Her Best Friend's Lie

by Laura Wolfe

  My eyelids lowered and I shifted my arm, trying to imagine Andrew lying next to me, telling me to relax and have fun, and reminding me that he’ll see me soon.

  “You’re so beautiful.”

  I hung on to each remembered word, the raspy voice sweet in my ear. But remorse tunneled through me because it wasn’t Andrew’s voice whispering to me. This was the massive, horrible secret I was hiding from my friends, and from my husband. The flattering words were from the other man in my life. The one I’d secretly been seeing for the past eight months. The one with the boyish grin and interesting eyes who showered me with compliments and surprised me with flowers. The man who rearranged his schedule to make dinner reservations and book hotel rooms. I’d never meant for it to happen. I never thought I was one of those women who self-medicate, using the fleeting attention of a charming man to make themselves feel better. And I certainly wouldn’t reveal what I’d done to anyone. I was a family therapist for God’s sake. I had to protect my professional integrity. People couldn’t know that my life was a disaster.

  I’d thought about my actions frequently, and about why I’d done what I’d done. I concluded I’d cheated on Andrew because he didn’t appreciate me anymore. It was a cliché, but it was the truth. At the very least, Andrew didn’t know how to express his love. He treated me like another item on our to-do list.

  Take out the garbage. Check. Pay the bills. Check. Tell Megan to have a good day. Check.

  That must have been why I’d strayed, why I’d jumped into the arms of the first man who showed me an ounce of passion.

  “Can I buy you a coffee?”

  That’s how the affair had started. He’d spoken that single question in a deep, gravelly voice. I’d seen him at the cafe across from my clinic three days in a row, noticing his tailored suit and strong jawline. On the second day, his gaze hung on to me too. We’d chatted while waiting in line, talking about bland subjects like road construction, the weather, and our kids’ favorite non-caffeinated drinks. It was nothing more than a coffee with a man I barely knew, but a stronger person would have said no. During that brief twenty-minute date, a magnetism had pulled us closer, an easy familiarity warming me to him. It felt like we’d already confessed our secrets and shared our stories, as if I could see my entire future in his gold-brown irises. He’d lowered his left hand beneath the table when he caught me glancing toward his wedding band. Without realizing it, I’d mirrored his actions, hiding my ring too. The mutual seduction had been quick and inevitable. His allure had rushed through me as beautiful and dangerous as a tropical waterfall spilling off the side of a cliff. It was the kind of fresh excitement that accompanied intense physical attraction. Lust at first sight. So different from anything I’d felt with Andrew in months, if not years.

  Now guilt consumed me, panic attacks hitting me at unexpected moments. Oddly, it was the affair that finally made me realize Andrew was enough. The problem had been with me, not him. Instead of talking to him about my feelings and telling him what I needed, I had shut down. I was the one who hadn’t been smart enough to appreciate my spouse. I still wasn’t smart enough to end it. I’d lost my confidence over the years. I hoped this weekend with old friends would help me reclaim a piece of my former self, to glimpse the determined, happy young woman who used to occupy my body. I’d held my goals and dreams close back then, like shiny coins in my pocket. Somewhere along the line, the stitching had come undone. Now my pocket was empty. I needed to find myself again. Maybe then I’d have the courage to come clean with Andrew and put in the work to repair our marriage.

  My eyelids closed, my body aching for sleep, but my mind reeled as I pictured my current location so far away from my unsuspecting husband and my precious children. Instead, I was lying in this room listening to Charlotte’s heavy breathing, a stone’s throw away from the creepy owner of the cabin. Nothing but acres and acres of woods surrounded us. I would sleep with one eye open. Morning couldn’t come soon enough.

  Chapter Eight

  The sun filtered through the kitchen window as coffee dripped into a cloudy pot with a cracked handle. I wondered if the coffee maker was celebrating its fortieth birthday right along with the rest of us. Still, I was grateful that it functioned. After a restless night, I was desperate for caffeine. My phone had no reception but showed the time—8:15 a.m. Charlotte and Sam sat at a square kitchen table, waiting for their caffeine fix, too. Kaitlyn and Jenna had wandered out to the porch.

