Big Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

  “Of course.” The rabbi was young, in his thirties, with short, dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He had a pale, earnest-looking face and blue-gray eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses. A gold band gleamed on his left hand, and he wore a pressed blue suit with a shiny light-blue silk tie. The suit he’d brought up here, I guessed, to marry Drue and Stuart.

  “Thank you for coming. This is such an unbelievable tragedy, for a young woman to lose her life on her wedding day. I want to make sure she is remembered, and celebrated, appropriately.” He had a legal pad and a pen, and he flipped to a blank page. “What can you tell me about Drue?”

  That she didn’t deserve to die, I thought. Whatever she’d done, whomever she’d done it to, whatever she’d deserved, it wasn’t this. I felt my throat get tight as the rabbi looked at me, waiting.

  “She was funny,” I said. “Lively. She had a great sense of adventure. She could turn any day into an occasion. If that makes sense.”

  The rabbi nodded, and as he wrote, I told him everything I thought he could use. I told him that Drue loved jokes, and didn’t say how often my classmates and I had been the target of them. I told him that she liked pranks and fun, and didn’t mention her cruel imitations of our math teacher’s limp or a classmate’s stutter. I said that she’d been popular, with lots of friends and lots of boyfriends, and I didn’t mention her habit of starting up with a new guy before she’d entirely ended things with an old one, leaving me to offer explanations and excuses to the wronged party. I said that she loved music, and art, and that she had a great sense of style. I said that she was beautiful, and didn’t tell him that she’d had her nose and her breasts both done, or how she’d flirted with bulimia all through high school. I could still remember the time I’d found her in the bathroom after lunch, on one of the rare occasions she’d actually eaten something substantial. She’d been poised above the toilet bowl, holding her hair away from her face, and she hadn’t even needed to stick her fingers down her throat. She’d just bent down, opened her mouth, and sent her grilled cheese splashing into the water. See? she’d said. Easy!

  “What else can you tell me?” said the rabbi. When I hesitated, he said, “Don’t worry about trying to be entirely complimentary. I want to get a real sense of her. Of course, I’ll make some choices about the stories I tell. But I want to know what she was really like, as much as I can.”

  My throat ached, and my eyes stung. I thought about the quote from The Great Gatsby, about how Tom and Daisy Buchanan “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness… and let other people clean up the mess.” I thought of how awful Drue had been, how carelessly cruel, and, still, how much I’d loved her, how I’d been powerless in the face of her charms; how, as soon as I heard the familiar cadences of her voice, as soon as I felt her attention, her regard, all of that focused on me, I was ready to forgive her, to forgive everything, just to have her in my life again, because life with Drue was a good time, a memorable time. Every moment with her had the potential to turn into an adventure. She’d made me feel clever and beautiful, just by association. She’d made me feel special.

  When I felt like I could speak, I cleared my throat. “When she asked me to be in the wedding, I think it was the first time that she asked about me, and what I was doing, and really listened when I answered. It was the first time she didn’t see me as… oh, I don’t know. A sidekick. Someone lesser than she was. Or a cautionary tale. Someone she could look at and say, At least I’m thinner and prettier than she is. At least I’ll never be that.” My eyes were burning again, and my throat felt tight. “I think that she was sorry that she’d hurt me, and that she wanted to do better.” I sniffled and took a sip from the cup of water. “That’s what I’m going to believe. Because that’s how I want to remember her.”

  Rabbi Medloff touched my hand. “In the Jewish tradition, when someone dies, we say ‘Baruch dayan ha’emet,’ which means ‘Blessed is the true judge.’ ” He looked at me, his eyes intent. “God knows your friend. God knows her heart. Who she was, and who she was trying to become.” He squeezed my hand. “There is a true judge, and I believe that judge will see her.”

  I nodded, and sniffled, and wiped my cheeks.

  “Do you have friends here?” His voice was gentle. “Any family? People who can be with you?”

