The Friendship Pact

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Yes, sir, I’m sorry to bother you again,” I began, “but I’ve got good news. I was so excited I rushed right over here and then, when you answered the door, I realized how it might look, a stranger in jeans barging in and all, so...”

  “What my slightly overzealous but generous client is trying to say is that she got ahead of herself and is now here to do this properly.” Bailey’s interruption sounded so...official, even I was studying her.

  “Mrs. Brown is a teacher at the school Mary Ephrain attends...”

  My heart sank. No, Bailey! He’s going to shut—

  Before I could complete the thought, Bailey’s foot shot forward, preventing the not-so-gentle closing of the front door.

  “Please, sir, hear me out,” my friend continued without any indication that her foot could have been broken if he’d forced the door shut. “Unknown to the school, Mrs. Brown comes from a wealthy family and sits on the board of a charitable organization...”

  While Bailey talked, I tried to see past him, in case he wasn’t going to buy our story and let us in.

  “Mrs. Ephrain, Liza, is the recipient of a monetary award—” Bailey wound up her speech.

  Bud the bully stepped back. As we walked in that door, I sent up another prayer of thanks for my best friend.

  * * *

  Bailey felt nothing as she stepped directly in front of Kora inside the small living room in the old musty-smelling house.

  There were two couches, mismatched, both faded leather, one beige, one brown. The brown one had a piece of duct tape across the middle cushion, obviously covering a tear.

  She focused on that tape, although she was aware of the overall cleanliness of the room. Of Bouncer Bud in front of her, and Kora behind her.

  “Is Liza here?” Koralynn asked, stepping forward, and Bailey moved closer to a man who was menacing without making a gesture or saying a word.

  Stan seemed harmless compared to this guy. But you dealt with all of them the same way. By staying one step ahead of them, mentally.

  “They’re here, yes,” Bud said. Nothing but his eyes moved. Toward the hall, off to Bailey’s right. She didn’t trust the guy enough to take her eyes off him, but she didn’t need to. Kora was there, moving toward the hallway, playing the ditzy blonde as she said, “Oh really? Can I go find them? I’m just so excited to tell Liza that she won! She didn’t even know I’d submitted her name, and I can’t wait to get the paperwork rolling so we can get the money to her....”

  Bud jerked toward the hall, as though he was going after Kora, but when she mentioned the money he stopped.

  Pathetic really, how easily some people could be pegged.

  * * *

  I couldn’t leave Bailey out there alone with the guy, although I didn’t doubt that she could handle him. She’d faced down Stan at fifteen. And I’d seen her in court, a barracuda when someone tried to take advantage of one of her clients. I moved quickly down the hall, keeping her in sight as I knocked brazenly on the first of three closed doors. Lenowski and Bailey stood a couple of feet apart, watching me.

  The second door opened and a worried-looking but well-kept Liza Ephrain slipped through, closing the door behind her before I could see if anyone else was inside.

  “Mrs. Brown?” Liza said, frowning as she recognized me. She moved toward me, then glanced at Bud Lenowski, her shoulders dropping.

  I spun around to look toward the door she’d come through so that my face was turned away from the living room. “Trust me,” I whispered as the woman moved past me toward the man whose presence obviously compelled her to his side.

  She didn’t nod. She couldn’t. And I hoped she’d heard. And would play along.

  If she didn’t, there wasn’t much else I could do.

  “Is Mary here?” I asked with false cheer, glancing toward the door a second time. I didn’t want the child involved. But I couldn’t leave her in fear behind that door, either. She’d practically cried out for my help and as hard as I’d tried to be reasonable and rational, I couldn’t get that cry out of my head.

  She reminded me too much of little Bailey.

  “Mary should hear this, too,” I continued. “She’ll be so excited. Mary?” I called, and moved toward the door before anyone could stop me. Maybe Liza had walked past me, putting herself between Lenowski and me so I could do just that.

  Maybe I was overreacting here and bursting in on a family, invading their privacy, with no real cause at all.

  So, I’d give them some obviously needed financial assistance, call it a charitable award and learn how to mind my own business.

