Girls' Night Out_A Novel

by Liz Fenton

  Lauren nodded.

  “Do you believe her?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  But the truth was, she wasn’t sure.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE DAY AFTER

  NATALIE

  Ashley had been missing for at least half a day.

  Natalie stared out to the coastline, watching a cardinal diving through the air, lifting its wings. Just when she thought it was going to touch the ground, it sailed toward the sky again. What are you searching for, little bird? Ashley’s disappearance hit her hard in the gut once more as she watched the cardinal, reminded of the sacred quetzal of Chichén Itzá. Clapping their hands together at the base of El Castillo, mimicking the sound the bird made. She wished she could go back to that moment, before Ashley and Lauren scaled the pyramid. Before they’d fought. Before Ashley had confided in Natalie in their hotel room afterward. Before Natalie had failed her as a friend.

  “Drink this.” Maria walked up to Natalie, who was sitting on her balcony. Maria held a glass of water with a slice of lemon lazily floating on top. “It’s eleven thirty in the morning—have you had anything to eat or drink today?”

  Natalie’s insides felt hollow. She didn’t think she had. But her stomach was rock-hard—the thought of ingesting even a drop of water made bile rise in the back of her throat. Maria’s narrowed eyes made her intention clear: she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. She took the glass from Maria and sipped it, the cool liquid funneling into her body, and she gagged slightly. She forced herself to swallow and felt a memory swinging low in her mind, like heavy fruit on a thin branch. She closed her eyes, trying to grasp it. It wasn’t quite a vision—more of a feeling. Thirst. Exhaustion. Nausea. Desperation.

  Not entirely different from how she felt at this very moment. She tried to distinguish the feelings from one another, but she couldn’t, the emotions layered too heavily.

  She looked at her cell—her battery power was at 11 percent. The stream of texts and phone calls from people back home hearing about Ashley was nonstop. Their lawyer had left several voice mails. She listened to the most recent. Natalie, we need to tell Revlon something. I haven’t heard from them yet, but I know I will. Please call me so we can strategize.

  She turned her phone over, frustrated. She knew Arthur meant well. As their attorney, he was only trying to protect them. But this was yet another reason she wanted out of this company. She didn’t want to worry about what Revlon thought Ashley’s disappearance would do to the value of BloMe, Inc. The room began to spin and she reached out a hand to steady herself. She felt like she was losing control. That they were all losing control.

  She pulled up Ben’s name.

  “Hi,” he said on the first ring. “Did you find her?”

  “No,” Natalie said, taking several deep breaths.

  “I need to come down there and help.”

  “No, stay with the girls. Jason just texted to say his flight is about to take off. So he’ll be here later. There are plenty of us looking. In fact, I should get back—”

  “I can get my sister to stay with them,” Ben said.

  “How are they?”

  “They’re great. Planted in front of their iPads, binge-watching old seasons of Survivor.”

  Natalie smiled, imagining them huddled together under one of the microfleece blankets she kept in an ottoman by the couch. “Why did you tell them you were keeping them home today?” She pictured them jumping up and down, mentally mapping out their day in terms of Netflix programming, having no idea their aunt Ashley was the real reason they couldn’t leave the house. Natalie cringed at the thought of having to deliver bad news. She shook it away. She couldn’t think like that. Ashley had no siblings, and her parents had passed away several years ago in a car crash, leaving her alone. She’d always declared that Natalie and Lauren were her adopted family.

  “I said I’d heard a bad flu bug was going around, and I didn’t want them to get it. It’s the first thing I thought of. But it’s not like they fought me on it.”

  Natalie exhaled. When she woke up this morning on the beach, she had no idea the degree this would reach. Now her daughters were home from school, banned from social media. Natalie thought of Ashley’s daughters, oblivious to their mom’s disappearance. She prayed it would always stay that way. She knew Jason’s mom was with them and in charge of keeping them off the internet, but that was easier said than done. Especially when she was upset too—probably checking her own phone for updates constantly. She couldn’t imagine being in America when Ashley was missing in Mexico. “You took Meg’s phone?”

