Friends and Liars

by Kaela Coble

  FRIENDS AND LIARS

  Kaela Coble is a member of the League of Vermont Writers, a voracious reader, and a hopeless addict of bad television and chocolate. She lives with her husband in Burlington, Vermont, and is a devoted mother to their rescued chuggle, Gus. Friends and Liars is her first novel.

  FRIENDS

  AND

  LIARS

  KAELA COBLE

  Published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2017 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Copyright © Kaela Coble, 2017

  The moral right of Kaela Coble to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 78649 205 0

  E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 206 7

  Printed in Great Britain.

  Corvus

  An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London

  WC1N 3JZ

  www.corvus-books.co.uk

  To my crew, for the family kind of friendship that endures through all the drama, that feels the same no matter the time or distance between meetings, and that loves even when it doesn’t like.

  PROLOGUE

  DANNY

  Now

  Look at them. I’m dead and they’re still pissing me off.

  They’re disgusting. Sitting in their pew, huddled together like a pack of wolves. Each playing their part in mourning—the bereaved, the wilted, the guilty. They clutch at each other, leaning physically and emotionally for support. Shaking heads, balled fists, crocodile tears. Asking why, how. Dabbing their swollen eyes with crumpled tissues. Declaring their loyalty and love for one another. For me.

  Really they hate each other, and they hate themselves, and they hate me for making them face their own mortality. And they love me because it fuels their sick sense of pride in their little clan. “The crew,” they call themselves, even though they haven’t been whole for a decade. “Still supporting each other after all these years,” they declare, even though they wouldn’t know true support if it helped them climb out of a grave.

  There’s Ally, the great beauty of Chatwick, sitting tall and stoic, practically cradling Steph in her arms. She shoots glances at her husband, Aaron. High-school sweethearts; couldn’t you just puke? Her face is a marriage of self-righteousness and pride. Steph is a girlfriend of the crew, not an original member. What right does she have to this display? But no matter what, and despite their resistance, Ally is their leader. She is the mother of the crew, the default person in whom to find solace.

  Emmett and Aaron sit together instead of with their respective significant others, no doubt upon Emmett’s insistence. He has always orchestrated the seating arrangements to split between genders. As the youngest of three brothers, he has always been uncomfortable with the noise, the gossip, and the full range of feminine feelings. The heightened emotional state caused by my death is no doubt more unbearable for him than my death itself. That he is allowing Ally to tend to his weeping girlfriend, offering no comfort of his own, comes as no surprise.

  He and Aaron mimic the same posture—leaned forward, their elbows resting on the thighs of their cheap woolen pants. They face the front of the church, careful not to make eye contact with each other, so they won’t have to utter one of the lame platitudes they’ve heard too many times over the past few days. “He’s in a better place.” “He’s finally at peace.” And my personal favorite, “Roger is watching over him now.”

  While they should be focusing on the tragedy that is (was) my life, instead my casket is a big fat polished-cedar reminder that one day this will be them. They ponder all the predictable questions that even people of the mildest intellect contemplate when faced with untimely death: Where do we go when we die? What will they say about me when I’m gone? What does it all mean? Tomorrow they will look into low-premium life insurance plans to take care of their burgeoning families should something happen to them. It will make them feel like men in control of their lives. But they’re not. They’re boys, and they’re not in control of shit.

  Speaking of boys, Murphy isn’t here, the coward. He always picks the easiest option, and in this case (and many cases), that means hiding. I’m dead, lying here about to be carried off and buried, but all he cares about is winning the argument. Murphy showing up would mean I got the last word, or that he had forgiven me, and either of those would mean he’s weak. He doesn’t realize he’s the weakest one of the bunch anyway.

