Secrets of Southern Girls

by Haley Harrigan

  Julie sinks, lets her head fall under the water, pushes off from the pool’s edge, and begins to swim, gliding along under the surface, hair slicked back against her scalp like a bath cap. The water is blue-green and a little murky, cloudy with new chemicals. Her eyes burn, but she keeps them open, sweeping her arms back and forth like a bird in flight. Her legs are still, indifferent. She carries herself along this way until her lungs feel as though they will burst like two fragile soap bubbles. And then she rises to the surface, gasping, and finds the edge she has been swimming toward.

  80

  August feels like a fool. Here he is, at the end of his journey, having achieved everything he set out to do: find Jules, find the diary. He just wasn’t counting on finding this ugly new reality.

  He’d loved Reba without question, without hesitation, without a single suspicion that the love he felt might not have been reciprocated. He’d loved her the way you can only love someone once, that first time, before you know better. Before you don’t have it in you anymore.

  He should get the hell out of this godforsaken place, pretend that he hasn’t spent a decade of his life chasing a ghost, a figment. His version of Reba and the reality of her are so drastically different that it is sobering. The perfection… He’d made it up, and the diary was proof.

  Jules would understand if he left. And if she didn’t, did it even matter? Wasn’t Jules just a means to an end, a way to get at these answers? It hardly matters that he likes her, enjoys her company, finds her smart and stunning.

  But thinking about Jules makes him wonder if she’s okay. Reading the diary wouldn’t have been easy for her, either, since she’d created her own pristine version of Reba. She’s been gone for a while, and he’s had plenty of time to finish the diary, to learn the truth.

  And the truth is that he was nothing. He was meaningless, a fling, a fleeting moment. He isn’t some tragic hero, spending his life mourning his lost love. The girl he’s been mourning doesn’t even exist.

  She was a liar. For so long, he’d wondered what it might have been like if he and Reba could have made a life together, what it would have been like to be a family. If he would have been a good father.

  How she died doesn’t even matter to him anymore. It has hardly a thing to do with him. But he can’t ignore the pain he feels, as though this all happened yesterday and not ten years ago. He doesn’t know how to make it go away, but he figures he can try his best down at the bar, if they’ll serve him this early in the day.

  He drinks enough Bloody Marys at Southern Saddle to count as breakfast and to make him feel numb, at least for a while. He’s abandoned the bar and is walking down the hallway back to the hotel when he sees someone swimming, alone, in the hotel pool. He recognizes the black purse slung over the arm of a lounge chair even before he sees Jules bursting, breathless, from beneath the water’s surface.

  81

  Julie is neck-deep in the hotel pool in her underwear when she spots August. Funny how they gravitate toward the same places, how they like to be alone in the same ways. He has a plastic cup in one hand, and she can tell by his relaxed posture and his untucked shirt that he has been drinking already, and she doesn’t blame him. His eyes meet hers. She can feel herself bobbing, shoulders up and down in the water, her muscles tensing, breath coming in shallow gasps that have little to do with her underwater swim. He nods, a wordless hello.

  She watches him, water droplets streaming down her face.

  “Going for a swim?” she asks in a voice that is meant to be light but comes out choked.

  “Not so much. I didn’t expect to see you here…back here, I mean.” He sits in one of the lounge chairs and sinks his head down into one palm. “I read it. The whole damned book.”

  She doesn’t respond, doesn’t know what to say.

  “I loved her,” he says quietly. “But she didn’t love me. I was barely a footnote. It wasn’t me, not ever. It was never me.”

  82

  REBA’S DIARY, 1998

  I don’t know if I have been avoiding August only because I feel so guilty for lying to him, or if the magic of being with him was lost the second Jules stumbled upon us in the woods. But I haven’t been to the river, haven’t met his eyes in class or in the hallways.

  Still, it took him a few weeks to approach me. And then yesterday, I looked up, and he was standing at my locker.

  “August,” I whispered to him, my eyes darting around the crowded hallway. It was in between classes, and students were everywhere. But no one seemed to notice August peering over the metal door of my locker. “What are you doing?”

  “We should talk.”

  I was silent.

  He reached out to touch a strand of hair that had fallen into my face, but pulled back when he saw what must have been a horrified expression on my face. I forced myself to look into his eyes. He was perfect, but I knew, without a doubt, that he wasn’t mine.

  “Talk to me,” he said.

  “It’s over,” I whispered finally. “This is over.”

  “No, it’s not,” he replied quickly, too quickly. “It’s not. You’re… We’re…”

  “I was selfish to start this with you,” I said quietly. “I… It was wrong. From the beginning. It’s too dangerous, and it has to stop.” I desperately wanted to avoid telling him the truth.

  “Dangerous?” he said. “Reba, we’re well past dangerous. You can’t shut me out. We have to talk about this, about what we’re going to do.”

  “You don’t need to worry about it.” I looked down at the floor, couldn’t possibly keep lying while looking him in the eyes.