  Charlotte tilted her head toward Sam, who wore a gray MedTech hoodie over her pajamas. “So, who are MedTech’s biggest clients right now?”

  Charlotte had already asked Sam six or seven questions about her online prescription company, ignoring the fact that Sam was bleary-eyed and hadn’t had her coffee yet. Sam handled the interrogation better than I would have.

  “We’re finding a new segment of sales through online advertising, but most of our clients are physicians in private practice. They refer their patients to us, especially the ones who’ve fallen through the cracks of traditional insurance.”

  “What’s their cut?” Charlotte asked without missing a beat.

  “It depends on the product and the volume.”

  Sam and Charlotte had been pre-med during school. After graduation, Sam had gone on to complete medical school, specializing in cardiology. Then she’d shifted gears and taken a research position at a hospital, while simultaneously building her online prescription company from her basement. Just like when we were in school, the conversation between them often slipped to medical talk.

  Sam fidgeted with her phone and let out a sigh.

  “Still no reception.” I winked as I delivered full mugs of black coffee to them. I wished I’d thought to pack sugar or milk.

  Charlotte gazed toward the window. “Maybe a signal could come through down by the lake or on a ridge somewhere. I’d love to check in on Oliver.”

  I paused for a second, noticing she hadn’t mentioned anything about Reed. “We could drive back toward civilization later. See if we can pick up a signal.” I took a sip of the coffee, my teeth clicking at the bitter liquid, which tasted more like airplane fuel.

  “Wow. That’s bad coffee.” Charlotte wrinkled her nose and set down her mug.

  I opened the fridge and pulled out the box of muffins from one of Kaitlyn’s bags of groceries. There were strawberries too, but I didn’t have the energy to wash and trim them. Charlotte asked Sam another question about her company, and I felt like a third wheel. I wandered out to the porch where Kaitlyn and Jenna sat hunched over the table, whispering. I thought I heard my name. The photo album lay open between them. Jenna flipped around at the sound of the door.

  “You guys telling secrets again?” I asked.

  “Come sit down with us,” Jenna said a little too quickly, and without answering the question.

  I scraped back a chair and set down my coffee, finding relief in the brisk morning air whipping off the lake. The door opened again, and Charlotte and Sam wandered toward us.

  “Morning,” Kaitlyn said.

  Charlotte raised her chin toward the lake and sniffed the fresh air. “It’s so nice out here.”

  They filled in the two remaining chairs.

  “Look at this.” Jenna stabbed her finger at the album, pointing to a picture on the very first page. We all leaned forward to get a better view. It was a photo we’d only skimmed over last night, eager to flip through the rest of the images. In the picture, Jenna, Sam, and Kaitlyn rested against a Formica kitchen counter with cardboard boxes around them and plain white cabinets stretching behind their heads. They wore grungy T-shirts and tight denim shorts, and had their hair pulled back in ponytails. A portion of my shoulder and elbow poked into the frame. The photo had been taken the day the five of us had moved into our rental house on 14th Street our junior year. I remembered that day so well—the excitement, the laughter, the stress.

  “That was move-in day on 14th Street,” Charlotte said.

  “Yeah. But
look on the counter.” Jenna tapped the photo again. “There’s my mom’s mug. The one that somehow mysteriously disappeared a couple of weeks later.”

  I leaned closer. Near the edge of the frame, a white mug sat next to Jenna on the counter. The front of the mug read #1 Mom in dark-blue lettering.

  Heat prickled across my cheeks. “Oh my gosh. You’re right.”

  Kaitlyn raised her eyes. “Isn’t that crazy?”

  “So, what do you guys think happened to my mug, to the last remaining and most meaningful artifact connecting me to my deceased mom? How did it vanish into thin air? Do you think her ghost came back and took it?”

  Sam sat straight up in her chair, her eyes darting from the album to me to the trees. I closed my eyes as the memories poured through me, as dark and bitter as the coffee.