  I felt gratitude flood through me, that Darshi was here, and that Nick was, too, and that my parents were standing by, waiting to hear from me, wanting to help. Then I thought about Drue again, the way her eyes had followed her father at her engagement party, how her parents had squabbled over the cost of the wedding, how her fiancé hadn’t come to comfort her. I wondered if, at the end, she had known that she was dying, if she’d been in pain or if she’d been afraid, and I thought about how, in spite of all the ways we were different, Drue had spent a lot of her life being lonely… just like me.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The hospital cafeteria smelled like overboiled coffee and industrial cleanser. The floors were pea-soup green; the walls were a dispirited beige. A pink and silver IT’S A GIRL! balloon hung, half-deflated, from a chair where it had been tied with pink ribbon. At a table for four, three women in blue jeans sat in the metal-legged chairs, their heads together as they talked softly. A janitor wearing earbuds pushed a mop behind a cart made of scuffed yellow plastic, bobbing his head in time to music only he could hear. I spotted Darshini and Nick at a table. Nick looked tanned and healthy in his pinkish-red shorts and white shirt. Darshi had discarded her jacket, and her shimmering silk plum shell matched the sheen of her lipstick. I felt something painful and familiar flare up inside of me. She was pretty and he was handsome. They looked like they belonged together, like they matched in a way that Nick and I never would.

  I turned away to fill a paper cup with coffee, doctoring it with sugar and cream, when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a familiar figure dart down the hall. I turned around in time to see a flash of Corina Bailey’s silvery hair as she vanished into a room with a sign that said CONFERENCE ROOM on its door.

  “The plot, she thickens,” I whispered. Abandoning my coffee on the table, I told Darshi and Nick what I’d seen and padded quietly down the hall, hard on the heels of the not-groom and his erstwhile fiancée. When I arrived at the conference room door, I gave them a minute, knocked once on the door, and pushed it open before anyone answered.

  Inside, sitting on a couch with padded vinyl cushions, was Stuart, dressed in the standard-issue white-guy uniform of Docksiders, khaki shorts, and a blue-and-white-checked short-sleeved button-down. Corina, in a tight white T-shirt and pale-pink capri pants, was curled against him, her head on his chest, one hand stroking his cheek. They weren’t kissing, but the way Corina was touching him was not the way a woman would touch a friend.

  I cleared my throat. Neither of them noticed me. “Excuse me,” I said. That did the trick. Stuart jolted upright, jerking himself away from Corina and putting twelve inches of vinyl seat cushion between them. Corina moved more slowly, unwinding her limbs slowly, extending her legs and stretching her arms over her head. Her T-shirt rose over the firm, golden-brown convexity of her belly. She moved languidly, like a woman who’d just rolled out of bed.

  “Daphne,” said Stuart, his resonant voice thin. He cleared his throat. “It… it isn’t what you think.”

  Corina rolled her eyes and said, “Actually, Daphne, it’s exactly what you think.” Her voice was pitched normally. Instead of sounding like a little girl, she sounded like an adult, and I remembered Drue telling me, She isn’t what you think.

  “Corina…” Stuart said.

  She turned her eye roll on him. “What’s the point of hiding now? We don’t have to lie anymore! The dog days are over!” The breathy baby-doll voice, the kittenish gestures, the girlish affect, all of it was gone. Maybe this wised-up, hard-edged woman was the real Corina. Maybe there was no real Corina at all, just different versions, different Corinas for different occas
ions.

  Stuart put his hand on her shoulder. Corina shook it off. “No. No, don’t shush me. I’ve had it. I’m done with the lies.” She turned to me, a smug expression making her pretty face significantly less pretty. “Stuart and I love each other. We never stopped loving each other. And now we’re going to be together. Love wins.”

  Corina gave me a smile that showed all of her teeth. Stuart, meanwhile, looked like a man trying to pass a kidney stone. I thought of the woman whose voice Nick had heard in the darkness, the woman who’d said I’m done waiting and I’ve waited long enough.

  “Did Drue know that you and Corina were still together?”

  Stuart’s shoulders slumped. Corina sat up straighter. “Of course she knew,” she said. At some point, she’d taken time to put on a full face of makeup, from foundation to lip liner to fake lashes. Her nipples strained against the fabric of her T-shirt, and she’d scooted so close to Stuart that the side of her thigh was right up against his.

