Best Friends Forever

by Jennifer Weiner

  Jordan shook his hand. “You can see where we’d be concerned.”

  “I’m sorry,” Daniel said again. He stared at Jordan intently for a moment, clasping his hand. “If I was guilty… if I got arrested… where would you put me?”

  Jordan frowned. “In one of the cells here, until your arraignment.”

  “Can I see?”

  Figuring there was no harm in it, Jordan led Dan past the narrow metal bench with three sets of handcuffs attached, unlocked the heavy door, and pointed out the department’s three cells, including his favorite. Dan sighed. It was the sound of a starving man seeing a feast, the sound of a man dying in the desert glimpsing water… a sound Jordan thought he recognized. Hadn’t he heard similar sighs coming from his own mouth as he settled into his camp chair with his beer and his remote, hoping for a twenty-two-minute respite from thoughts of Patti and the dentist, of all the things he’d hoped for that had eluded him?

  Dan extended one hand to the metal door and let his hand touch the bars. “Could I…”

  “No,” said Jordan. “You can’t.”

  “Please,” said Dan. “You don’t have to lock the door. You don’t have to tell anyone I’m here. I won’t cause any trouble, I just… I can’t…” He was trembling all over. “Please,” he said, and Jordan, puzzled, unlocked the first cell and watched as Daniel Swansea walked inside. He spread the thin blue plastic-sheathed mattress on the metal bunk and curled on his side, with his shoes on and his back to the hallway and his cheek pillowed under his hands. Jordan watched him for a minute. Then he slid the door shut and left him there.

  Something had happened to Daniel Swansea whether the man wanted to admit it or not. Something had, as the kids said, gone down, and Jordan Novick, chief of police, was going to find out what.

  FIFTY

  “How was your Thanksgiving?” Dr. Shoup asked from the sink, where she was scrubbing her hands.

  “Fine.” I couldn’t believe how little time had passed. It felt as if I’d lived a year since Valerie had shown up at my door. It was Thursday now; not even a week had gone by. The morning was unseasonably warm, the sky a mild blue, with a soft breeze stirring the remaining few leaves on the trees. I lay on the examining table in a gown and socks and panties, keeping the appointment I’d made a lifetime ago, while Valerie sat in the waiting room outside. “I was in Key West. Have you ever been there?” Dr. Shoup shook her head. “How was your Thanksgiving?” I asked.

  “Uneventful.” Dr. Shoup was not what you’d call talkative. Then again, I hadn’t picked her for her scintillating conversation. “Let’s take a look.”

  I stared up at the lights. This afternoon, unless I had to go right to the hospital, I’d go swimming. My bag was in the back of the car, packed with my swimsuit and goggles and towel. Maybe Val would come in the water with me. Maybe, after, I’d take her to the juice bar, point to the table where Vijay and I used to sit before he’d decamped for bluer waters and other adventures. Dr. Shoup’s cool fingers skimmed the contours of the bump, pressing lightly on one side, then the other.

  “It isn’t my hipbone, is it?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  Dr. Shoup didn’t reply. “That hurt?” she asked, pressing harder.

  “Not really.”

  “How about here?”

  I shook my head. “Is it my liver?”

  Ominously, she didn’t answer. “How have you been feeling?” she asked me instead.

  My heart sank. “Fine.” I paused. “Worried.”

  Her fingers ran along my belly, pressing and prodding. Finally she wheeled her little stool away from me, snapping off her rubber gloves. “Follow me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Ultrasound.”

  Holding my gown closed behind me, I followed her down a long hall, so scared I could barely breathe. It must be bad if she was doing an ultrasound without scheduling it ahead of time, without asking for a referral, without billing Blue Cross. I lay on a little cot with my gown pulled up and bunched underneath my breasts, afraid to say anything, afraid to even breathe.

  She squirted gel on my belly and pressed the transceiver against it. “Any nausea? Weight gain? Weight loss?”

  I shook my head. “No. Nothing I’ve noticed. Just the lump.”

  “What have you been using for birth control?”