  “Mary?” I called again and swung open the door. My gaze zeroed in on the little girl I’d come to know over the past year. She sat on the floor on the other side of the bed, cradling a child I assumed to be her four-year-old sister in her lap. She had her hand over the child’s mouth. Two sets of wide, apprehensive dark eyes stared back at me.

  As if in slow motion, Mary’s expression went from fearful to shock to...I wasn’t sure what. “Mrs. Brown?”

  “Yes, Mary. I came to visit and to give your mother some good news. Why don’t you and your sister come out in the living room and hear all about it?” With Bailey keeping Liza in the front room, I went into the small bedroom, skirting the double bed, covered with a threadbare white spread, and leaned down to take the little girls’ hands, pulling them to their feet.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered to Mary.

  She shook her head. And I knew I’d done the right thing.

  * * *

  “You could have been killed!” Danny paced the kitchen, turning when he got to one end and coming back, only to repeat the process.

  “But we weren’t.” Kora’s reply was soft and easy, maybe even upbeat, as she stood at the sink rinsing vegetables for the salad she was making.

  Bailey, sitting on one of the upholstered benches attached to their butcher-block picnic-style table, decided to keep her mouth shut. Partly because she wasn’t getting involved in any tension between Kora and her husband. And partly because she didn’t disagree with him. She and Kora had taken a stupid chance.

  Lucky for little Mary Ephrain, it had paid off.

  “You should have heard Bailey,” Kora was saying. “She came up with the idea that Liza and the kids should come to her office to sign the paperwork and to have the photo shoot the charity supposedly wanted. She qualified for the money because she was a single mother, so having Bud around wouldn’t have been a good idea, she said, and even added that she was a bit concerned about the fact that she knew Bud existed, that Liza had a live-in, as she wasn’t sure the charity’s board would still want to award the money....”

  “Funny how quickly he insisted he didn’t really live there.” Bailey couldn’t stay quiet on that one. “The jerk says he was only staying there temporarily....”

  “Until he could get back into his own place,” Kora chimed in. “You should’ve seen Bailey. Before Lenowski knew what hit him, she had his things packed and him out the door on his way to the room she’d arranged for him at the Y, all in the name of making sure Liza would get her money.”

  “Kora named an amount he couldn’t pass up,” Bailey threw in with a smile. And then wished she hadn’t as Danny started to pace again.

  “Liza’s on public assistance and he shouldn’t have been living there. She just couldn’t get him to leave. She had to work at a local laundry and take the kids there, and he’d had a key made and kept coming back. She was afraid if she called the police, she might lose the kids...”

  “That guy’s a real winner. I can’t believe you two took him on by yourselves. You didn’t even call me,” he grumbled, looking from Bailey to his wife and back again.

  A former football linebacker, Danny was not a small man. Or a weak one. But there was nothing menacing abou
t him or his agitation as he moved back and forth between them.

  Frankly, Bailey felt a little sorry for the guy. He loved Kora to distraction and was scared to death of losing her.

  Which was why Bailey put up with him in the first place. Or rather, why she tried so hard to get him to like her. And to stay out of his way.

  Lifting the metal strainer holding the broccoli she’d just broken apart, Kora placed it under the faucet for one final rinse and shook it to let the water droplets drain through. Then she dumped the contents into the big glass bowl on the counter.

  Bailey’s mouth watered. Kora’s broccoli salad was scrumptious. That was the only word for it.

  “Danny, stop pacing,” Kora said with a grin at her husband. “I’m sorry, okay? We should have called you. But if you’d heard that little girl in Bailey’s office, when she sat there and told us how Bud would get mad and they’d all have to hide in the bedroom, sometimes with their mom and sometimes not, and wait until it was over, you would’ve wanted me to do what I did. And it all turned out great. Can’t you just be happy with me?” The look she gave him had Bailey studying the little roses on the wallpaper. “Please?”

  She knew that tone. Had heard Kora use it on Danny before. Usually when he’d been on the other end of a phone line and Bailey had been in the room with her.

  “I’m glad the little girl and her mother are free of the guy.” Danny didn’t sound appeased, though. “I’m very glad they got help, got the restraining order and have their house back to themselves before any of the kids were physically abused....”

