At night. When there’s no moon.”

  “Remind me to call the pool company to come out next week so we can swim while I’m here. It doesn’t look like it’s been done this month, and I don’t feel like cleaning it. I never get the chemicals right anyway.”

  Her hands paused in my hair for a moment. “You’ll be here for that long?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “I’ll call for you tomorrow. Okay,” she said, snapping a band in place at the end of my braid. “My turn. You get started with a glass of wine, and I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

  I smoothed my hands against the sides and top of my head, feeling the satisfying bumpy line of the braid. “You’ve still got it,” I said.

  “You too, hot mama,” she said, and we smiled at each other in the mirror, both painfully aware that she was lying.

  5

  ALI

  I didn’t bother using any of the beauty products I’d given to Cora on myself. Not that I didn’t need them, but I wanted to get some wine in her and loosen her tongue as quickly as possible. There was obviously something major going on.

  The last time she’d been here for more than two weeks was when Barbara died. I’d stayed with her most of that time, going home only to pick up more clothes. She’d tried to get me to fly with her then, too, and I’d finally gone just to make her happy, but I was nauseated and kept my eyes closed the whole time.

  I trusted her skill. Cora had always done exactly what she set out to do, and then she did it better than anyone else. She was an excellent pilot, I was certain. But I’d have been terrified with Lindbergh himself. I did not trust it, I did not want to, and I did not have to.

  Letty would love it. I paused for a moment with my fingers tight against my scalp, suds dripping down my face, and then began to massage again, slowly. Yes, it was true. Letty was a lot like Cora. Okay, there it was.

  And Cora was right. We’d been little hellions, and we’d partied, and we’d taken outrageous risks, and we were very lucky nothing awful happened to us as teenagers, but we’d been pretty good kids, too. I still looked back and wondered that my parents had been so permissive, but we’d come through it all right.

  So Letty, really, was a combination of all of us. Me, Cora, and Benny, and that wasn’t a bad pedigree if you asked me. And maybe there would be another one. I felt a warmth deep in my belly, already anxious to talk to Cora about it. But her first. There was obviously something wrong, and I needed to get to the bottom of it.

  This was the first time that we hadn’t fallen into full-disclosure mode as soon as we’d seen each other, but of course she was the one who’d started things off so oddly. I rinsed off and wrapped myself in a towel, braiding my own hair over my shoulder.

  As promised, Cora was waiting for me on the patio with a glass of wine and some of the cheese and fruit I’d brought, blueberries gathered in her hand. I collapsed into the chair across from her.

  “You know, getting those shutters done was a lot easier when we were sixteen,” I said.

  “Wasn’t everything?”

  “I suppose,” I agreed, taking a sip of wine. “So. Are you going to tell me about it?”

  “What?” she asked, raising her eyebrows at me.

  “Oh, come on. First of all, you’ve never not told me you were coming home before. I wouldn’t even have known if Benny hadn’t driven by.” Now that I’d said it out loud, it stung again. “Were you planning on telling me, or did you want to be alone?”

  “Ali, of course I was going to tell you. I just changed my plans at the last minute and was so tired when I got in . . . I was in Chile.”

  “So I heard. Why were you in Chile, and why did you change your plans? Did you and Drew break up again?”

  “We did, actually. But that’s not why I changed my plans. I was in Chile teaching a seminar on wind energy, and I just suddenly wanted to be in Florida more than I wanted to go back to Seattle. I’m sorry if it hurt your feelings that I didn’t call immediately.”

  “When did you break up? What happened?” I asked. “Why didn’t you call?”

  She sighed. “It was the same old stuff. We’re just better off as friends. We both know that. I’m sorry I didn’t call.”

  “But . . . ,” I started, trailing off when I realized that what I wanted to say would be embarrassingly immature. We weren’t fifteen anymore. We didn’t have to call each other the second something in our lives happened anymore. But it still hurt.

  She put her wineglass down and leaned forward, grasping my wrist in her hand. “Hey, really, I’m sorry. I’ve been sick, and I was just tired.”

  She’d been sick. I quickly ran through whatever I knew about South American illnesses she could have contracted, and just as quickly realized that I didn’t know much about South America. Malaria came to mind. Sleeping sickness. What else? Rabies. Yes, I knew it was ridiculous, but I thought rabies. I’ve never really known what all she did on these trips besides try to talk people into putting up windmills, but I’d always envisioned her as a combination of Indiana Jones and Amelia Earhart, flying into remote backcountries, dodging bats, hair flying in the wind.

  “What kind of sick?” I asked.

  “Just sick, you know.”

  “Are you better? Do you need to go see the doctor?”