  “Of course I need to worry about it.” His voice was louder now, and he had attracted the attention of at least a few students moving down the hall.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay.” I was quiet for a moment. “Meet me by the river, then. Tomorrow night, after the play. The journal… You should read it. It will explain. I’ll bring it to you. And…and we’ll talk, okay?” It was the last thing I wanted, but it would end things, without question.

  He nodded. “You’ll really be there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Tomorrow, then.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  83

  The air is warm and humid, the thick clouds above so filled with rain that they could burst at any moment. Julie pulls herself up over the pool’s edge, water dripping from her body as she stands, shakes out her hair. She tries not to feel self-conscious standing before August, but she can feel his eyes on her body.

  “A towel would be nice.”

  He disappears into the lobby, briefly, and returns with a white hotel towel. She wraps it around herself, and though it only reaches to her thighs, she feels less exposed as she sits down on the lounge chair beside him.

  “I thought of destroying it,” she says quietly. “The diary. I thought of getting rid of it so you would never have to know the truth. Do you wish I had?”

  He looks at her thoughtfully, and it feels like his large, dark eyes really see her. “No,” he says. “It’s hard, you know. I thought I was important. I thought I meant something to her—”

  “You did,” she interrupts.

  “Yeah, I meant something to her. But I wasn’t…the one she loved.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “All these years, I thought she jumped off that bridge because of me. And she didn’t…I guess. I guess it didn’t have much to do with me at all.”

  “Toby said that she fell.” Julie looks down at her feet, at the dark puddle of water on the concrete. “That it was an accident.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, if he cared about her, why would he kill her? And, say he did do it—say he pushed her. What can we do about it? It was a decade ago, and it was declared a suicide. It’s not like there’s justice to be had.”

>   They’d come to Lawrence Mill with a mission, to learn the truth about Reba…but Reba was the lie all along. It feels like mistaken identity, like the diary was written by an impostor. But Julie knows it wasn’t. She sighs. “When he told me about it…it felt right, you know?”

  “So…” August says, looking at her, his gaze hopeful and sad all at once. “You and I… Neither one of us was as important as we thought?”

  She looks away from him. “Toby said I was there. That I didn’t push her, but I was there. That I was drunk, that I stood there and watched, even though he yelled for me to help. If I’d gone for help…”

  “Stop,” August says. “Stop putting yourself through this. You are not responsible for this. Reba made bad decisions. Reba lied. Her death is not your fault.”

  Julie tries to believe it, that it was all inevitable, somehow.

  “How did it end,” he asks suddenly, “with you and your husband?”

  She’s caught off guard by the sudden change of topic, and she laughs, a bitter laugh, and pulls the small towel around her tighter. “The way that things end. I was…crazy. I was wrong. There are women out there who would do anything to catch Evan Huntley, and I messed it all up.”

  “Wait. Evan Huntley is your husband?”

  She nods. “Well, ex-husband.”

  “Evan Huntley the actor?”

  “I didn’t know you followed theater.”

  “I don’t, but my mother does. She and my dad go up to the city pretty regularly to catch different shows. She’s a big fan. And he’s your husband?”

  “Ex-husband.”

  “He’s kind of famous, Jules.”

  “I know.” She doesn’t tell him how degrading it is to rely on Evan’s money to live, to care for Beck. How Julie uses as little of it as possible—a city apartment, a nanny for Beck, food—and puts the rest away for Beck’s college.

  “So what happened? Why’d he leave?”

  She sighs, letting herself imagine what it might be like now, if she hadn’t let it all slip away.

  • • •

  “The at-home test was right. You’re pregnant,” the doctor said. He was smiling.

  “But…I’m on birth control.”

  “Doesn’t always work,” he said. “Congratulations.”

  Julie walked around for hours, even though the doctor’s office was only blocks from Evan’s apartment, where they both lived now. His place was small, but she didn’t have many things.

  Reba’s voice echoed in Julie’s head in a way that it hadn’t in the year that she’d been with Evan. They’d only been married six months. Pregnant, the voice whispered, and it sounded desperate, like Reba’s had that night by the river.

  Julie was afraid to go home, didn’t want to tell Evan, to make it real. When she finally did get back to their building, she sat on the front steps staring out at nothing at all, thinking of Reba, everything rushing back with the force of a river’s current. Evan found her there on his way home from a play practice. “My Julie,” he said, always dramatic. “What are you doing out here in the dark?”

  When she looked up at him, his smile turned. “Oh no,” he said. He helped her up and led her to the tiny apartment. He sat beside her on the small sofa and took her hands in his. His hands were warm. “What is it, Julie? What’s happened?”

  And she told him.

  He was surprised. He looked her up and down, and then he laughed.

  “You’re happy?” she asked, uncertain.

  “I love you, Julie,” he said softly. “Why wouldn’t I be happy?” He kissed her cheeks, her eyelids. “Don’t cry. It’s perfect.”