  “Of course,” Ben said. “She thinks I’m borrowing it because I dropped mine in the toilet.”

  “Ben—”

  “I’m a terrible liar, I know.”

  Not so bad that you couldn’t hide what you’d done to all of our money.

  “Look, I’m worried about you. I need to come—”

  “I don’t want the girls without both of us,” she said sharply.

  “Okay,” Ben said, and she imagined him holding up his hands the way he did when he was admitting defeat. “I’m just uneasy sitting here, thinking about Ashley missing, you being drugged—” he said, referencing a quick text she’d sent asking him to please not be upset she was texting it, but she wanted him to know. That and she was going in to get tested. “So, Nat, I hate to do this, but we need to talk about the money,” he began.

  “We are not talking about that right now,” Natalie said. How could he think that was a good idea?

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. But her disappearance changes everything.”

  Natalie felt her blood pressure rise. “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “Of course. Can you just tell me what’s going on?”

  Pushing her anger aside, she told him the story quickly—except for the part about waking up alone on the beach—and held her breath, expecting him to launch into a safety lecture.

  “I wish I was there to protect you,” he said, his voice tender.

  Natalie felt her throat burn. He sounded like the Ben she’d married. The one she’d known up until he revealed he’d lost their money. “I do too,” she said, her voice cracking. When they’d met and he told her he was a day trader, she was apprehensive. You gamble? she’d asked. No, no way. But everyone thinks that’s what it is.

  He’d made a couple of bad investments. Then he’d doubled down on them. He had gambled. With their livelihood.

  “Is Revlon willing to wait until this all gets sorted out?” Ben asked.

  “Really, Ben?” she snapped. “I told you, we aren’t discussing this right now!”

  “Nat, it’s a reasonable question. There’s a lot of money on the line.”

  “Because of you.”

  “Look, I fucked up. But now there’s an opportunity to fix it. And you’d want to sell even if we didn’t need the money. So I’m just asking. What’s Arthur’s strategy for damage control? I’m assuming he’s contacted you.”

  Natalie sighed. “I’m dealing with it.” Before she hung up, she promised to update him the minute they had news. About Ashley. Not Revlon. Like it or not, she and Ben were in this mess together. They were still a team.

  Natalie needed to take a walk. She headed toward the beach, keeping her eyes trained ahead as she passed the bungalow where the honeymooners were staying. What were they doing now—swimming with sea turtles? Boating? Having sex? Maybe all three. Probably all three. She longed to be them, to have her biggest concern be whether she should do it missionary or reverse cowgirl. She kept moving forward, but hesitated when she saw the wooden table and chairs half hidden by palm leaves—where hotel guests could book a romantic dinner—and thought of something Ashley had said on their way down to meet Lauren at the beach the first day they’d arrived. Maybe you and I should sign up. Then she’d threaded her arm through Natalie’s and leaned in, mezcal tequila on her breath. Because I think we both know we’re all the other really has.


  Natalie had laughed and felt a rush. She often wanted to be Ashley’s only friend. But now the words haunted her.

  The breeze picked up as she neared the beach. She pulled her sunglasses down over her eyes, the sun an orange ball of fire in the sky. She checked her phone—it was almost noon. She should be out searching for Ashley. But where? Other than the bar and Marco’s place, she had no idea where to look. At the end of their questioning, she’d given the police the list of the places they’d been that week: the private beach, Chichén Itzá, downtown Tulum, Hartwood. But why would Ashley have returned to any of those places? She remembered the guidebook saying the coastline of the Yucatán Peninsula alone was seven hundred miles long. She’d almost have more luck finding her by throwing a dart at a map of Mexico and going wherever it landed. Her limbs felt shaky, her heart racing again at the thought that they might not ever find her.

