by Mina Hardy
“You should be out of those slings as early as a couple weeks from now. Perhaps even sooner. And things will change for you before you even know it.”
I can’t tell her that’s what I’m afraid of.
“How about life at home?” Dr. Levitt asks.
Before I can answer, the bell dings to tell us the time’s up. The hour always seems to pass so quickly, but today, I’m glad. There’s so much to talk about with her, but so much I’m not ready to say.
CHAPTER FOUR
Valerie
The Blue Dove Inn used to be a dive bar, but new ownership bought it about four years ago. They cleaned it up, put on a big addition, and added a deck out back where they showcase local live music in the summers. Their specialty cocktails menu is longer than the appetizer list, and the craft beer selection even larger. It’s one of the nicer places to eat around here and also the closest place for me to order takeout.
Tonight is trivia night, so it’s crowded. I’ve had to wait longer than usual. Usually I prefer to cook for Jonathan because he’s mentioned more than once that she never does, but tonight I got out of work too late to get to the grocery store for the fresh veggies I was planning to stir-fry. I’m in the corner, scrolling through a news blog on my phone while I wait for my name to be called, so when I hear it, I look up at once with the expectation that it’s the hostess with my food.
“Val! Hi!”
It’s Diana. She still has both arms in slings, so she can’t hug me, but she moves close enough, like she means to. I can smell the wine on her breath, and she weaves a little bit. Gross. It’s only eight o’clock on a Tuesday night, and she’s drunk. Like mother, like daughter, I think, and can’t hide the twist of my mouth or the way I draw back. How could she think I would hug her? How could she think I would even acknowledge her? After all I’ve done for her and how she completely went back on everything she promised? She’s lucky we’re in public, or else I’d have no problem telling her exactly what I think of her.
Trina Kauffman is with her, which explains part of it.
“Hey, Val. Haven’t seen you out in forever,” Trina says.
“Been busy,” I say.
The three of us have known each other since high school, but Trina has always been more Diana’s friend than mine. She and I don’t hang out or keep in touch beyond saying “hi” if we bump into each other. She probably doesn’t know what’s going on between the two of us, although I wouldn’t put it past Diana to have told her. Gain sympathy points. Make herself a martyr. But the fact that my former best friend went out of her way to say hello tells me she’s saving face in front of Trina.
Trina laughs. “You must have a new guy taking up all of your time.”
Maybe Diana did tell her.
An awkward silence falls over the three of us. Diana’s still smiling at me. I know her well enough to see that it’s a little strained, but only a little. There’s something else in her expression too. A kind of longing. I look away from her.
“I’ll go grab the car and bring it around,” Trina offers to Diana with a nod toward me and a friendly smile.
Sure, because Diana is so disabled she can’t possibly walk herself down the steep concrete stairs and across the parking lot. What a crock of shit. I hear my name again and turn, without saying anything else, to get my food from the hostess. It smells delicious, but my stomach is churning. I hope Diana will be gone when I turn back, but she’s still outside the front door, waiting for Trina.
“Hey,” she says in a quieter voice. She looks at the bag in my hands. Clearly there’s enough food for two. Her lips press together a little, but she meets my gaze without hesitation. “I’ve been meaning to call you.”
“Why?” I clutch the white paper bag closer to me. Its warmth ought to be a comfort.
Diana’s brow furrows. “I … because …”
“Just. Don’t. I’m supposed to be in Punta Cana right now.” My words are clipped, but I’m pitching my voice low so nobody can overhear us. New housing developments and a few new stores in the strip mall haven’t made this town any bigger than it’s ever been. People have had enough to say about me over the years, and I’m not about to give them anything else.
A blue Subaru rolls up, Trina at the wheel. Diana shoots a glance at her as Trina gets out and goes around to the passenger side to open the door for her. Diana looks back at me.
“I don’t understand,” she says.
I lean close enough to hiss into her ear, “Yes, you do. Don’t you dare act like you don’t. Don’t you fucking dare.”
“It’s about Jonathan.”
I blink rapidly to keep myself from staggering at her sheer fucking audacity. Then I focus on her. “Of course it’s about Jonathan.”
“I know about the two of you,” Diana says quietly, not making a scene.
I stop myself from feeling grateful that she’s not shouting. How can she stand in front of me, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth?
“Of course you do,” I manage to bite out. “You’re the one who asked me to fuck him in the first place.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Diana
I stagger, clumsy-footed. I asked her to do what?
“Stop pretending you can’t remember,” Val says. “Just own your shit, Diana. For fuck’s sake, how could you do this to me?”
“Me … do … but you’re the one …”
“Diana?”
I turn at the sound of Trina’s voice, and Val pushes past me to take the steps down to the lower parking lot. Trina helps me get in the car, but we don’t laugh and joke this time as she buckles me in. I can tell she wants to ask me what’s going on, but she waits until we pull into the driveway before saying anything.
“You okay?” she asks.
“Yeah. I just … we had an argument.” Is that what it was? Honestly, I don’t know what the hell we had, just now or, obviously, before.
