The Friendship Pact

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “You made a good choice,” Daddy leaned over to tell me.

  I nodded. Smiled. And then I saw Danny. We’d talked about whether his tux should be brown or black. His shirt gold or rose colored. I forgot all of it as I looked him right in the eye and knew that my life was just beginning.

  I wasn’t marrying this man because my parents liked him. Or because, as Bailey said, he was crazy about me. Plain and simple, I was marrying him because I couldn’t imagine life without him.

  October 2008

  Hands trembling, I sat down on the cold hard chair next to my best friend, took her into my arms and held on.

  “Oh, my God, Kor. Oh, my God.” Bailey’s voice was muffled against my neck.

  “I’m right here, sweetie. And I’m not going anywhere.”

  Bailey’s older brother, Brian, accompanied by his state-supported part-time caregiver, was on a flight up from Florida, but wasn’t due for another couple of hours. Which left Bailey and me alone in the ICU family waiting room.

  “Oh, God, Kor, I didn’t...I had no idea....”

  Nestling my face against her hair, I spoke just above her ear. “There’s no way you could have known,” I said. Bailey’s mother’s life had been like a roller coaster since before Bailey was born. Who could have predicted that this latest divorce would cause her to...

  “He was a judge,” Bailey said. “How could I possibly think she’d win against a judge?”

  “You trusted the justice system,” I told the woman who was currently ranked at the top of her class in her last year of law school.

  “This is the man who used his power to get out of paying every single contractor they’d hired to remodel their house. Threatening those companies, saying he’d cause difficulties from the registrar of contractors, was wrong. And that’s only the beginning of his duplicity,” Bailey said. “But he wins.”

  She sat, seemingly staring at nothing, her expression more vacant than I’d ever seen it. Worse even than the night she’d told me about Stan, the pedophile asshole who should be in prison for what he’d done to her.

  I thought, for the hundredth time, that I shouldn’t have promised Bailey I’d keep her secret. I should have told Mom. Should have known that Bailey would need counseling, at the very least. Instead, I’d helped her lock herself deep inside and now, all these years later, I feared she’d never find her way out again.

  “He had her arrested for driving her own car,” she reminded me.

  “It was in his name.”

  “But she’d had exclusive use of it since they’d purchased it,” she said. “And he’d never told her she couldn’t continue to drive it after they separated. Sending his deputy after her was clearly a misuse of power.”

  Which didn’t matter at the moment. What mattered was that Bailey’s mother was on life support, lying in a hospital bed a few doors away, because she’d attempted suicide earlier that evening.

  “He’s going to pay for what he did.” I offered her what I could.

  “He’s a judge, Kor,” she said again. “He doesn’t just know how to work the system. He is the system. And he’s connected to everyone else who’s part of it, too.” Bailey’s voice sounded dead. But at least she was talking.

  “By law he’s held to a higher standard, not a lower one,” I said.

  Bailey sat up, the expression in her eyes bleak. “And who’s going to prosecute him? An attorney who’ll have to appear before him? An attorney whose paying clients will be facing him at some point in the future? Because it’s damn sure that my mother, a five-time-divorced paralegal who has a history of problems with alcohol abuse and has had numerous affairs, including one with this very same judge, hasn’t got a chance.”

  “It was the right thing to do, to report his misuse of power. To report the contracting debacle.” I clung to the one time Bailey’s mother had had enough backbone to stand up for herself.

  Because Bailey had stood behind her and guided her all the way, and I wasn’t going to have my friend beating herself up about it.

  I clung to what I knew was right. What Bailey believed was right. And I clung to my friend, giving her every ounce of strength I had.

  “Anyway, when I said the judge was going to pay, I wasn’t talking about paying in a court of law,” I added softly as the silence ticked slowly by. “The one thing he’ll never be able to escape is his own karma. Somehow or other, he’ll pay for this....”

  An hour passed with no sight of the doctor. No further word. We were waiting for them to stabilize her so we could see her. Bailey and I walked down the hall for cups of weak, machine-dispensed coffee. At half past midnight, we were the only nonemployee, nonpatient people in the waiting room.

  “Danny probably wants you home.” Bailey’s voice sounded loud in the corridor as we walked back to our seats for the umpteenth time.

  Hard to believe I’d been married for over five years. Seemed like five weeks. And forever, too. Danny was my life. Danny and Bailey.

  “He wants me right where I am,” I told her. He’d offered to come to the hospital with me, but I knew Bailey needed me there alone. And he’d been fine with that. Bailey had been in my life longer than he had.

  Danny might not be close to Bailey, but he didn’t ever get in the way of our connection. He respected its sacredness. Half an hour later, our coffee cups empty, we moved from chairs to the couch farther back in the room. Bailey’s shoulders were drooping, her long dark curls falling limply around her face. Putting my arm around her shoulders, I pulled her against me. Danny had already called the sub line for me, requesting a substitute teacher the next morning.