  “Huh? Oh.” I felt my face getting hotter. “Condoms. Mostly.” The truth was condoms, occasionally. Vijay hadn’t liked them, and I’d figured we were safe. He’d been tested, he assured me… and I, of course, had been a virgin, so if I had AIDS or something, I’d be the first person in the world to get it off a toilet seat, and as for pregnancy… “I never really had regular periods, you know, when I was heavy, and then they were kind of random when I was losing weight.” Great. Now, in addition to late-stage liver cancer, I probably had a nasty STD, too.

  She tilted the screen so that I could see… what? Something bean-shaped and gray, flickering like a tiny strobe light. “I’d say you’re four months along.”

  For a moment, I thought she was telling me I’d had cancer for four months. When I realized what she meant, I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. I could only stare at the flickering gray bean that wasn’t a tumor, that was the furthest thing away from a tumor that anything could be. “I thought,” I said. I swallowed, licked my lips, and tried again. “I never thought…”

  She looked at me briefly, and her expression was not unkind, before she shifted the transceiver on my belly and turned her eyes back to the screen. “I take it this comes as a surprise?”

  “Surprise,” I repeated. “Well, given that I thought it was cancer, yeah, I’d say that I’m surprised.”

  I thought I saw the flicker of a smile. “It’s an understandable mistake.” Which was, of course, what she’d said about my hipbone diagnosis. Pulling off her gloves, she turned her back to me and stepped on a lever that opened a metal trash can. “Do you want some time to think about your options?”

  “No. No.” I shook my head and laid my hands on top of the lump. The bump. The baby. Later, there would be the familiar embrace of the water, and the house I’d made my home. I would go out into the sunshine with my best friend and tell her my news, and we’d celebrate together. My time with Vijay, the kisses with Jordan, those would be memories to be cherished and polished and eventually tucked away, like I’d once put away my old, sweet daydreams about Dan Swansea. I would turn my face toward the future and not look back. “Thank you,” I said, and if Dr. Shoup was surprised when I hugged her and kissed her cheek, she hid it well.

  Valerie was sitting in the waiting room, hair swept up in the same messy ponytail she’d worn since Florida, floating in a pair of my sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt, working her BlackBerry with her thumbs. At the Key West airport, as the porter loaded our bags in exchange for a tip of my father’s old car keys, Val found a pay phone and had a long, murmured conversation with Charlie Carstairs, who’d agreed with, Val said, surprisingly little fuss to give her a month-long leave of absence, which she’d promised to spend with me. She tucked her BlackBerry into her purse and got to her feet as I walked past the receptionist’s desk with my hands full of slips of paper: the telephone number of an obstetrician, a prescription for prenatal vitamins, pamphlets about prenatal diet and fetal development. “Is it okay?” she asked, her face tense and forehead furrowed. “Do we need to go to the hospital?”

  I shook my head.

  “So what, then?” I grabbed her hand and pulled her out the door, down the stairs, out into the daylight. “What’s going on?”

  I looked at her, smiling so widely it felt like my face would split. “I’m pregnant.”

  “You’re… Wait. What? From the married guy? The doctor?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I bounced up and down, so full of joy that I had to move. “It doesn’t matter. It’s my baby.”

  “Oh my God,” said Valerie. She leaned against the side of her Jaguar, which she’d liberated from my garage a
s soon as we were back in Pleasant Ridge. “Oh my God,” she said again, and grinned at me. “A baby! Can I have it?”

  I stared at her incredulously. “Can you have it?”

  “Kidding! Kidding! Come on,” she said, and grabbed my hands. “Let’s go buy baby stuff and drink champagne!”

  “I can’t drink…” I looked at the pamphlets in my hands. I didn’t know anything about having babies, or raising them. I’d have to get books. I’d have to check Wikipedia.

  “We’ll pretend you don’t know. Or you can have sparkling apple juice or some lame shit like that. Come on,” she said, “this place gives me the creeps.” She was still holding my hands, and she looked at me, her face suddenly serious. “I didn’t really want your baby.”

  “I know, Val.”

