A good mom . . .
She said the same thing the other day, even though she had her share of doubts.
And her own mother just told her the exact same thing about herself, oblivious to the fact that one granddaughter was sneaking around in the woods with an older boy and the other was suspended from school for cheating.
Yeah. I’m a terrific mom.
“My daughter didn’t think I was a good mom.” Debbie fumbles in the pocket of her blazer, finding a crumpled tissue to wipe her eyes.
“That’s not true. She was always talking about all the things you did for her, Deb. Her beautiful bedroom, and the piano, and all the times you took her shopping, everything, all the mother-daughter spa days and getaway weekends . . . I never heard her complain about you.”
“That doesn’t mean much, apparently . . . because I didn’t, either. Not once.”
“So she never confronted you about anything she wrote in the note?”
“No! That’s the thing I can’t get over. If she had just told me, I would have explained that her father and I . . . look, we’re together, but it hasn’t been a true marriage in years. Andrew and I understand each other and we give each other space.”
“He knows about you and Mike, then?”
“No. Let’s put it this way, though: It wouldn’t break his heart if he found out. But if he realized that it was the reason Nicki did what she did . . .” She shakes her head. “He would never forgive me for that. And I wouldn’t expect him to.”
“So Andrew doesn’t know about the note?”
“No. I told you, no one knows—except you.”
“And Mike. He knows, too, doesn’t he?”
Debbie opens her mouth as if she’s going to deny it.
“Don’t, Deb. It’s okay.”
She takes a deep, shaky breath. “I told him. I knew he wouldn’t think—I knew . . . Mike and I understand each other.”
Just like you and Andrew understand each other? Jen wants to ask, but she refrains. Let Debbie cling to her rationalizations. Let Debbie do whatever she needs to do in order to keep getting out of bed in the morning and facing another day without the daughter she loved more than anything in the world.
That, Jen knows, is the undisputed truth. No one who ever saw Debbie and Nicki together would deny that Debbie’s world revolved around Nicki, making it all the more horrific that her own actions inadvertently led to her daughter’s death.
I still can’t believe it, Jen thinks, and yet . . .
There was a damning suicide note.
“How long,” she asks her friend, “have you and Mike been . . . ?”
“A year or so.”
“What about back when we were in school?”
Seeing the flicker of culpability in her friend’s eyes, Jen knows the answer even before Debbie offers an evasive one. “Back in school he was your boyfriend, Jen.”
“Right.”
And I thought you had my back. All those times when you rode the team bus with him and came back to tell me how the other cheerleaders were flirting with him and how lucky I was to have you there to keep an eye on him for me. . .
But it’s ancient history now. She has a solid marriage to a loyal, loving husband, and Debbie has . . .
Nothing worth having.
“You know, I hadn’t seen Mike since—well, really, since you guys broke up and we all drifted apart,” Debbie tells her. “But then out of the blue, in the craziest coincidence, we ran into each other at—”
She breaks off, interrupted by Jen’s ringing cell phone.
Maybe it’s her mother, remembering something else she needed, or Frankie, calling to say that the girls are coming after all.
Jen apologizes and pulls her phone out of her pocket. This time, she instantly recognizes the number on caller ID: It’s Sacred Sisters. With an apprehensive sense of déjà vu, she answers the phone.
This time, it isn’t the principal. It’s an automated voice system, the same one that calls before dawn on stormy mornings to inform parents of school closings.
Jen listens to the message and then hangs up, aware of Debbie’s questioning gaze on her.
“Who was that?”
“The school,” Jen tells her, noticing that her battery is almost worn down and glad she has a charger in the car. “They said that due to the tragic death of one of the students, they’re canceling Spring Fling tonight and will have counselors and the social worker on hand tomorrow at the school to talk to kids who need it.”
“They did that at Woodsbridge, too, when Nicki . . .” Debbie shakes her head. “I mean the counselors for the other kids. Not Spring Fling . . . oh, Lord, I had forgotten all about Spring Fling. It was one of the few good things about going to that school. I can’t believe they’re still doing it after all these years. Was Carley going to go?”
Jen doesn’t have the heart to get into the topic of her daughter and Spring Fling right now. She shakes her head.
“Did that phone call give any details?”
“None at all. Not even her name.”
“I would imagine most of the kids have heard by now.”
“Probably. You know how—” She breaks off. Of course Debbie knows how quickly bad news circulates. Last Saturday, it was her own daughter.
Has it truly only been a week?
“How did you find out about Taylor?” Debbie asks.
“My parents heard from one of the neighbors. But there wasn’t anything specific. I mean, I don’t know how it happened, or why it happened,” she says, assuming Debbie does know.
“She hung herself, Jen.”
Jen presses a hand to her heart and shakes her head mutely, stunned at the violence of it, just as she’d been stunned about Nicki and the knife.
“So that’s the how of it. As for the why of it . . . who knows? She had everything going for her, the last kid you’d ever think would—well, she and Nicki were the last kids you’d ever think . . .”