  The five of us stood in a circle in the living room with cardboard boxes and the chemical odor of fresh paint surrounding us. It was late August and a week before classes started. We hadn’t worked out the bedroom assignments yet.

  Jenna clapped her hands. “Here we go, ladies. It’s time to draw for bedrooms.” She pulled out a baseball cap with five pieces of folded paper inside. We’d been through the same routine last year, but at a different house on the other side of campus. “There’s a number on each paper that determines the order we get to choose. Everyone good with that?”

  Charlotte stuck out her lip, a look of concern clouding her eyes. “It’s not really fair that one of the bedrooms is so much bigger than all the others.”

  Kaitlyn nodded. “Yeah. And the big room has its own bathroom attached.”

  I thought back to the house we’d rented the year before, our sophomore year. The walls were thin, there was no dishwasher, and the hot water only worked half the time. We’d faced a different drama in the months leading up to last year’s move-in—whether or not to invite Frida to live with us. Charlotte had wanted to include her in the house, explaining she was Frida’s only friend. The rest of us did not want strange, lurking, staring, hygienically challenged Frida living with us. The majority ruled. This year, no one had even mentioned Frida’s name.

  Charlotte wiped her hands on her shorts and looked around. “We should have chosen that yellow house we looked at. All the rooms were the same.”

  Jenna shook her head. “That house was in a horrible location, Charlotte. This one is so much better. Besides, we signed the lease six months ago. We can’t change our minds now.”

  I cleared my throat. “Maybe whoever gets the enormous bedroom should pay a little more toward the rent.” I laced my fingers together, hoping I didn’t get the room. It would only cause problems. I didn’t want my housemates to resent me.

  “Nobody should have to pay more,” Jenna said. “That’s not fair. We’ll randomly draw for it.”

  “Why isn’t it fair to pay more for a bigger room with a private bathroom?” Kaitlyn asked.

  Jenna touched her forehead and sighed. “Because not everyone can afford to pay more than the amount we agreed on. We shouldn’t discriminate.”

  “It’s not discriminating. If one of us wants a bigger room, we can pay a little more.” Kaitlyn turned away from Jenna and widened her eyes at me.

  Sam rubbed her hands together and lifted her gaze from the floor. “If you guys don’t mind, I think I should take the larger room. I’m fine paying a little extra for it. I bought a queen-size mattress yesterday. It’s out in the truck right now. I don’t even know if I can fit it in the smaller bedrooms.”

  Jenna made a face like she smelled rotten garbage. “No way, Sam. We all would have bought queen-size mattresses if we knew it would get us that room. That’s not fair.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. This stupid bedroom was already causing problems. It made sense to give Sam the room. The rest of us had twin or double beds. But I didn’t want to get on anyone’s bad side. Especially Jenna’s. Her mom had passed away the previous spring, losing a long battle with breast cancer. The two of them had been especially close. It wasn’t my place to make Jenna’s life more difficult.

  Sam rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Let’s draw the numbers so we can unload our stuff.”

  Five hands reached into the hat. I clamped my fingers around a folded square of paper, holding my breath as I opened it.

  “Oh, great,” Sam said, blinking her eyes at the ceiling. “I got the last choice. I can’t even fit my bed into that corner bedroom.”

  “I got number one,” I said, my voice shaky.

  Everyone stared at me.

  Jenna nudged my arm. “Congrats, Megan. You get the master suite.”

  The number in my hand felt more like a curse than a blessing. “No. I don’t want it. I’ll take the room in the back. The one with the hexagon window.”

  Sam tilted her head. “Why?”

  “It’s charming,” I said. But that wasn’t the reason. I didn’t want the burden of the enormous bedroom. Besides, I barely owned any furniture, and I’d perfected my bare-bones shower routine over the last two years of communal living. A private bathroom would be wasted on me.

  Charlotte’s mouth gaped. “Really? You’re not taking the suite?”

  I shrugged. “Nah.”

  “Yes!” Jenna pumped her fist in the air and jumped up and down, squealing like she’d just scored the winning goal in an overtime game. “I have number two. I’ll take the big room with the bathroom. Woo-hoo!”

