The Spires

by Moretti, Kate

  But no, Brett showed absolutely no self-awareness that any of this was a drastic change or he could be razzed about it, even gently or lovingly.

  So when Willa had the audacity to tease him, and Penelope had not, not ever, she’d held her breath and waited and he’d actually thrown his head back and laughed, it was the first time she’d found him sexy in a year. Who was this laughing man on her patio with lime in his glass and wearing his old Duke sweatshirt, with his thick, floppy hair and three-day beard? Was he flirting with Willa? It was a wild turn-on. To see him anew, and in turn, them, through her friend’s eyes: the big house, cute husband, two social, well-adjusted children, who returned home late and were not, for the first time, cocky or sassy or any of the things they’d become in the past year. They were sardonic and smart and beautiful and quick (if not slightly confused about finding their parents not in separate rooms on separate electronic devices but together—drinking, talking, laughing with a pretty stranger).

  Then later, sweetly drunk, after they showed Willa to her room, Brett promising to make them all breakfast and coffee in the morning, now that he was a “man of leisure” (he’d never been self-deprecating before), Penelope climbed on top of him, desperately seeking to prolong the evening, the most fun they’d had in ages, keep that man from the patio around just a bit longer, and perhaps steal a tiny bit of him for herself. She was intent on exploring the new dips and valleys of his body with her hands; this man she’d known for almost twenty years now felt like a stranger but in the most wonderful way, and she wondered, through a boozy haze, if this would be a blossoming for them and then laughed into his mouth at her own flowery ridiculousness. But still, she was hopeful.

  Later, when she thought about how much hope she’d held that first night, how she’d let herself believe, with her sweet, floundering husband between her thighs, that Willa’s sudden arrival could somehow be a reset, a way to see something in each other that they couldn’t seem to find alone, it would seem unbelievable how naive she’d been. Later, when she tried to remember this first evening with any clarity, tease apart the fantasy from the reality, to figure out where it all went terribly wrong, the only thing she could really pull from it was Brett’s voice, pitched with irritation, when he’d said, “Willa from the fire house?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  February 13, 2020

  Penelope found Willa in the kitchen. It had been a whirlwind morning. Penelope spent at least fifteen minutes longer than she should have looking for her lucky shirt—the one she always wore in audits at work. White blouse, a small detailed ruffle at the shallow V-neck. Very professional. The shirt seemed to be gone. She’d have to scour Tara’s room later.

  Tara and Linc caught a ride to school with Tara’s friend Ruby, a newly minted driver with her very own Audi Q3, a nicer car than Penelope had ever owned. But such was the way in Wexford, New Jersey. Penelope and Brett found themselves getting caught up in the game—and then made a valiant effort to not care. Keeping up had always seemed exhausting, a fool’s errand. And yet, Penelope still noticed the car. What did that say about her?

  Her children were gorgeous, Penelope knew that: Tara was tall and slender, willowy in a way that made her fifteen-year-old friends envious. Penelope knew this because she listened from the hallway as they mocked her for raiding the fridge again, and they’d love to be able to eat anything we want, don’t you care at all about the carbs? Long, golden, soft waves down her back and a full mouth gave her sex appeal that no fifteen-year-old should have. Every nerve in Penelope’s body rattled when she thought about the way men watched her, pretending they weren’t. Linc, Tara’s younger Irish twin, was just as beautiful, but his features were more delicate than his sister’s. Blond curls, blue eyes, blush cheeks on porcelain skin, reminding her since birth of Hadrian’s Antinous—too pretty, too soft, too careful for a boy. Two babies that, born back to back with no break between them, seemed to have shared a womb. Every look exchanged meant something several layers deep, every emotion carefully masked from Penelope but plainly evident to the two of them.

  Penelope had been the audience to their little play for as long as she could remember. She recorded it once: two toddlers sitting on a blanket, a tower of blocks between them. They’d laughed so hard they both fell over, little feet kicking with glee, and on the video, over the giggling was Penelope’s reedy voice: “What’s so funny, you two? What are you laughing at? Show Mommy.” Later, watching it, she was ashamed at the sound of her voice—thin, irritated, needy. She made them each a best friend and, in the process, made herself redundant.

  Which was fine, she insisted, if only to herself. You want your children to get along. And yet, every once in a while, she’d feel a little pathetic about it. There had always been a tiny part of her that held herself back, out of the main circles. She thought of the time at the Church House—her role as observer. Repeated now, in her own home.

  Still, Penelope worried incessantly. Tara was too brusque, Linc too sensitive. What would happen to both of them in the world? Brett thought she was crazy; the kids were fine. He never worried—not before, when his mind was preoccupied with international meetings and portfolio management, and not now, when he spent all his spare moments finding his own inner energies.

  “Your kids are great.” Willa sat cupping a steaming mug of coffee at the table. She wore an oversize men’s blue shirt and a pair of heather-gray leggings.

  “I know,” Penelope said, pouring her own cup of coffee from the pot she assumed Brett had made before his morning run. She was supposed to say thank you, but instead found herself smiling.