  That brings me to Ruby. She sits in the pew between the girls and the boys, the space between her and them so slight you would only notice if you were looking for it, like I am. She watches Ally comforting Steph, occasionally reaching out a hand to squeeze one of Ally’s. I know Ruby feels genuine grief, but mostly discomfort. She doesn’t know her place anymore, her role. I’m only now realizing that she never really knew it. She’s been an official outsider ever since she dared leave Chatwick at eighteen, but even before that, she and I were always the ones straddling the curvature of the crew’s closed circle. One foot in, one foot out. The dark ones.

  I know it’s terrible how much enjoyment I get from watching her squirm, but it’s just too entertaining. Besides, with the fate of my soul no longer a question mark, I’m enjoying what I can. My death will be hardest on Ruby, for sure, but she’ll never admit it, and our crew won’t acknowledge it. She left. She abandoned us, so she can’t possibly feel it as deeply as they do. It’s amazing how grief turns so quickly from a group activity to a competitive sport.

  It seems all of Chatwick turned up in their patent-leather shoes and cheap polyester blends. “To show their support,” they say. For who? Me? I don’t even know half these people. Four days ago they wouldn’t have pissed on me if I was on fire. Most of them are only here to satisfy their morbid curiosity, whispering behind hands and rolling eyes, gathering tidbits to relay later to their neighbors who were unable to make it. But some are here for my mother, Charlene, whose deli (formerly my stepfather’s) is where they happily depleted their food-stamps. Either way, I wish they wouldn’t have come. It makes them feel too damn good about themselves, and they don’t deserve it. And I don’t deserve the show, either, even if it is fake.

  Mom stares blankly ahead of her as the priest eulogizes yet another man who’s let her down. I look—well, looked—just like her. If you shaved off her two curtains of waist-length blonde curls and straightened out her chest and hips, we would look like twins.

  Nancy, Ruby’s mother, sits next to Mom, holding her limp hand. Nancy is the one who made all these arrangements, and despite the overabundance of flowers, I still appreciate her efforts. She saved my mother from having to coordinate another funeral, and I think one is enough for a lifetime. Ruby’s never forgiven her mother for the way she handled her illness back in the day, but as dicey as things got in the St. James household, they didn’t hold a candle to my family. Besides, Nancy’s one of the only assholes in this town who has any compassion, and I’m grateful she’s decided to bestow it upon Mom when she needs
it most.

  That’s all I ever needed. Compassion. If I’d ever gotten a shred of it from any of the people in this room, maybe I wouldn’t be in this fucking box.

  My “friends” all think once they’ve fulfilled this obligation they will finally be rid of me. They will go back to the “happy,” normal, vanilla lives they lead, and their guilt will subside eventually.

  Silly rabbits. They have no idea my mom found the letters this morning.

  CHAPTER ONE

  RUBY

  Now

  I’m the first to arrive at Charlene’s house, so I opt for street parking in case I need to make a hasty escape. I’ve never much cared for being caged in. Especially not in Chatwick.

  Staring at the house, the last place my friend Danny was alive, I remember when he moved in here the summer after his stepfather died. Charlene used the moderate payout from Roger’s life-insurance policy to buy it, and with what was left over she fixed up the apartment over the deli where the three of them lived so she could rent it out. She and her son needed a fresh start, she explained to neighbors who raised their eyebrows at the sudden move, so soon after Roger’s death. Her first (and only) house project was to coat it with the hideous teal paint that remains today, enlisting the crew to do the bulk of the work. She paid us in subs that she brought over every day after the lunchtime rush. At the end of the day she served us iced tea she mixed in a large glass pitcher as we melted onto the front porch steps and teased each other about who smelled the worst after a hard day’s labor. I can practically smell the iced tea, the paint fumes, and the sweat. It had been a happy time, mostly, but not as innocent as it should have been. At least for those of us who already knew that nothing was as it seemed.

  The paint is now chipped and faded, but it still glows with the spark of Charlene’s quiet defiance. She never said as much, but she had chosen it as a message: she no longer had to answer to anyone. She no longer had to rely on anyone else to keep her and her son alive. Her choices were hers and hers alone, and if she wanted a teal house, then by God she would have one.