  “But we’re poor!” she said. “And I don’t know how to…to mother.” She sniffled. She was exaggerating, because they weren’t poor, not exactly. Evan had gotten the lead role in an off-Broadway play, and she had a part-time job. But her point about being a mother was true. She couldn’t even remember her own mother, and it wasn’t like Aunt Molly had been a great role model.

  “Shh,” he said, holding her. “We’ll be fine. Don’t worry about a thing. Everything will be fine.”

  For the first time, she didn’t believe him.

  • • •

  It’s nearly unthinkable now, how quickly she lost it all. The child growing inside her forged a link back to Reba, at least in Julie’s mind, forced her to think of things she had managed to avoid in her fairy-tale year. While Evan slept at night, or while he was at play practice during the day, she tried to piece it all together again in her mind. Julie was a monster. She’d killed her best friend and her friend’s unborn baby, and yet, she was pregnant with a child of her own? It didn’t seem fair. She stayed up nights, in a corner of the room with only one dim lamp burning, and let the shadows dance around her. Evan would find her in the mornings, asleep in the corner.

  As the days wore on, she began to feel an unexplained rage toward him. Sometimes, when he looked at her, her love and hate mixed together and she wanted to kiss or slap him, each with equal intensity. Press lips to lips, or send her hand sailing against his face with a loud smack, fingertips grazing the light sandpapery stubble there.

  It was new, the anger. He’d done nothing different, changed in no perceptible way. But she’d trusted him, believed he would somehow bring her peace, and he’d failed her, because that peace hadn’t lasted.

  “Julie, what’s happening to you?” he asked one night. And she told him little pieces, little things about Reba. But the whole story, the intricate details… Those she kept for herself.

  At first, she couldn’t imagine quitting school, didn’t see any reason to. It wasn’t common, but she also wasn’t the only pregnant woman she saw in her classes. But then, she couldn’t summon the energy to go. She spent her days under the thick solace of the comforter, her head buried beneath a pillow, keeping the world away.

  Evan was exasperated. Sometimes, he would come home overly cheerful, as though he hoped it might rub off. He would wear a sly smile and hold his hand against her stomach and call her amazing. It didn’t help.

  They argued loudly. She was terrified of everything, and Evan was terrified of her. And obviously worried. She could see herself shattering the fragile things she loved. But she couldn’t stop it.

  She was eight months pregnant the night he finally gave up on her. They had fought again, her words heated and heartless. He came home quietly, his face soft, ready for peace.

  He sat beside her. “I brought you something,” he said and presented her with the gift.

  She ran her hands over the heavy, hard-backed book. It was brown with a pattern of gold etching. There was no title on the front, and she was confused, turned it sideways to see the spine. Romeo and Juliet was written in ink that sank, a golden wound, into the deep brown. The book fell to her lap, dropped so quickly that it might have seared her skin.

  “You told me once that you were Juliet in high school,” he said cautiously. “But I looked around, and you don’t have the book. So, I found this in the used-book store. It’s really old. I thought you might like to have it.”

  She was silent as she stood slowly, gripping the book as though it were a thorn against her hand. She felt blood rushing into her face.

  “Why would you do this?” she whispered.

  Evan stood up. “I thought you would like it. I just want us to be okay.” He stepped backward at the look on her face. “Is it…bad?”

  He didn’t know. She’d never told him that Reba died the night of the play. But she blamed him anyway. Lights seemed to flash before her eyes, stage lights, blinking on, off, on. She saw Reba in the crowd, saw Reba falling down into the river. And she couldn’t make it stop.

  She hurled the book across the room, flinging it away as hard as she could, as if making the book go away might change the truth. She heard the shatter too, afterward, and was appalled at what she had do
ne, though she couldn’t admit it. She heard the loud thud of the book as it hit the fire escapes below, as she stared in horror at the jagged hole she’d made in the window.

  Evan looked at her like she was a monster, someone he’d never seen before and would never want to again.

  “Evan,” she whispered. She wanted to explain; she really did. But he was backing away to the dresser, grabbing clothes, stuffing them into a bag.

  “I can’t do this,” he said, his eyes sad. He stared at her, and she opened her mouth to say something, to tell him about Reba. But she was speechless, and he walked out the door. The cold air blew in from the window. She waited to feel something. But her body had been invaded and her mind consumed, and she couldn’t feel anything else at all.

  • • •

  Evan took their daughter because Julie begged him to, just after they settled the baby in her arms for the first time and the name had come so easily from her mouth. Rebecca. And he kept Beck for more than a month after, while Julie huddled, restless, in the bed that she had once shared with him. She couldn’t be a mother. She was convinced she’d never be able to. And then one day there was Brighton, pounding on the door to the apartment. She waited for him to leave, but he didn’t, only waited outside, knocking, until she couldn’t stand it any longer and let him in.

  She’d been on antidepressants for two weeks when Evan brought the baby back, swaddled, alien. Play touring the Southeast, he said. You’ve got to grow up, Julie. Something cold. She’d hurt him, and things had shifted between them. She held the baby awkwardly there, in the doorway, watching Evan walk away and wondering what to do with an infant.