  She stepped down onto the beach, the granules easing between her toes with each step. A sand crab scurried across the surface, then burrowed, disappearing as quickly as he came. She thought of Ashley, how quickly she had disappeared. In the blink of an eye, she was there and then she wasn’t. At least that’s what Natalie’s memory made it seem like. But she knew it couldn’t be trusted. And that’s what frightened her the most—what lay inside her mind, ready to be recaptured.

  Wow! The water feels amazing!

  Natalie swiveled around so fast she stumbled. That was Ashley’s voice.

  But Ashley wasn’t standing there. No one was. She heard the taunt again, this time followed by laughter. She froze in place. A memory was there and, dammit, she was not going to let it slip away. Again.

  She closed her eyes—listening to the sounds of the waves slowly breaking on the shore, of birds calling out to each other—and waited.

  I. Want. Out. I. Need. Out.

  It was her own voice this time.

  Natalie’s mind felt like a heavy door she couldn’t push open. And just behind it was where the memories were locked away. She thought back to after she had her C-section with Lucy. She’d lain in the recovery room, her legs immobile from the spinal block, like two steel planks, no matter how strongly she commanded her mind to move them. The nurse had smiled sweetly and told Natalie it would be a few hours before she could feel them again. But Natalie was undeterred. As Lucy had suckled on her breast for the first time, Natalie had stared at her legs, willing her brain synapses to reconnect, despite the drugs still flowing through her body. And thirty minutes later, when her leg moved, Natalie hadn’t been surprised. She knew her determination was, by far, the most interesting thing about her.

  She closed her eyes again and attempted to visualize the memories reconnecting to one another. She imagined herself tethering them as they circled closer, almost within reach. She inhaled deeply and reached out once more.

  And suddenly an image of Ashley materialized. She was in water, floating, the area around her blurred like the vignette filter on one of those old-fashioned photos. Natalie concentrated. Where had they been? At the beach where Natalie had woken up, soaked? She maintained her breath, afraid to move. Afraid to lose the vision.

  The sound of laughter drifted into her thoughts again. It was clearly Ashley’s—light and airy, like soft towels fresh from the dryer. Then she heard another voice.

  It was hers. Asking Ashley to get out.

  Why had she wanted Ashley to get out? And what had she wanted her to get out of? Had she been in danger? She clawed at the back of her mind for the rest of the memory. But the door had shut—the recollection no longer within reach. It was just her, on the beach, alone with her limited reflections.

  The baby hairs stood on end on Natalie’s arms. Natalie stared out at the ocean, wondering whether she and Ashley had been out there together last night. But the story didn’t line up with the honeymooners’ account. They’d heard one woman’s voice. Not two.

  “Where are you, Ashley?” Natalie yelled into the ocean.

  “Natalie?”

  Natalie turned, her cheeks flushing. Officer Garcia’s thick eyebrows were squished together. “My colleague, Officer Hernandez, is here to escort you to the clinic.” Natalie walked slowly toward Officer Garcia, praying the results of the tests wouldn’t complicate things even more.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE DAY AFTER

  NATALIE

  Natalie stared without emotion out the window of the police cruiser as it pulled up to the hospital in Mérida two and a half hours later.

  The hospital was a large soft-peach building that advertised “Urgencias” in red neon, which had caught the light of the midafternoon sun. From the outside, it looked more like a hotel than a hospital, with its sharp landscaping and the palm trees swaying in the wind. But inside, babies cried, toddlers ran around, at least two dozen people crowded the waiting room. As soon as she arrived, Natalie beelined to the check-in desk and showed the receptionist Ashley’s picture, asked if she’d been brought in. The woman took the phone and studied it, and Natalie felt a surge of hope. But then she shook her head and explained she’d been there since ten o’clock the night before and she would have remembered.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Jason had just arrived. She texted him that she’d be back around 9:00 p.m.

  That would be almost twenty-four hours since she’d seen Ashley.