Trina grimaces. “Sorry. I know you two are tight. I hope you get it worked out. But hey, if you want to talk about it, you have my number. If you need a ride, or whatever. Just call me.”
It’s too embarrassing to cry about this, so I force a watery smile. “Thanks. It’s been a rough bunch of weeks.”
By the time I get inside my house, I no longer feel like crying. I manage to get my phone out of my purse with a minimal struggle. Cradling it carefully, I open a message window and type out a text to Val. We’ve had arguments in the past. Sisters always do, and she’s always been as much a sister to me as a friend.
What’s going on? We need to talk.
But the message keeps showing “Delivered,” and she doesn’t reply.
CHAPTER SIX
Valerie
SEPTEMBER, TWO YEARS AGO
“That is a shit-fire, fuck-me, hallelujah lot of money,” I said when Diana waved the check in front of my face.
She’d come to Brooklyn for a rare weekend visit. It had been six months since the last time we’d seen each other. I missed her, but my life there was different. I got away from that prison of a small town. She chose to stay behind.
“What are you going to do with it?” I poured us both glasses of wine from the bottle she’d brought. Briar White, her fancy brand with the white rose on the bottle.
We’d both grown up with next to nothing, but Diana had moved up in the world. Nice house in Pennsylvania. Another at the beach in Delaware. She worked, but didn’t really have to. Her husband kept her in style, and it had become more and more obvious over the years that she’d become accustomed to it. We saw each other so infrequently now that it really stood out—but could I blame her? She’d chosen her prison, but it came with thousand-thread-count sheets.
“Spending her money feels dirty,” she said. “Like it could be enough to make up for everything she pulled. Like it could ever change what she did. I’ll never forgive her.”
She tucked the check into her pocket and sat beside me on the couch I’d rescued from the neighbor’s trash, her feet tucked beneath her.
She looked too fancy. Some of her dark hair fell in tendrils around her face, the rest of it pinned up high. I wanted to reach around and yank it free. Mess her up a little. Get her down on my level. We used to be so alike when we were young, but we’d both changed.
“You don’t have to forgive your mom,” I said, “but don’t let that stop you from spending the money she left you.”
“And it is all mine. I don’t have to share a single cent of it. He doesn’t even know about it. See? It’s made out to Diana Sparrow. He couldn’t cash it even if he tried.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
“He met my mother once,” she said flatly. “Two months ago, when she came back around and said she wanted to make her amends. Whatever she felt she owed me with this check, Jonathan has nothing to do with it.”
She talked sometimes about how fast her husband went through money. Less often, she let it slip that he was a lot less cool about her doing the same. I’d mention that he was financially controlling. She’d point out that she lacked for nothing.
I’d never even met Jonathan before he and Diana got married. I’d heard her talk about him the few times she’d managed to visit me in Brooklyn. I went to the clinic with her when she decided not to have his baby. Nothing she’d ever said about him had made me think I needed to make the effort of knowing him, until suddenly they were engaged. I’d never tried to talk her out of it, the way I should have.
“Fuck Jonathan,” I said and raised my glass.
“No, thank you,” Diana replied. “You can be my guest, though.”
“He’s not my type.”
We clinked our glasses and sipped. No matter how long we spent apart, it was always easy to fall back into the patterns of our friendship. We talked about our celebrity crushes and how terrible her husband was and why I’d broken up with my last boyfriend, who’d really been a one-night stand that had lingered past the expiration date.
Another bottle of wine later, Diana pulled the check out of her pocket again with a triumphant flourish. “I know what I’m going to do with it.”
“Pay for a hit man to off your asshole husband?” I thought she’d chastise me—after all, it’s one thing to complain about the dude you’ve bound yourself to in unholy matrimony, but it’s another when someone else does it.
Instead, encouraged by sweet white wine and girl time, we both burst into peals of laughter. She shook her head. Drained her glass. Put it on the coffee table.
“Nope,” Diana said. “I’m going to buy myself a car.”
* * *
That was a little over a year ago. The money she’d inherited from her mother would have paid a year’s rent on my Brooklyn apartment, but Diana didn’t need to worry about anything as banal as her living expenses. True to her word, she’d used it to buy her precious red Camaro. She’d been as careless with that car as she’d been with our friendship, and now both were wrecked.
Thinking of that weekend and how she’d spoken about Jonathan, I run hot and then cold with chills of fury. If she’d left him back then, we wouldn’t be where we are now. When my phone pings with a text from her, I’ve had enough.
Swipe.
Block.
Delete.
I owed her for a long time because of what she did for me, but I don’t owe her anything anymore.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Diana
Cold rain hammers at my skull as I drop to my knees in the mud and dig, dig, dig. I pull clots of earth with my bare hands. There’s a hole at the base of the tree, and I am the one who made it.
I made this hole, the size of a child. The child I never had. The one I did not want.
I taste blood. My mouth hurts. My fingers hurt and are also bleeding; there’s blood and mud and rain, cold as ice. All around me. I’m digging. Deeper. My fingers work the earth, and worms wriggle between them. My hands part the earth, separate it, make an emptiness.
I’m putting something in the hole by the tree.
I’m covering it up.
I’ve buried something.