  “And Brett is great,” Willa said earnestly. “You’re just so lucky, Penelope. I’m so happy for you. I wish we’d kept in touch. I wish . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Well, anyway. Maybe if we’d stayed friends, I would have made better life choices.” She laughed, but it was forced, loud.

  How would they have stayed friends? Each of them carrying their own burden from that awful night. They’d been ripped apart, the seam irreparable. Penelope had too much at stake—more than Willa could ever know.

  “We’re so alike, Pip,” Willa said, her thumb running over the nick in the wood table. “Do you have girlfriends? You haven’t mentioned, texted anyone?”

  Penelope startled for a moment. She felt a bit splayed open, examined. She did have girlfriends—or used to. Nora, for one. Now she had Jaime, who was like a girlfriend, in his own way. What had happened to the parents of Tara’s and Linc’s friends? They’d been stay-at-home moms—meeting each other for morning yoga and midday coffee. While Penelope worked five days a week. She used to be invited to the moms’ nights out, but hadn’t been in a while.

  “I don’t have many friends myself. I see you. It’s hard to get along when you’re an island.” Her voice pitched low, a soft rumble, like she might cry.

  Penelope sat across from her old friend and studied Willa’s face. She’d changed so much: harder, thinner, more glamorous, less ingenue. The Willa she knew had been curvy, soft, bubbly, and while she’d been made up, she’d also retained a sense of effortlessness. This new Willa seemed full of effort. The scar, covered with makeup even at this early hour, gleamed but possibly (probably) only to Penelope. It was likely that anyone else would not have noticed it.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Penelope asked her softly. She didn’t want to outright inquire how long Willa would stay, but she knew Brett would ask. Perhaps tonight. He always preferred to be mentally, if not physically, prepared for all eventualities. Or at least he used to.

  “Not really, but I don’t suppose I can stay here indefinitely without an explanation.” Willa fiddled with her spoon, stirring distractedly. “You’ve always been generous, Pip, but that would be a stretch even for you.”

  “Well, I understand you are in hiding. Presumably from an abusive man—husband?” Penelope said. Willa simply nodded. Penelope continued, “I’m willing to listen whenever you want to talk, but you don’t have to tell me an
ything you don’t want to.”

  After a pause, Willa said, “We were married three years ago. It was a simple justice of the peace wedding. I’d been married, and widowed, before. I don’t know if you knew that?”

  Penelope shook her head. Should she have known? After the accident, they scattered so quickly, and the next thing she knew, Penelope was married, and then pregnant. No time for following up. She shoved everything about the Church House into a little box in the back of her mind, except for the mornings she’d wake up panicked and twisted in the sheets, with the smell of solvent and fire. Everything about the accident, her four roommates who had once been so close a classmate had called them “toxic.” She should have followed up more. She should have reached out at some point, right? No. Absolutely not. How would any of them ever come back together? They’d been turned by their shared trauma, their magnetic poles shifted so now they had no choice but to repel each other. They each had their own secrets to protect—no one more than Penelope.

  “Anyway, I met him—Trent—at a bar. He seemed like a good guy. I don’t know, my compass has been off. My first husband died of heart failure in his sleep. I was single for years. Then Trent came along, and I was just so tired of being alone. Of missing someone. I think I was just in a hurry. Anyway, he hit me for the first time on our honeymoon. We were in Hawaii, and he said I’d been flirting with the waiter at dinner. It was so fast, I didn’t even scream. After that, I wondered how many other people were in their honeymoon suite getting quietly hit.” Willa sighed, a big exhale. “Then it became fairly regular. He had money, his own business. I had nothing. He said if I left, he’d find me and kill me. So here I am, lying low until I can figure out what I do next. He’ll kill me. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life. I have to move, probably across the country. Change my name.”

  Penelope felt a shiver of fear for the first time. Had Willa put them all in danger?

  Willa seemed to sense the question. “He doesn’t know you exist. I wouldn’t have come if he did. I only brought cash with me, no credit cards. I have a car, but it’s mine, not his, from before we met. I stole a license plate on the drive and ditched mine, so even if he tried to call the car in, it would send them around for a while. Plus, state lines and all.”

  “Where did you drive from?” Penelope finally thought to ask. “Where did you and Trent live?”

  “Oh. I don’t know why I thought you knew?” Willa sat back against her chair and swallowed, wiping her upper lip with her index finger. “I found you a long time ago. I found everyone. Just a simple Google search, really. Not being weird or anything. I mean, I just assumed we all did that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Willa reached over and gripped Penelope’s wrist, her french-manicured nails biting into the skin. “Pip, I never left Deer Run.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Willa

  The first thing that struck her was that Pip looked exactly as she remembered. How do twenty years go by—twenty years of hardship or stress or illness or struggle—without someone showing any signs of it? Willa herself had to stick her forehead with needles for hundreds of dollars, pay for the loose skin beneath her chin to be tucked back into its proper place. Her hair dyed every few weeks to cover the wispy white flyaways. Not to mention all the other nips, cuts, smoothers, peels, just to keep her looking like . . . well, like Willa.

  Unless, of course, there was no hardship. That was always possible, she supposed. Maybe Pip had finally gotten lucky.