  My hands are wrapped so tightly around the steering wheel my palms begin to sweat. I consider driving away, straight out of Chatwick to Drummond, where the plane I am supposed to be blissfully seated on is currently being prepared for its flight back to JFK. In just over ninety minutes, I could be out of Vermont and back to my apartment in Manhattan, with the blinds shut. But I see Charlene’s pleading eyes in my mind, asking me to please come to the private service Danny requested. There would be no public reception where my absence would hardly be noticed; it was just the crew. That’s what Danny had wanted. I wondered briefly how she could possibly know what Danny had wanted, before it sank in. He had left a note. Up until that moment, none of us knew if the overdose was an accident or suicide, and no one knew which was worse. Now we know; this is worse, of course. Much worse. Charlene watched the realization dawn in my eyes before confirming it. “There’s letters for all of you,” she said.

  Damnit. I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for Ally. I was the first person she called when she heard the news. My initial instinct was to not take the call, but when someone you haven’t spoken to in ten years tracks you down at work at eleven o’clock in the morning, you take the call. If it had been anyone other than Ally, I would have had the receptionist take a message. Then I would have sent a nice card to Charlene (because Danny hated flowers), and I would have returned to pretending that nothing beyond the borders of Manhattan ever existed. It was Ally’s voice, the shock and the pain and the . . . Allyness of it. The way she hadn’t asked but demanded my return. “I’ve never asked you why, Ruby, and I still won’t. But you’ll come for the funeral. You have to.” What she meant, without saying it directly, was that I owe her. And I do. For leaving and never looking back. For leaving her behind and never telling her why.

  If only I hadn’t picked up the phone, I would be at my desk in New York, feeling guilty but safe. Not plagued by the ceaseless nerves bubbling under my skin. Not overcome by an urge to smoke that I haven’t had in ten years. There are so many things in Chatwick that aren’t good for me, and if I go in that house, I’ll be sucked back into them all. I’ll spin right back down the drain of this town.

  Just as I make up my mind to get the hell out of here before anyone else arrives, Charlene swings open the screen door and stands on the porch with one hand on her hip, the other over her eyes, so she can see who’s lingering outside her house like a private detective. She recognizes me and waves. Shit! You can’t drive away from a grieving mother.

  The door of the Sentra squeaks as I swing it open. I took a cab from the airport this morning because Nancy was busy helping Charlene get ready for the funeral, but since I had an hour between my arrival and the funeral, I went . . . home, I guess, is its rightful name. I no longer had a key to the house, but the code to the garage hasn’t changed (my sister Coral’s birthday, followed by my own). In addition to the spare key that hangs behind my old ice skates, I found, to my surprise, Blue, my high-school car, still a piece of junk with its four-gear standard transmission, power nothing, and heat that runs full blast all year long whether you want it to or not. My father purchased it second-hand for me the year he moved back in with us, a consolation prize for his absence. Despite my insistence I wouldn’t need it after I left for college, Nancy has kept it here for me. The key was sitting in the ignition, and instead of going into the house I was not ready to face, I sat in the car and listened to a cassette tape—a cassette tape!—of songs I had recorded from the radio when I was sixteen years old.

  I climb the rotting steps to Charlene, who stands on her tiptoes to hug me. I am not tall, five-foot-seven in my tallest pair of heels, which I left at home—my real home, that is, in New York—but Charlene is a teeny size two; the top of her head barely clears my shoulders. I feel like a beast descending on her.

  “Oh, Ruby,” she says, her hands on my face, her puffy eyes beseeching mine. “Thanks for comin’. It’s so good to see you.” She looks me all over and declares me as beautiful as ever. “Now, come have some iced tea with your long-lost mother-in-law.” She includes this self-assigned title in the Christmas cards she sends every year, despite the fact that I haven’t spoken to her son in ten years. She always hoped Danny and I would fall in love, as if I had the power to set his life on the right course. Now more than ever, perhaps unintentionally, it serves as a reminder that I could have saved her son.