  “I want you to have everything you want. You’re my best friend,” said Val. The wind lifted her hair, and for a moment I imagined us as girls again, floating in the water, with our hair trailing like ribbons behind us. She held the car door open, and once again, as always, I was powerless to resist her. “Now come on. Get in. There are small, expensive pieces of clothing waiting for us to buy them.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  “She’s on the move,” said Holly, leaning forward, practically quivering, like a dog on point. Her eyes were trained on the living room window; her breasts strained against the seat belt. Jordan barely noticed. His own eyes were focused on Merry Armbruster’s front door. Merry Armbruster, Class of ’92, the one Christie Keogh said had spent her fifteenth reunion trying to convert her classmates in the parking lot… the one who, Jordan suspected, had been Daniel Swansea’s mystery lady. Glen Hammond, the D.A., had gotten the wheels turning when he’d asked whether Dan had heard a really moving grace… and when Jordan had called Chip Mason, Chip had told him that Merry Armbruster had dropped Dan off at his place on Sunday morning, which meant, he figured, that Dan and Merry had spent the night together.

  When the front door swung open, he braced himself for that lady from Misery, Kathy Bates with fire in her eyes and an ax in her hands. But the woman who walked out to her mailbox was barely five feet tall, ax-free, and not even remotely menacing. She wore a zippered down coat that brushed the toes of her thick, insulated purple boots, the kind they’d called moon boots back when Jordan was a kid.

  He got out of the car with Holly bounding behind him. “Ms. Armbruster?”

  She squinted at them. “Yes?”

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions about the high school reunion,” said Jordan.

  She tugged her hat against her hair. “Come inside,” she said, and led them into the living room. Jordan and Holly sat side by side on a sleek leather couch in front of a flat-screen TV that spanned most of the wall.

  “That’s a big one,” Holly said, pointing at the set.

  Merry’s lips thinned. “It’s my parents’. This is their house.”

  “Are they home?” asked Holly.

  She shook her head. “They are in Las Vegas.” She raised her chin. “‘Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall increase.’ Proverbs 13:11.”

  “So they’re at a casino?” Holly asked.

  “What can I help you with?” Merry asked.

  Jordan leaned forward. “Did you happen to run into Daniel Swansea on Friday night?”

  For a minute, he thought that she wasn’t going to say anything—that she was going to press those thin lips together even more tightly, lift her pointy chin even higher, and refuse to answer, or tell him that she wasn’t talking without a lawyer. Instead, after a minute, she said, “We prayed together.”

  “Prayed for what?” asked Holly.

  Merry looked at them proudly. “He had a great sin upon his heart. But now he has repented of his wickedness. Now he walks in the light of the Lord and forgiveness. Now he sees…”

  Jordan cut her off. “Ma’am, was he hurt the night you found him?”

  “He was lost,” Merry said gently, a schoolteacher correcting a very young child. “He was lost, but now is found. Was blind, but now he sees.”

  Holly looked at Jordan helplessly. Jordan thought for a minute, then got to his feet, pulling a card out of his wallet and handing it to Merry. “Thank you for your help,” he said, imagining the expression that went along with Holly’s gasp. “You’ll be in touch if you need us?”

  Merry tucked the card into her pocket. “Take care,” said Jordan, and Merry replied, “God bless,” and then locked her parents’ door behind them.

  “So what now?” Holly asked once the heater was on and their seat belts were fastened. She squinted through the windshield, staring at the Armbrusters’ house. “We can’t do a search?” Holly’s face suggested that she knew the answer to the question even before she’d asked it. “She did something to him. I just know she did.”

  Jordan nodded. “I agree. But I’m not sure that what she did to him was wrong.” He paused, struggling for the words. “Maybe it was a corrective.” He thought of Dan Swansea, huddled in the handicapped cell, Dan Swansea saying I did a terrible thing. I know that now. “And there’s nothing else we can do. We’ve got no warrant, no grounds for an interview.”

  “So that’s it?” Holly cried. “She just gets away with it?”

  “We’ll keep an eye on her,” he promised. “On both of them. If they ever slip again, we’ll be ready.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  “You met someone,” said Sasha Devine. She looked Jordan up and down. “Is it that Adelaide person?”