  “We’ll get through this,” I assured her. “You and me. Together.”

  “I know.”

  “I love you, Bail.”

  “Love you, too.”

  * * *

  With her head on Koralynn’s shoulder, Bailey contemplated sleep—the same kind of sleep her mother had embarked on when she’d taken an overdose of sleeping pills eight hours earlier.

  The kind where you didn’t have to worry about waking up.

  And there was the difference between her and Mom. She thought about it. Mom did it.

  “I should’ve been with her,” she said. Mom had called. Wanted to meet for dinner. Bailey had a moot court competition in the morning and had put her mother off in favor of preparing to win the case. She wasn’t just vying for grades; a win could give her the positioning she’d need to get on with a reputable firm as soon as she graduated.

  Or could have given her. There was no way she was going to the competition now.

  “You were with her all the time, Bail.” Koralynn’s voice wafted over her. And Bailey listened. After two years of law school, she trusted people less now than she ever had, except for Koralynn. But she still believed in Koralynn. Believed Koralynn.

  Her best friend, and maybe Mama Di and Papa Bill, seemed like the only people left on earth who still honored the truth.

  “I could tell by her tone of voice that she was struggling.”

  “She was always struggling. You held off going to law school right after college because she’d just found out the judge was having an affair and she thought she was getting divorced. You took money from him for your first year of law school because she begged you to—so she could prove you were all one big happy family. Then last year when they separated you took her to live with you. You’ve spent every weekend with her for months. And some evenings, too. You’re in y
our last year of law school, with more on your plate than most of us could manage, and you think you haven’t done enough? She should be giving to you, Bail. Maybe that would take her out of herself a little. She’s your mom—you should be able to expect help from her, not constantly feel guilty for not giving her more!”

  “I should never have encouraged her to file that complaint against him.”

  “She did the right thing. It’s the judicial commission’s mistake that they ruled unethically. Besides, that was six months ago.”

  “Yeah, but she never got over it.”

  “Which is why you helped her write a request for reconsideration. And she could talk to the reporter from Political Times. Or go to Channel Six, since they do exposés. She has a lot of options.”

  Like moving away from Pittsburgh, for one.

  “I should’ve known tonight was different.”

  “How was it different, Bailey? She’s been at the end of her rope for more than a year. For most of our lives, it seems. I’m sorry to sound harsh, especially now, but it kills me to see you try so hard and then lose so much of yourself because she doesn’t come through. Her journey is hers, and she probably does her best, Bail, but what I see is that you do everything for her, ask nothing for yourself, and then feel like you don’t do enough.”

  Bailey told herself she should sit up. Hold the weight of her own head.

  “I want you to promise me something, Bail.” Koralynn’s voice sounded more serious than usual.

  “Of course. Anything.” She could give Koralynn everything she had for the rest of her days and never be even.

  “Promise me that if you ever need anything, you’ll come to me. Promise me you’ll ask me for it.”

  “Of course.” She always had. Didn’t Koralynn know that?

  “Because I promise you, from the depths of my soul, that if there’s anything I have that you need, no matter what it is, I will give it to you.”

  “You know that’s how I feel about you, too. Right?” Bailey asked, although she couldn’t imagine that Koralynn would ever need her in such an elemental way.

  “Yes.”

  “I’d give you a kidney,” Bailey said into her friend’s shoulder—something they’d started saying back in high school, when a classmate of theirs had donated one of his kidneys to save his father’s life. They’d spent long hours talking about the gruesome details of the sacrifice, the pain and inconvenience, the danger, and decided it was the supreme act of love.

  “I’d give you both kidneys, Bail. I swear to you. You are not alone.”

  But an hour later, when the doctor came out to tell them that Bailey’s mother had died from the overdose of painkillers she’d consumed the previous evening, Bailey had never felt more alone in her life.

  Chapter Four

  May 2009

  “You want a drink?” Jake Murphy, dressed in a designer black suit with a red silk tie knotted perfectly at his starched white collar, slid an arm around Bailey’s waist as he came up behind her.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she told the man who’d escorted her to so many functions over the years she’d lost count of them.

  “Tom Collins?”

  Her drink of choice back in college—because it hadn’t tasted like alcohol. Not that she’d shared that piece of information with anyone but Koralynn.

  “Red wine.”

  Judge Weiner, the man who’d been her mother’s sixth and final husband, was making his way toward her and, catching his advance out of the corner of her eye, Bailey slipped her arm through Jake’s and accompanied him to the bar.

  “This is quite some shindig the Mitchells have put on for you,” Jake was saying.

  Most of the students graduating from her law class were having parties, the majority thrown by their families.

  “They’re the best,” Bailey said, instinctively looking through the crowd for Koralynn, who’d been by her side for most of the past year while she simultaneously grieved for her mother and completed her last year of a very grueling law program.