  As if reading my mind, she stops in her path to look at me warily. “I guess I should stop doing that,” she says. “Pushin’. You know, now that there’s nothin’ to push.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I just shake my head with a sad smile and follow her into the kitchen. Charlene deposits me on one of the red leather and chrome chairs she tells me she picked up at the Margie’s Pub remodeling sale for five bucks a pop. I thought they looked familiar, although technically I shouldn’t know what they look like. She pulls out the same pitcher from her fridge that she served us from fifteen summers ago and pours it into a glass I distinctly remember Danny serving us vodka-and-orange sodas in a few years later. She offers me vegetables from a platter that she next produces from the fridge, and I wonder how she’s still standing, let alone serving me like I’m on a social call and her son will be home to join us any minute.

  In keeping with this charade, Charlene insists I tell her about my “life in the big city.” There isn’t much to tell, so I talk about work. On the plane, I contemplated telling people who asked that I work at The New York Times and leaving it at that, letting them assume I’ve been away from Vermont for so long because I was busy achieving the ambition I listed in my high-school yearbook: to be a journalist. But now, at my first opportunity, I hasten to add that it’s in the advertising department, because I don’t want Charlene to think I’m putting on airs. Who was I kidding? For one, I’m sure she and my mother have talked about me and my career at least once since I’ve been gone. And even if by some mirac
le Nancy has let me fade into the sordid history of this town, it is Chatwick. Despite the fact that I don’t have a Facebook page, I bet you could walk out on this street and ask anyone what Ruby St. James is up to, and they would reply: “Oh, the St. James girl? Reddish hair? Oh yes, she’s living in New York, working at that big paper of theirs. I hear she’s single, as always, and pays more in rent than this whole neighborhood spends on mortgage combined!”

  My friends and I always called it “the Chat,” this rapid-fire circulation of the unprinted news of Chatwick. The Chat is an intangible presence which cloaks the town in intrigue and fear. The houses are so close together here that every argument even one notch above normal speaking level is overheard by the little old ladies rocking the afternoon away on their screened-in porches. Their gossip filters down through whispered conversations at post-church-service receptions, then the parents repeat it at home it in earshot of their kids, who bring it to the playground. The other (and significantly more powerful) origin is Margie’s Pub, which trickles news down to the Quik Stop clientele the next day, which brings it back to the “below the tracks” families, or the blockers. Subjects run the gamut from legal troubles to marital stress, right on down to who’s dating who at Chatwick High. No one is immune. I remember Ally once having to defend herself against a neighbor who heard that Ally had broken up with her friend’s grandson over the phone. We were in fifth grade.

  Danny’s family and mine were like gas pumps, fueling the Chat for years on end. From our home, the neighbors would occasionally hear Nancy crashing around the house trying to get from room to room, and shortly afterward a shouting match between my parents. At the Deusos’ they heard much worse.

  The doorbell rings, and Charlene escorts Ally and Aaron in. Ally carries a freshly baked pie, and the gap in time between now and the last time I saw her feels wide as a canyon. Her face—voted Prettiest in junior high and high school—is the face of the girl I stole my mother’s car with before I even had a license, driving it all over town, smoking cigarettes. It’s the face of the girl who told the crew what sex was, her giddy face lit by flashlight in the field behind her house, using the same hand motions she had seen her brother use when he explained it to his friend earlier that day. In that same field, years later, she would gather us together—me, Emmett, Danny, and Murphy, the original crew—to tell us her father had left. After a summer of her parents arguing over the rubbers her mom had found in her dad’s pockets while doing the laundry, this came as a shock to no one but Ally, whose fierce belief in true love left her unprepared. That was the night she made us promise to be friends always. To be loyal to one another above all else. Never to lie to each other. She needed something to cling to, and I could understand that, so I promised, like Ally promised and Emmett promised. Like Danny and Murphy promised, even though the three of us were already breaking it. Even though we’ve done nothing but break it since that night.