She falls to bleak silence again, leaving Jen to try to wrap her head around the catastrophic coincidence that feels like anything but.
That two lovely girls from good homes—perhaps not with happily married parents, but decent homes just the same—could so violently take their own lives within days of each other simply defies reason.
“Did the girls know each other?” Jen asks Debbie.
“No. They never met. Sometimes Mike and I would fantasize about getting them together—we thought they would like each other—but of course, we assumed that wasn’t going to ever happen.”
“Did Taylor . . .” Jen clears her throat. “Did she leave a note, do you know?”
Debbie nods slowly. “I didn’t see it. Mike didn’t, either. His ex-wife told him about it. It was on the computer and it sounds like . . . it sounds exactly like Nicki’s note. Blaming Mike.”
“And the affair?”
“Yes.”
“What about The Virgin Suicides?”
“What do you mean?”
“The book—I saw it in Nicki’s room, the other day. She must have been reading it.”
Debbie just looks at her. Then, wordlessly, she stands and heads for the stairway, motioning for Jen to follow her.
Together, they climb to the second floor. Nicki’s pink and green bedroom is exactly as it was the other day, still with the fuchsia throw pillow askew and a distinct indentation on the quilt where Debbie sat grieving.
“Where is it?” she asks Jen, who walks over to the desk, pulls the book off the hutch shelf, and silently passes it to her, noticing that there’s a bookmark stuck between the pages.
Debbie looks at the novel, turns it over, opens it, reads the inside flap.
“I didn’t know she was reading this. And that’s strange, because . . .” She shakes her head and looks up at Jen. “In Novembe
r, we joined a mother-daughter book club at Woodsbridge with a bunch of her new friends from school. Her English teacher suggested it and I was so glad Nicki wanted to join, because she was never very big on reading, remember?”
Jen remembers, distinctly. From the time they were little girls, bookworm Carley was always trying to get Nicki to take some novel she’d loved, hoping she’d read it so that they could discuss it. It became a joke between them.
“You read the book,” Nicki would say, “and I’ll watch the movie with you.”
And that was what they did for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Hunger Games, Twilight . . .
But Nicki was even reluctant about some of the movies. Jen remembers driving the two of them to the cineplex to see the final Harry Potter installment, and Nicki nervously asking Carley’s reassurance that it wouldn’t be violent.
“Scary is one thing,” said the girl who would carve her own wrists with a butcher knife, “but you know I can’t deal with blood and gore, Carls.”
“Don’t worry, Nicks. If there’s a gory scene, I’ll hold your hand and you can close your eyes and I’ll tell you when it’s over.”
Pushing past another wave of sorrow, and wondering how Debbie manages to function at all beneath the weight of grief and guilt, Jen suggests, “Maybe her English teacher assigned The Virgin Suicides.”
Debbie shakes her head, passing the book back to Jen. “It was all classics. They were reading Of Mice and Men, and they had just finished Romeo and Juliet—you know, in February, for Valentine’s Day. They read it aloud in class and Nicki got to be Juliet. She liked that because—” Her voice breaks.
Jen hugs her. “It’s okay, Deb. I didn’t mean to . . . I’m sorry.”
A cell phone rings, breaking the silence. This time, it’s Debbie’s. She looks at it. “Mike. He was going over to the house, and he must be . . .”
“Go ahead, take it. I can go. I—”
“No, wait. I won’t be long.” Debbie quickly leaves the room, answering the phone with a gentle “Hey.”
Left alone, Jen turns the book over and over as Debbie had done, as if it might reveal some insight into Nicki’s last days. There’s a price sticker on the back, indicating that it was bought at Talking Leaves, Carley’s favorite bookstore.
Noticing that Nicki apparently didn’t get very far in her reading, she opens the novel to the spot Nicki left marked and sees that it’s page one, with its description of the youngest of the five sisters slitting her wrists.
The book flies from her grasp as if snatched away by the icy gust of revulsion that blasts through her.
“What?” Debbie asks, behind her, and she turns to see her standing there, phone poised in her hand as if to indicate Mike is still on the line. “Why did you throw that?” Without waiting for a reply, she goes on, “Mike said Taylor was reading it, too. It was in her room. He has her copy in his hand. He said she got it at Talking Leaves, too. But she hadn’t just started reading it, like Nicki. She was almost finished reading it.”
“There’s a bookmark? Do you know what page?”
Debbie rephrases the question into the phone, listens, then relays the answer: “It was stuck between pages 214 and 215.”
Hand trembling, Jen picks up Nicki’s copy and flips through it until she finds the spot.
“What? What is it?” Debbie asks, watching her.
Jen can only stare numbly at the pages depicting the scene where fifteen-year-old Bonnie hangs herself, and she knows Mike has just seen the same thing, because she can hear his voice telling Debbie.
“Maybe they did know each other after all,” Jen murmurs, mostly to herself. “Nicki and Taylor.”
And maybe—
The ominous thought barges into her brain:
Maybe one of them suggested that Carley read the book, too. Maybe they even suggested that she—
No. They wouldn’t have done that.