  “Actually, yes. I saw him today. That’s why I wasn’t waiting on your doorstep first thing this morning. And I’ll be going back in a few days. So, see? I’m taking care of myself. It’s not catching, I’m just run-down.”

  I looked at her searchingly for another minute, and then believed her.

  “Well,” I said, “then take a break. I won’t bother you anymore about it. I’ll just ply you with wine and food and friendship, and you’ll be back to yourself in no time.”

  To my surprise she looked genuinely relieved.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I can’t have much wine with the pills I’m taking, but I’ll sip anyway, and I’m obviously trying to cut way back on my salt.”

  She grinned ruefully, and I thought, Well, that’s that. She’s doing everything she needs to do. Gone to see the doctor, taking a break, cutting back on alcohol and salt.

  Cora was fine. Which made my little issue less of a complication. “So, I’m really glad you’re here,” I said, taking a swallow of wine. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk about.”

  “You sound serious,” she said, closing her eyes, sighing heavily, and lifting her feet onto the chair beside her.r />
  I looked out over the pool, thinking of Benny attacking the clean water with the skimmer, and took a deep breath. Cora was sick, exhausted, and heartbroken. The only one ready to talk about a baby right now was me. Patience had served me well before. It would again.

  The sun was just starting to set, the light finally softening to a warm ivory, with just the beginning hints of pink and lavender. The shadow of a crane slipped over the patio, and areca palm fronds bounced gently against the screen.

  I relaxed back against my chair and put my feet up, too.

  “Nothing that can’t wait a couple of days. Welcome home,” I said, holding out my glass, which would need refilling in another swallow. Cora’s had barely been touched, and we tilted them together and smiled at each other.

  “It’s good to be back,” she acknowledged. “Want to head down for the sunset?”

  “Let’s do it.” We transferred our wine to plastic cups and strolled the few blocks to the beach. We sat in the sand, still hot enough that it burned through my shorts and soft enough that it cradled me like a mother.

  We fell asleep that night as we had when we were teenagers, deeply, after talking for over an hour across the darkened room, the air-conditioning unit in the window humming white noise, each of us in a twin bed in Cora’s childhood room.

  Just after three I woke to my cell phone’s irritating rising notes and leaped out of bed to silence it before it could reach peak volume and wake Cora. It was Benny, on his way over to get me.

  Letty, our little miracle, had been picked up by the police.

  CORA

  When the phone rang, I assumed Letty, of course, and my heart raced, already filled with regret for the things I hadn’t known about her. I couldn’t say, for sure, that I thought she was dead, but my remorse at having never known her, never known my daughter, was suffocating.

  Ali immediately went out to the hallway, softly closing the door behind her, unaware that I had woken. I threw the covers off and opened the door, startling her. She shook her head and held a finger up to me.

  “But she’s okay? She’s all right? Okay, okay, no. Yes, come get me, of course. I’ll be out front. Just—calm down, Benny, yelling at me isn’t going to help anything.”

  She flipped the phone closed and held her hand to her forehead as if feeling for a fever.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Letty,” she said. “Unbelievable. Letty’s been picked up by the police at a house party out in Golden Gate.”

  “Is she okay?”

  She hurried into the bedroom and began changing into her jeans and a tank top. “He said the cop said she was fine. Scared, of course. Dammit, what was she thinking?” She suddenly stopped tying her laces and looked up at me. “I should call Emily’s, shouldn’t I? I hate to wake them, but I hate to think of Jean panicking if she sees they’re gone before we get back.”

  “I guess so. Would you want to be called?”

  She started dialing, then held the phone against her ear while she bent over to finish tying her shoes. I pulled on jeans and a T-shirt.

  “Jean? It’s Ali, no, yes everything is okay, but I guess the girls went to a party tonight—”

  She stopped speaking for a moment, then, “Well, I guess they sneaked out a window or—I—what?”

  Another brief pause.

  “Jean, Letty told me she was spending the night at your house.”

  I mouthed What? at her, but she just shook her head.

  “I see. I’m so sorry to have woken everyone, Jean. We’ll take care of things.”

  She slowly flipped the phone closed and stared at me. “She lied.”

  “What happened?”

  “The phone rang at dinner yesterday, and Letty answered, had this whole conversation with someone, and asked permission to spend the night at Emily’s tonight.”

  I got it. “Oh. I gather she was never there?”

  She shook her head slowly. “No. Jean says Emily and her friend Jainie, who did go over to spend the night, are sleeping in Emily’s bedroom. Jean never heard about Letty going over at all. I can’t believe she did this.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Well what?”

  “I’m just saying, we did that.”

  “We did what?”