  Sam stared blankly, her lip twitching.

  “I have number three,” Charlotte said. “I’ll take the first-floor room.”

  “I’ll take the tiny bedroom in the corner,” Kaitlyn said, smiling at Sam. “You should be able to fit your bed into that other room upstairs.”

  Sam lifted her face toward Kaitlyn. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. It’s no big deal.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jenna stepped back. “Glad that’s all worked out. You are all welcome to visit me in my suite at any time, especially if anyone feels the sudden need to do somersaults or cartwheels across the floor. Or if there’s a shower emergency.”

  “Or a toilet emergency?” I asked.

  Jenna cringed. “I guess.”

  I chuckled and shook my head, but noticed Sam stood with her arms crossed in front of her, not cracking a smile.

  In the days that followed, Jenna didn’t have many visitors to her spacious suite. She bounded around like the queen of the rental house, loud and oblivious to the tension surrounding her handling of the room assignments. In contrast, Sam, Kaitlyn, and Charlotte stopped by my room frequently. Everyone wanted to talk about their feelings, how they’d been slighted or were annoyed with Jenna, or how she should be paying more for the bigger room. Sometimes, the complaints were more general—people not cleaning up after themselves in the kitchen or why a guy who promised to call one of them never did. Even Jenna stopped in occasionally to talk about how much she missed her mom and how her dad rarely returned her calls. She worried he was suffering from depression.

  I was already on the road to becoming a psychologist by then, and my friends’ efforts to seek my counseling confirmed that, perhaps, I’d found my calling. I found it satisfying to peer inside a friend and dissect why she felt a certain way. I imagined a computer engineer felt the same bubble of anticipation when removing a panel from the back of a machine and following which wires connected to which circuits. By talking things through, it was possible to peel back the layers and get to the root of the problem. Counseling wasn’t a burden to me; it was a thrilling and rewarding challenge.

  One Saturday afternoon, I sat cross-legged on my bed, reading a chapter from a textbook when a light knock sounded on my door.

  “Yeah.”

  The door creaked open and Sam stepped inside. Her brown eyes were glassy and her face frozen.

  I looked up from my reading. “What’s wrong?”

  “Is Jenna home?” Sam whispered, peering over her shoulder toward the door.

  “No. She’s at soccer practice
. Why?”

  “Something happened.” Sam sat on the bed next to me and covered her face with her hands.

  “What?”

  She lowered her hands. “It was an accident. I swear.”

  “What happened?”

  “Jenna’s mom’s mug. I was rearranging the glasses in the cabinet. It slipped from my hand and shattered on the floor.”

  “Oh no.”

  Jenna drank coffee from the same mug every day. It was the mug she’d given her mom for Mother’s Day fifteen years earlier. It said “#1 Mom” across the side. Her mom had sipped from it every day when she’d been alive, explaining to Jenna with a smirk how the woman next door had received the same mug from her son, so she’d have to fight her neighbor for the title. Jenna had told us the story many times, always with a sheen of nostalgia in her sky-blue eyes. The emotional significance of the mug was invaluable.

  “Shit!” Sam bit her lip. “How could I have been so careless? Why did I even touch it?”

  I raised my gaze to meet hers. “You have to tell Jenna.”

  “No. I can’t. She’ll think I did it on purpose.”

  “Huh?”

  “She’ll think I was trying to get back at her for taking the bedroom I wanted.”

  I thought of the drama from move-in day, thankful again that I’d selected one of the smaller rooms. Sam’s bed filled her room from wall to wall. She could barely open her closet door and dresser drawers. She frequently complained about her cramped living quarters.

  Sam paced toward the wall, clutching her head. “It was just a fluke. The handle slipped.”

  I closed my book. “Of course, it was an accident. Jenna will understand.”

  “No. She won’t. Please. Don’t tell her. You know how Jenna is. She’s going to make my life a living hell.”

  “Can we glue it back together?”

  Sam lowered her thick eyelashes. “It was too far gone. I cleaned it up already and threw away the pieces.”