  Pip came from nothing. She had no one—no real family, no friends that anyone could have named. When she talked about her life before Penn, it was with a wry mix of self-deprecation and apology. She’d used her life insurance from her parents’ death to pay her tuition.

  Willa had come from money—a genetic lottery. Raised in the South, moved north, and then later, her whole family scattered to different parts of the globe. Willa had been left alone save for a sizable bank account that she blew on booze. She’d been set to plow through the full balance—talking about a luxury apartment in Center City to anyone who would listen. Inviting the world to join her.

  The year at the Church House had been a respite—a pause for all of them. A reason to extend undergrad, stay in their little bubble. Maybe it had been a final Hail Mary to get Jack to fall in love with her.

  Jack, Willa’s single-minded obsession since freshman English—that first waft of hair gel and cigarettes and musty laundry and toothpaste as he sat in front of her, his legs stretched out to the desk to his left, conversation bouncing back and forth between Willa and the pretty raven-haired girl in front of him. He took the raven-haired girl home from a party the second week of school, kept Willa on the hook as his “best friend.”

  It was obvious they all wanted Jack. It was almost embarrassing.

  Six months after they moved in, he brought Grace home and sent them all into a tailspin. Grace with her long blonde hair, shining in big ringlets down her back. Her bright-blue eyes, smart, calculating. Knowing instantly that Jack was the sun; the rest of them were simply orbiting.

  They’d met at the coffee shop. Grace told her all about it. Grace told her everything—more than she’d ever wanted to know. How they met, what she thought of all of them. All the nitty-gritty—she wasn’t one to demur on anything.

  Despite all that had happened at the Church House, before, after, during that one pivotal year, Jack would never have left Grace. As quickly as he’d denounced marriage once upon a time, he embraced it at the Church House. Suddenly it was all he talked about—growing up, settling down, becoming an adult, as though the rest of them were children. He acted like he couldn’t wait for the year to end, that he was getting over it. That living with four other people was for college kids.

  It pissed them all off, especially Willa. You couldn’t blame her, really. Willa knew more about Jack than anyone—how much of his posturing was real? If history was any indication, almost none of it.

  But still, he would have married Grace. Everyone believed that, without question.

  If only she’d lived.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  February 14, 2020

  Happy Valentine’s Day.

  No hearts. No exclamation points. Just a simple text, plain as fact. Penelope had no control over her heart, which raced almost instantly, or her mouth, which smiled without conscious thought.

  What will you do today? You breathing?

  Their private joke—just breathe. She hadn’t replied yet.

  The last time he texted her, she’d left him hanging. Instead googled married people with a crush and found out yes, it’s natural and common and of course it happens, and as long as no one knows about it, it’s fine. Of course, she’d never act on it. The crush itself wasn’t unfaithful. She’d never been a cheater. Penelope’s father was a cheater. Serial, compulsive. She’d found her mother crying at the kitchen table in the early morning light on more than one occasion.

  Penelope pinched the bridge of her nose. From downstairs she heard the rustling, faint sounds of morning—the surreptitious pop of the toaster, the suction of the refrigerator opening and closing. Willa. Penelope had told Willa to make herself at home. She was surprised that she had done it so easily. She’d been an easy houseguest—pleasant, accommodating, grateful. She’d made dinner the night before—homemade chicken noodle soup. Quick but also delicious. She’d cleaned the house, left the kitchen spotless, counters gleaming in the soft evening light. Penelope only briefly wondered what Willa would do all day in their home and then snorted softly to herself. Let her snoop—they were incredibly boring. Not even a vibrator in her nightstand.

  Still. It was unnerving to have her back in Penelope’s life. After so much time actively working to push her old friendships aside. They had been a family then—the only kind some of them had had. Twenty years ago, it had taken everything she had—down to the very marrow of her bones—to move home, away from them all, ignore voice mail messages and calls. Star
t fresh and new. Would she be able to do that again? Not likely. That kind of strength came maybe once in a lifetime.

  She thumbed the screen open again, pulling at her lower lip as she studied the text. Finally, she wrote back. I don’t know. Brett is still sleeping. Maybe dinner? I have a college friend in from out of town.

  Is she cute? Would I like her?

  Jaime Heller, you like everyone.

  It was true; he was a shameless flirt even when his wife had been alive. Jaime Heller lived a block east. He was the father of Tara’s best friend, Sasha. They’d been in third grade when Sasha’s mother and Penelope’s closest friend, Kiera, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Her death had been swift and brutal, leaving Jaime to his own devices as a single father. Sasha was his light, his whole life. He’d learned how to braid her hair, paint her nails; taught himself, then his daughter, how to apply a maxi pad (thanking YouTube the whole time); wrestled with those early tween friendship dramas. Brett and Penelope had taken him in, invited him for dinners, even once invited Jaime and Sasha on a family trip south, to Virginia Beach. Brett and Jaime used to golf on Sundays, go to ten-cent wings on Wednesdays at the pub on Trapp Street. When Brett got laid off, at first he cited money worries and begged off golf. Then later he told Penelope that wings were terrible for you, deep fried in chicken fat. She watched her husband’s world shrink with his waistline as he ignored texts, calls from friends, previously standing dates.