  “We said we were spending the night at each other’s house and then hung out, all night, on Ft. Myers beach. You don’t remember that?”

  “Yeah, well, Letty’s not us,” she said, grabbing her overnight bag and her purse and stalking past me. I hurried after her.

  “Of course not,” I said. “I’m sorry—”

  She turned around so quickly that we nearly collided, and I stumbled to regain my footing.

  “You have no idea how hard it is, especially these days,” she said. “She’s only fourteen, Cora.”

  I wisely didn’t point out that she would be fifteen soon enough, and that fifteen was exactly when we’d started sneaking out. Frankly, I was surprised that the ruse had taken her in. She’d done it; why was she so amazed that Letty had? In fact, why hadn’t she been expecting it?

  “Of course,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m still half-asleep, you know. I’m not used to being woken up at three thirty.”

  I was trying to make light of it, but she wasn’t in the mood.

  She looked like she was about to say something, but then she turned away from me and nearly sprinted for the front door. I was on her heels and grabbed my purse from the kitchen counter as she stepped into the dark, humid morning. Her timing was perfect; I could see the headlights of Benny’s truck swinging into the driveway, and she turned to close the door as she left, seeming surprised to find me standing there with her, holding my keys.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I—Coming with you? Do you want me to come with you?”

  “Oh my God, no. Go, go back to bed. She’s not your responsibility. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, and then I was left standing in the driveway, one hand clutching my keys, the other raised in a wave as Benny pulled out and accelerated down the street, heading out to save, and punish, their daughter.

  6

  ALI

  On the long drive out to northeast Golden Gate I’d made Benny repeat everything, every word spoken, every tone the officer had used with him. It was woefully little, but Benny’s face was grim. He’d broken up plenty of high school house parties over the years.

  Benny told me what had been said, but other than that he stayed silent, anger radiating off him like heat, and I wondered if he was thinking back to our high school years, too. Benny had always been a straight arrow. We’d run into each other at parties occasionally, but Benny was always the designated driver, always offered to be. I’d calmed down considerably by the time we began dating again at seventeen.

  “And you want to do this again?” he suddenly said, his voice hard.

  “What?” I asked, the embryos out of my mind for the first time in well over a year.

  “This is just the beginning, you know,” he said. “If she’s sneaking around now, at fourteen, you have any idea what she’ll do at fifteen, sixteen. God help us, Ali, and you want to add a baby onto it right when we have to start being real parents.”

  “Real parents? What are you talking about? Since when haven’t I been a real parent? I’ve always been the parent.”

  “And I haven’t?” he yelled back at me. “You’ve had the store, you take off for days at a time whenever Cora’s in town—”

  I gasped. “Once a year, maybe, my best friend, the only reason we even have that child, comes back in town. I might spend two nights away from you all year. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

  “My mother never spent a single night away from her family.”

  “Your mother was an old woman by the time she was forty, Benny. She spent her entire life breaking her back in the fields and then working just as hard at home. Was that what you wanted in your wife, w
hat you wanted from me? Because if so, you really should have mentioned it earlier.”

  “Shut up, Ali,” he said, “just shut up.”

  He’d never told me to shut up. Ever. I was so stunned by his outburst that I just sat there, staring out at the pines rushing by the windows as we moved farther into the darkness of Golden Gate, the road narrowing, the black stretches between streetlights growing longer.

  How had I not been the mother to his child that he’d wanted?

  No, my entire existence hadn’t revolved around every breath she’d taken once she’d turned eight, nine, ten. What else was I supposed to do? Children grow up, they become independent. I’d certainly been more involved than many other parents.

  The more I looked for a reason, the more I couldn’t find one, and the angrier I became at Benny, nearly forgetting that I was angry at Letty and that we were out driving around in the middle of the night arguing because of her. Finally I couldn’t stay silent any longer.

  “You know, that was completely uncalled for,” I said, the words stark in the quiet.

  Benny just sighed.

  “What was I supposed to do, Benny? Let my parents sell the store?”

  “You could have,” he said.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “You could have. You didn’t want to.”

  “Why are we talking about this now?” I asked, desperate to get to the core of how this was all my fault.

  “Because our daughter is out of control, and you didn’t know it. And now you want another.”

  “Oh, it was strictly my job to keep track of her? You’re the one who said she could stay at Emily’s tonight.”

  “You’re her mother,” he said, as if pointing out the obvious.

  “And you’re her father. Why are you suddenly absolved of any responsibility?”

  “My entire life is responsibility, Ali. I have the responsibility for our bills, for the maintenance on the house, all on top of being responsible for the safety of the people in this county. I thought you at least had Letty covered.”