And even if they did—
Carley wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t.
Yes, Jen had been terrified about the possibility before she talked to Carley in her bedroom this morning; before she saw the tremulous smile when she reinstated her Internet privileges; before her daughter not only allowed herself to be hugged, but also hugged her back.
She left the house feeling better about everything.
Carley is in good hands with Frankie, and Jen will be with her the rest of today and all day tomorrow, and then on Monday they’ll talk to Sister Linda and find some professional help.
It’s going to be all right. It really is.
Carley waits to put on her sneakers until she hears Aunt Frankie go into the bathroom down the hall and close the door. Moments later, the pipes groan, indicating she’s stepped into the shower.
With a pang of guilt that’s fleeting enough not to stop her in her tracks, Carley grabs the backpack containing her laptop and tiptoes over to open her bedroom door as quietly as she can, willing it not to creak. She pokes her head out into the hall just in time to see Emma doing the same thing from her room.
“What are you doing?” they ask each other in unison.
“Nothing!” they answer each other in unison.
Then, wearing a defiant expression along with her jacket and too much eye makeup, Emma steps all the way out into the hall.
“Where are you going?” Carley calls after her—but in a whisper, lest Aunt Frankie hear. This is her one chance to sneak away, and Emma had better not blow it for her.
“Jailbreak,” is Emma’s terse reply as she heads for the stairs with a shrug.
A moment later, the front door opens and closes.
Now what?
Aunt Frankie is going to come out of the shower and find both of them missing?
She’s going to be super worried. Darn that Emma anyway.
Unless . . .
Carley hurries over to her desk, finds a sheet of paper, and scrawls a quick note.
Aunt Frankie—
Emma took off so I’m going after her. Be back soon.
XOXO
Carley
Again, she suffers a pang of guilt.
Again, it fails to deter her.
This is important. Angel flew all the way here on the red-eye just to meet her.
i was worried abt u, she wrote as soon as Carley signed onto the Internet. where have u been????
Warmed by her friend’s concern, Carley typed a brief explanation about her mother taking away the Internet as punishment.
That sux was the reply.
Then: ru grounded?
When Carley told her she isn’t, Angel wrote, great cuz I have a surprise 4 u
wat is it?
promise u wont tell ur prnts
tell them what??? Carley asked, growing anxious and impatient.
Angel explained that she’d jumped on a plane last night, using allowance and birthday money she’d been saving up.
so can u hang out 2day?
Carley thought about her mom, and Aunt Frankie, and her grandma.
i have to do this family thing so how bout 2nite
cant i have to fly back 2nite
Carley hesitated.
Then came another message: pleaseeeeeeee?!?!!?!?!?!?
my prnts wd kill me if i snuck out
ur already in trouble how much worse can it be
Angel had a good point.
cmon this is our 1 chance to meet and i came all this wayyyy
Another good point.
That was when Aunt Frankie knocked on Carley’s door to say she was going to jump into the shower.
And now . . .
I’m really doing it.
Carley’s sneakers carry her down the stairs into the kitchen, where she leaves the note on the counter for Aunt Frankie to find—just not right away. She n
eeds a head start to get out of the development, and she’s crossing her fingers that the metro bus will come pretty quickly. She doesn’t know the Saturday schedule.
Outside, she’s just in time to see Emma disappear down the driveway of the house next door to the Janiceks’, where a new family moved in last month.
It dawns on her: Emma’s new cool-hot boyfriend must be the teenage son of the single dad who bought the house.
I just hope she knows what she’s doing, she thinks as she scurries down the street. For that matter . . .
I hope I do, too.
After dashing down the street in the rain, Emma lowers the hood of her jacket, shakes out her hair, and knocks on the back door of Gabe’s house. She’d decided against ringing the front bell, not wanting Aunt Frankie to spot her if she happens to look out the bathroom window, which faces this end of the cul-de-sac.
It takes a long time for Gabe to answer the door, and when he does, he’s wearing his coat.
“Oh, hey,” he says. “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t sound so thrilled.”
“Sorry, I was . . . just on my way out.”
“Where are you going?”
“To meet a friend.”
She wants to ask if it’s a girl, but decides she’d better not. She doesn’t want him to think she’s jealous.
Even though I am.
“Where’s your dad?”
“Out.”
“He’s always out, isn’t he?”
“Pretty much.”
“So . . . is it a girl?” Emma hears herself ask.
“Is what a girl?”
“The friend you’re going to meet.”
“No. Why?”
He’s lying, she decides. She can tell by the way he keeps shifting his weight from one foot to the other, refusing to make eye contact with her.
“Just wondering. I mean, I haven’t seen you in, like, twenty-four hours and—”
“It hasn’t been that long. It was after school yesterday.”
“—and,” she talks over him, “I feel like you aren’t even glad to see me.”
“Well, I didn’t know you were coming over. You should have texted me first.”
“I couldn’t. I . . . lost my phone.” No way is she going to tell him her parents took it away from her. “But I figured you were probably texting me and wondering why I wasn’t answering.”
The Good Sister Page 29