  Weiner had stopped for conversation. And was still looking at Bailey.

  Not seeing Kora, Bailey stood next to Jake at the portable bar set up by the pool. Mama Di and Papa Bill had chosen a lovely resort for the festivities. They’d invited her father, who’d sent a card, a check and some flowers, and Brian, who hadn’t been well enough to make the trip. But she had Kora.

  She kept her back to the room, but she could still feel those eyes on her. Boring into her.

  He reminded her of Stan. And for a second there, out of the blue, she remembered the roughness of Stan’s fingers in her pants. It wasn’t the first time she’d remembered. Wasn’t even the hundredth. She pushed the memory away with the familiarity of long practice.

  Weiner didn’t give a shit about her. It was all about appearances—his acceptance by his deceased ex-wife’s only daughter, a young lawyer who couldn’t afford him as an enemy. Their small world would have talked if he hadn’t shown up. And although he hadn’t been invited—and would’ve known why—he would also have known that she’d never make a scene. Not here.

  Just as Stan had known she’d never tell...

  Bailey listened as Jake ordered her wine and a scotch sour for himself.

  In high school, he’d been a beer drinker. In college, when the four of them had met either at Penn State or at Wesley, it had been Jäger bombs. Not until Koralynn’s wedding had she seen him drink scotch sours.

  The judge, who’d financed his stepdaughter’s first year of law school, was getting closer. She could hear his booming voice.

  Jake handed her a glass of wine and held up his highball. “Here’s to you. I’m proud of you, Bail.” His grin did that crazy thing to her, and for a second she was willing to lose herself in sensation. To lose thoughts of Stan to something healthier.

  Until she heard the voice again. The fake, professional tone. With almost no resemblance to the biting demands it had issued at home.

  “You feel like a breath of air?” she asked, leaving the bar and making a beeline for the pool outside. A hundred or more strings of little white lights gave the outdoor area a festive glow.

  But before she made it to her goal, Bailey was stopped by a close friend of Mama Di and Papa Bill’s. A woman she’d known most of her life.

  And then there was a couple from the church she’d attended when she spent the weekends at the Mitchells’. Jake joined in the conversations and in some private ones of his own. A steady presence by her side. She wondered if he’d recognized Weiner. If he was purposely keeping himself between her and the older man.

  It wouldn’t work for long. She knew the man. He got what he wanted. Always.

  “He’s gone....” Koralynn’s whisper right behind her changed Bailey’s world yet again.

  Bailey turned, that irritating lump in throat, but her friend was no longer there. A couple of seconds later, she caught a glimpse of Koralynn’s retreating back just as she and Danny greeted another one of their many guests.

  As if on cue, Koralynn turned around and gave her a knowing look, and Bailey sent her a silent thank-you. Koralynn’s smile brought peace back to Bailey’s evening and she relaxed as she sipped her wine, hardly daring to believe that she’d really graduated from law school.

  That all these people were there just for her.

  When the Mitchells had purposely and deliberately failed to invite the judge, the only member of the currently seated Pittsburgh Superior Court bench not to receive an invitation, Mama Di and Koralynn and Bailey had suspected he’d show up anyway—to save face among his peers before whom he’d played the grieving widower. Bailey had assured them it would be fine if h
e did. She was going to have to face him in court eventually.

  But it hadn’t been fine. It would never be fine. She might have to work with the man on occasion, but she would never forget or forgive the fact that he’d abused his power and killed her mother as surely as if he’d pointed a gun at her head and pulled the trigger.

  Koralynn hadn’t said a word when Bailey said she’d be fine, but, as always, her best friend had known exactly how she felt.

  And somehow she’d come through again, protecting her from the evils in her world. Whether Kora had actually asked him to leave, or had someone call him away on some pretext, she didn’t know, but she knew the Mitchells had been prepared; they’d handled the situation.

  As Bailey walked around that magical-looking room, which was brimming with conversation and congratulations, the judge’s presence lingered. She finished one glass of wine and stopped at the bar for a second, wishing her mother could see her—could know that she’d really made it through law school. Know that her daughter would be everything she’d ever wanted her to be, everything she’d ever wanted to be herself. Bailey was going to live the dreams her mother had given up for her and Brian.

  A second glass of wine became a third.

  Thankfully Jake took his position of escort seriously and stayed beside her. He even asked her to dance, which he’d shied away from when, as a favor to Danny, he’d escorted Bailey to their senior prom. And anytime since, at college homecomings, or an evening at a club.

  He’d been saved from escort duty during their high school junior prom because he’d had a girlfriend.

  And from having to accompany her to a college graduation party for the same reason. Different girlfriend, though.

  “I’ve got something to ask you,” he said, about four drinks into the evening as they danced their first ever dance together.

  “Yes, you can have a ride home in the limo,” she said, unusually chipper with him. The Mitchells had rented a limo for her and Kora and Danny, in case they wanted to go to a club after the party.