  “Look,” she said. “I know Drue was your friend, so I’m sorry. But she was a horrible person. She treated Stuart like her servant. Do this, do that. Fly there, stand here. Marry me in June, on Cape Cod, so the whole world can see, and not… ow!” I looked. Stuart had taken her by the wrist and was pinching her. Not gently.

  “That’s enough,” he said.

  Corina wrenched herself away from him, glaring. On the show, her fingernails had been short and polished pale pink, her fingers bare. Now her nails were painted blood red, so dark that they could have been lacquered with the same stuff that Tinsley, the show’s villainess, had worn.

  “We don’t have to talk to you,” she said.

  “No,” I acknowledged. “But if it turns out that Drue was murdered, and that the girl they arrested didn’t do it, you two are going to be at the top of the list. I mean, I’m no Angela Lansbury, but this”—I made a gesture that encompassed the two of them and, I hoped, their activities the night before—“doesn’t look good.”

  “We have alibis.” Corina’s voice was smug.

  “Seriously? You’re going to tell the cops that you were together last night?” I asked, letting her hear the skepticism in my voice.

  Maybe Corina was oblivious, but Stuart, evidently, could grasp how terrible an idea it was. “Corrie…” he said.

  She ignored him. “It’s the truth. And the truth shall set you free.” Turning toward me, silvery hair swinging, she said, “They were never in love. And there wasn’t even going to be a wedding. The whole thing was a fake.”

  I looked at her, then turned to Stuart, who was bent over, with his elbows on his thighs and his head cradled in his hands.

  “What,” I asked, “was going on?”

  “Drue needed money,” he said, without looking up. “The family business was in trouble, and she wanted to save it. She couldn’t get access to her trust fund until she turned thirty, unless she got married before then.”

  I nodded, remembering how Drue had explained it to me. “Okay, so she needed to get married. But didn’t you just say there wasn’t going to be a wedding today?”

  Stuart Lowe had the grace to at least look ashamed. He couldn’t even meet my eyes, so he addressed his remarks to the floor. “Drue and I got married six months ago, at City Hall. She got her trust fund. And we started planning this whole thing.” He nodded toward the door, toward Truro, and the rented mansions, and the beachfront party, the caterers, the DJs, the hand-knotted silk rugs on the sand. “The plan was…” He looked up at Corina, his expression miserable. She gave him a tight-lipped nod.

  “Go on,” she said. “Get it all out.”

  He sighed. “Okay, so the plan was for me to leave Drue at the altar. Instead of ‘I do,’ I was going to say ‘I can’t.’ I was going to say that I still loved Corina.” At that, Corina gave a smug smile and cuddled up even closer to him. I stared, remembering the pitch deck Detective McMichaels had shown me: There will be guaranteed glamour, celebrity sightings, and maybe a surprise or two!

  Well, I thought. That certainly would have been surprising. It also explained Drue’s indifference to her husband-to-be, the way she’d rolled her eyes and said “Meh” when I’d asked if he’d mind her ditching their engagement party. And, of course, the way he hadn’t been around last night. “So that’s what you promised the businesses you were pitching. That was the big plot twist.”

  He gave a small, miserable-looking nod. “We figured if the wedding didn’t happen, that would be in the news, and all three of us would get a bunch of new followers on social. We wanted to have deals in place before that happened, so that we could, you know…”

  “Monetize the scandal?” I said.

  “It was my idea,” Corina announced proudly. If she was even the tiniest bit sorry about what she and Stuart had been planning, if she felt even the merest scintilla of guilt, I could see no sign of it on her pretty face.

  “And what was going to happen after that?” I asked.

  Corina smoothed her silvery hair. “Stuart and I would get back together. He’d say that he never stopped loving me. In a year or so they’d get divorced and we’d get married. Like we’d planned. Only by then we’d be even more famous. Real famous, not just reality-TV famous.”

  “And what about Drue?”

  “I know she was talking to the producers about having her own season of All the Single Ladies,” Stuart said. “I don’t know if she’d locked it in.”