I’ve buried someone.
* * *
I wake from the dream with the sour taste of bile in my mouth and the uncomfortable heaviness of heartburn settled at the base of my throat. It’s only ten at night, but I feel like I’ve been sleeping for days. My collarbones ache, probably because I was writhing around in bed. The triangle pillow I’ve been using to prop me up and help ease the backache that happens from being unable to shift positions or to sleep on my side is shoved too far over, close to the bed’s edge.
Dr. Levitt has assured me over and over again that if I’d hit a person, not a deer, there’s no way I could have buried them in the back yard. Even if the first responders on the scene hadn’t noticed a dead person, my injuries would have made it impossible. I know that my guilt and fear stem from something totally unrelated from the accident, and yet the dream lingers.
Jonathan’s side of the bed is still made pristinely. I can see the emptiness in the glow from the window. I left the outside lights on for him, but he’s not home yet.
I steel myself for the pain as I push myself upright, feet onto the floor, and swallow over and over until the horrible taste fades. I need a drink. I swear I turned down the thermostat before I went to bed, but the room is sweltering. I’m sticky. I use the phone app to dial back the temperature to something more reasonable.
I want a lukewarm shower to rinse away the sweat of the nightmare. At this point, I think I would sell my soul to the devil for a long, luxurious shower and the ability to wash my own hair. I want to shave my armpits, which I am embarrassed to be able to smell. The slings are disgusting too, even though Harriett has tried to wash them for me. Grotty gray, and I hope I’m only imagining the faintly sour odor clinging to them.
The doctors have all told me there’s no set science about when collarbones heal “enough.” My next checkup isn’t until next week, but I am suddenly so desperate to be clean, to be healed, that I take off first the left sling and then the right. The right collarbone break was worse and hurts more, but I slowly raise and lower both arms and bite back the groans. This time I’m able to push off the bed and stand.
I need to do this. To get back on my feet. To take care of myself.
In the shower, I run the water and step in with a deep sigh. Moving like an arthritic tortoise, I manage to soap and rinse. Again, turning so I don’t twist, I wet my hair and fill my palm with shampoo from the pump bottle, but I can’t raise my arms high enough reach the top of my head. The pain rises until it chokes me, and I’m terrified to push through it, scared I will re-break myself. I can’t do this.
A memory rises.
* * *
“Let me.” The ice cubes in the plastic bag rattled as I folded the dishtowel around them to protect Val’s skin from the coldness.
Her eye was already swollen. I helped her wipe away the blood from her nose, but her split lip still leaked crimson. She was lucky she hadn’t lost a tooth. Lucky, I thought, like luck had anything to do with this bullshit.
“Ouch.” Val winced as I put the bag of ice on her face. “Shit. That hurts.”
“You’re going to have a shiner.”
She rolled her good eye at me. “Think it’ll make me look tuff?”
She said it like Ponyboy in The Outsiders, the movie we’d obsessed over for years. Nothing about our lives was like the Curtis brothers’. No Darrel, no Sodapop, no Johnny. Maybe most importantly—for me, anyway—no Dallas Winston. Still, something in that book and movie called to us enough that we could quote it, line for line, because of how often we’d consumed both.
“Yeah. You look tuff.” I sat next to her on the bed and listened for any sounds from outside her room. Her father’s rampage had worn off before she called me. I got there as soon as I could, but wished I could have been there in time to stop him from hitting her. I wasn’t sure what I’d have done, but I liked to think it would have been impressive.
I took care of her this way. I
ce for her eye. Chicken noodle soup heated on the stove in a battered pot. She didn’t cry about any of it. I mean, neither of us ever did. Tears don’t do any good. You deal with what your parents hand you and wait until you’re old enough to get out. At sixteen, we only had a few more years to go.
I took care of Val, my sister-friend, until it was late and both of us were yawning. The ice had long since melted, and I emptied the bag into the sink of the bathroom down the hall. I pushed the dresser in front of the door and crawled into bed next to her. I was careful not to shift her too much. I saw the bruises blooming on her back and shoulders.
“It’s the last time,” she said with her eyes closed. “I swear to God, he’s never going to hit me again. I’ll … I’ll kill him if he does.”
We didn’t talk about what we did together in her mother’s hospital room, or how what we did contributed to where we were now. I touched her split lip. She’d have a scar.
“I’ll always take care of you if you need help, Val. You know I’ll do anything for you.”
Val opened her eyes. She held up her hand so we could link our pinkies. “Same. Anything.”
* * *
Val should be here to help me wash my hair. To help me get into my comfy pajamas. To laugh with me at old sitcoms. She would have been, not so long ago, but everything between us has changed. After all I’ve done for her. After all she’s done for me. This is where we end?
“You’re the one who asked me to fuck him in the first place.”
Wine, Brooklyn, the check from my mother. Yes, I remembered the conversation. The toss-away comment I’d made over a year ago had come back to haunt me.
I’ve known about the affair since a few days after I got home from the hospital. My phone had been lost in the accident, so my husband got me another one. He even set it up for me—by logging in to his own Cloud account.
My husband, as it turns out, is a very stupid man.