  He stared at her, open-mouthed. She met his look with a smile. “Maybe you’re not the only one with a small, quiet place in your mind.”

  He could only look at her, speechless.

  “Fell for the suspect?” Sasha seemed amused. “Is she a good person?”

  “I think so.”

  “She’s back home, right?”

  “I guess.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if she wants to see me.”

  “Stop by,” Sasha suggested. “Bring her flowers or something. Ladies love the flowers.”

  “I was going to arrest her,” Jordan said. “Won’t that make things weird?” He left out the part about how he’d already been in her house; how he’d fallen down in front of her; how they’d kissed, which would, of course, only make things weirder and would not bode well for his next performance evaluation.

  Sasha shrugged. “I took one of my old boyfriends back after he cheated on me with my sister,” she said. “And gave us both chlamydia.” She made a face. “Bad example. Anyhow, I bet she’d be glad to see you.” Jordan wasn’t sure he agreed. “So what do you think, really?” Sasha asked. He knew what she was asking him: What happened to Daniel Swansea that night? Had Addie and Val gotten away with a crime?

  “I think,” he said after a minute, “that Dan Swansea has mended his ways.” He thought some more. “I think that he was a guy whose ways needed mending.”

  “Fair enough,” said Sasha.

  Jordan got back into his car. Downtown, the foofy little candle-and-potpourri shop had gone out of business, replaced by a place called In Bloom. There, he bought flowers, a bouquet of hot-pink tulips wrapped in pale-green crepe paper, out of season and insanely expensive. He filled his tank and washed his windows, and when he couldn’t stall any longer, he drove to Crescent Drive.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Addie didn’t answer his knocks. She didn’t respond when he rang the bell. When he punched in her number on his cell phone, her phone rang and rang until it went to voice mail, where a computerized voice invited him to leave a message, not sounding as if it cared much one way or another whether he did. Jordan hung up the phone, waited for five minutes, then started knocking again, calling “Police!” Finally he heard her voice, coming from the upstairs bedroom window.

  “Jordan?” On her face, he saw what he’d seen in the photograph on her brother’s wall—hope. Faint, but still there. Then she turned away.

  “Addie. Hey. I just want to talk.”
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  Her voice floated out the window. “There’s really not much to talk about.”

  “There’s everything to talk about. Come on, Addie. Please?”

  For a minute, he was sure that she wouldn’t come down, that she’d leave him standing there with his tulips. Then the front door opened, and she was standing in front of him in black pants and a loose red top, with a towel in her hand and her hair—light brown, not blond—still damp from the shower.

  He stared at her. “Your hair’s different.”

  She touched it shyly. “I decided I wasn’t meant to live life as a blonde.” She smoothed one hand over her shirt. “Valerie’s the blonde.”

  He cleared his throat. “Did you guys have a safe trip home?”

  “It was fine.”

  “Are you…” He cleared his throat. “In Florida, your friend said you were sick.”

  She smiled, then ducked her head. “I’m not sick. It was a misunderstanding. I’m fine. I’m…”

  From the top of the stairs, he heard someone call “Addie?” As he watched, Val came down the stairs, barefoot in sweatpants, with a book in her hands. “Did you read this one yet? You’re supposed to be eating kale. Like, crates of it. Or else your kid could have…” She bounded to the bottom of the staircase. Jordan recognized the book she was carrying from Patti’s shelf: What to Expect When You’re Expecting. “A neural-tube defect? What the hell is that?”

  Jordan looked at Valerie, then back at Addie. “You’re pregnant?”

  She blushed. “A little bit, yeah.”

  Jordan’s head was spinning. “You…” He stared, remembering the condoms, and also Mrs. Bass’s insistence that she didn’t have a boyfriend. “Did you go to a sperm bank?”

  “Something like that,” she said.

  He made himself stop staring and tried to remember why he was there, what he’d meant to tell her. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. About…” His voice trailed off. He had no idea what to call what had happened between them, no certainty of what he was sorry for except that he was indeed sorry.