  That part, at least, made sense. I could imagine the People magazine covers, the cover shot of Drue gazing into the distance, looking beautiful and forlorn, with a headline reading HEIRESS’S HEARTBREAK. And then, a few months later, Drue beaming, holding an armful of the colorful bow ties that the bachelorettes on “All the Single Ladies” distributed to their male suitors. DRUE BOUNCES BACK!!! I thought of the hashtags—#singleladies and #lookingforlove and #singlegirlproblems and #loveyourselffirst. I thought about all the single and searching women who’d follow her story, on TV and on social media; all the businesses who’d want a bite of the apple. Maybe she’d even have ended up as the face of one of the dating apps, if she didn’t land a man on the show.

  “And Stuart would have the money to get his business off the ground,” said Corina.

  At that revelation, Stuart slumped even farther on the couch, as if he was hoping the crevice between the cushions would swallow him up. “Money from the trust fund?” I guessed. At his unhappy nod, I said, “For the brain smoothies?”

  “You think it’s a joke.” There were cords standing out on Corina’s neck. Her cheeks were stained a mottled, unlovely pink. “They’re going to be huge. Just wait. You’ll see.”

  “So Stuart would launch his business. He’d get rich,” I said. “All three of you would get famous. You two could be together, and everyone would get to be on TV. Am I missing anything?”

  “Yes. You’re missing the point. You’re making it sound like Drue was the victim.” Corina’s lips were curled, her teeth bared. “Like it was this plot we cooked up against her, when it was actually something we came up with together. Drue knew the score.” She raised her chin. “And she deserved it. Getting dumped on her wedding day. She was a bitch.” Corina’s voice was low and furious. “A one-hundred-percent, twenty-four-karat bitch. I guarantee, the only reason she wanted you around was so she could get a bunch of fatties to follow her.”

  I felt my stomach twisting, my entire body suddenly cold. That isn’t true, I wanted to say as Corina kept talking. “You want to know what your friend was really like? Want to know how the whole thing started?” Stuart stared at the floor as Corina stood up and came stalking toward me, flaxen hair swinging. Spittle flew from her painted lips, spots of color burned in her cheeks. “She saw Stuart on TV. Right when the show started airing. And she decided that she had to have him back.”

  I stood still, thinking that this sounded possible, maybe even probable.

  “After the first, like, three episodes, after she saw how Stuart was blowing up, she call
ed him. At first it was all sweet talk.” Corina pushed her hair behind her ears and raised her voice to a simpering falsetto: “Oh, I made a terrible mistake when I dumped you, you’re the only man I want, I love you so so much.” Corina rolled her eyes. “Like that. When Stuart didn’t fall for it, when he told her that he loved me, that he’d moved on, that’s when she offered the money.”

  I looked at Stuart. “And all you’d have to do was… what? Marry her in secret, then pretend to be engaged for a while, and leave her at the altar?”

  “Oh, she had a whole list of demands,” Corina said. She sat down next to Stuart and crossed her legs. “She wanted a June wedding on the Cape. She wanted it in the paper, and the magazines. She wanted five hundred thousand followers on Instagram, she wanted five major corporate sponsors. She wanted to win. At least for a little while. Everything was a contest to her, and she always had to win.”

  My head was throbbing, and my face still felt frozen and numb. “And Drue was okay with the whole left-at-the-altar thing?”

  Stuart cleared his throat. “My impression was that maybe she had someone else, too,” he said. “She wasn’t going to be alone.”

  “So why didn’t she just marry that guy? She could have been with someone she loved and gotten the money.”

  “Win-ning,” Corina said. “That wouldn’t have been winning. She couldn’t just marry any guy, it had to be a guy like Stuart, and taking him away from someone else was, like, icing on the cake.” She went back to her spot on the couch, curling against Stuart, who caressed the side of her head, murmuring something I couldn’t hear.

  “Did you ever love her?” I asked him. “Did you even like her?”

  Stuart was silent for a long moment. “Drue was fun. When I met her at Croft, she was, you know, always up for a good time. But in the end…” His voice trailed off. “She had a goal, and I was her way to get there.”