  Several minutes later, she was led into an exam room, and the nurse pricked her arm. Natalie looked away as the dark fluid filled the vial, trying to decide which scenario would be worse: finding out she was drugged or that she wasn’t. If she was, then it only added to the rising fear inside her, and it meant the same or worse could have happened to Ashley. If she wasn’t . . . she wondered what her subconscious was protecting her from.

  Then the nurse tapped her long nails, filed sharp like daggers, on the clipboard. “It says here that you are to get a medical exam as well.”

  “No,” Natalie said, wrapping her arms around herself. “I told the police nothing happened. I’m fine.” She took in the dirty linoleum floor of the exam area, the stained curtain that separated her from the next, surprised this was the private hospital. She shuddered to think of what the public ones were like.

  The nurse consulted her chart once more and shook her head. “Yes. It says here. The policía want one.”

  Natalie felt sick. In America, didn’t you have to consent to a rape kit? In Mexico, was it up to her? She should have contacted an attorney. She didn’t want anyone to touch her. It was hot and muggy inside, the air conditioning losing a valiant fight with the outside heat. She wanted to find Ashley and go home. “No,” she tried again, sick with the thought they might actually find something.

  A willowy man with close-set eyes and a thick white mustache stepped into the room. “I’m Dr. Rivera,” he said. “I received a call from Officer Garcia. He said this is a precaution, but it could help find your friend.”

  Natalie shivered despite how hot it was in the exam room.

  Dr. Rivera continued. “The police need to rule out that you were sexually assaulted, okay?” he said, putting on latex gloves. “Will you lie back, please?”

  Natalie hesitated, then decided for her own peace of mind to go along with it. Finally she nodded and met the eyes of the nurse, who smiled in response. She wished she’d taken Lauren up on her offer to accompany her here. She could really use someone to hold her hand. To tell her everything was going to be okay—even if it wasn’t true. Long before Ben, that person had always been Ashley. And even since she’d married him, it had oftentimes still been her. They were like sisters in that way. Ashley had been by her side at everything. She’d taken care of her after her laser eye surgery—driving her home as she lay back in the passenger seat, high on Valium, the huge glasses shielding her from the sun. She’d even helped her change her C-section bandages when Natalie was so sore she could barely get out of bed. Natalie lay back on the table, missing Ashley. Even the things that drove Natalie crazy, like the way Ashley chomped her gu
m furiously or how she interrupted Natalie before she could finish expressing a thought, would be welcome right now. She stared at the ceiling, her eyes fixated on a spider inching its way across, trying not to imagine what the future might look like without her best friend.

  Later, Natalie leaned her head back against the seat and settled in for the long drive back to the hotel, taking in the prismatic sunset to the west. Remembering the first night when they’d seen the spectacular sight, taking pictures with their phones, she shut her eyes, not wanting to see the beauty, not deserving it.

  Jason was waiting for her in the lobby of the hotel when she returned. Without thinking, she hurried toward him and collapsed into his arms, the tears coming before she could stop them. Jason rubbed her back until she finally stopped crying.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling away from him. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Because I don’t know what happened.”

  “I thought you might be apologizing for something else,” Jason said, stepping back from her.

  “What do you mean?” Natalie’s heart started pounding. The look in his eyes was unsettling. She thought of what Ashley had told her—about his darker side. One she was still trying to reconcile with the man she had known for thirteen years.

  “I met with one of the officers—Garcia? He took my statement.”

  She drew in a long breath, studying his face. “Okay.”

  “They wanted to see the emojis she sent me and what time they came in. They’re also going to try to pinpoint where she was when she sent them. They say it’s a long shot, but they’ll try. They told me something else too.” He stared at her for so long she finally had to look down. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Did he somehow know Ashley had been planning to leave him?

  “Tell you what?” Natalie asked. She was not going to say it.

  “Let’s talk over here,” he said, and she followed him to a couch in the corner she’d sat on a dozen times today. “I need you to stop playing dumb.” He gave her a look. “Who is Marco, and why didn’t you tell me about him when you called me?”