  Yeah, Bailey was glad, too. She just wished she could have done more for Liza. The woman had no current bruises, no doctor’s visits or previous calls to the police to help her escape the man who’d pulled her hair out of her head as he held her to the ground and threatened the lives of her children if she ever disobeyed him.

  “But you’re not a cop, Kora. You’re not trained to handle these kinds of situations. That guy could have turned on you just as easily as he turned on his girlfriend. He could have hurt Bailey, too. You two should have known better. If nothing else, you could have let me go over there with you.”

  “You wouldn’t have gone over there, Danny. You’d have called the police, and Liza would probably have lied because Lenowski would’ve been standing there in her house. She would never have had the courage to believe that the cops could make him leave her alone once they’d left....”

  “She was the home’s legal resident, not him.”

  “A woman who’s being tormented doesn’t always think clearly.” Kora repeated something Bailey had told a distraught Liza Ephrain that afternoon. The woman had been eaten up with guilt and had asked Bailey if she should call child services, to save her kids from herself.

  Bailey, who’d only ever seen such selfless maternal love once before—in Mama Di—had adamantly set the woman straight on that score.

  “Liza made a bad choice in boyfriends but she didn’t do it knowingly,” Bailey explained. “There’d been no signs. Bud had been a nice guy, patient with the kids, willing to take them on, until he lost his job. And then lost his house due to his inability to pay the mortgage.”

  “None of that made her a bad mother,” Kora said, pouring the dressing she’d prepared earlier over the broccoli mixture and stirring. “On the contrary, she jumped at the chance we gave her, playing along with us and getting the man out of her life....”

  “If it hadn’t been Kora there, someone she knew and trusted, it probably wouldn’t have worked,” Bailey said, getting involved where she’d promised herself she wouldn’t. Defending Kora to Danny couldn’t possibly be a good move on her part. “It’s because she trusted Kora that Liza had the courage to stand up to the man.”

  “And Bailey—you should’ve seen her, Danny. She read that guy like a book. She’d already told Liza privately that if she pressed charges against him for domestic violence, he could walk, since we had no actual evidence, only her word against his, but Lenowski didn’t know that. So we’re in court getting the emergency restraining order and Bailey gets Lenowski to agree to leave Liza and her kids alone in exchange for not pressing domestic violence charges, on top of the restraining order she was requesting. And then, to make it even better, the judge goes ahead and issues the restraining order, too.”

  Seeing Kora pull the French bread out of the oven, Bailey stood, reaching for plates and silver and napkins, and set the table. All in all, it had been a good day. Except for this part. Whenever Danny was mad, Bailey felt nervous as hell.

  Shoving his hands in the pockets of jeans he’d changed into after work, Danny hunched his shoulders, looking from Kora to her. He’d taken off his tie, but still wore the white dress shirt he’d had on all day, with the cuffs rolled up. It was his statement. His style.

  When he raised a hand to yank at one of the longish blond curls at the back of his neck—a gesture that always made Kora, and therefore Bailey, laugh—she let out a breath of relief.

  “You guys did good,” he said. “But I still don’t like it. Next time call me.”

  “We will,” Bailey and Kora said in unison.

  Now if only her stomach would relax, she’d be able to enjoy her dinner.

  Chapter Ten

  I was really bummed when I still wasn’t pregnant by the time school started. But I knew that things happened when they were meant to happen. It had taken my folks almost ten years to have me.

  Still, when I couldn’t calm down about it, Danny agreed to go with me to get checked out. That last week in August, before we got our results, was horrible. Nerve-racking. I tried to throw myself into my work, had all my kids’ names matched to faces within the first full day, but I needed my best friend. I saw Bailey three times that week. Once for coffee after school, at Thursday fitness class, and on Saturday, while Danny played golf. Bailey and I had gone shopping, had lunch and taken in a movie. And I talked to her every day, of course, just like always. But my baby worries weren’t something I could discuss with her.

  In the past month, she hadn’t said a word about being inseminated, and I couldn’t risk getting her started on that again. I was not going to let my paranoia where my own baby-making abilities were concerned push her into possibly making a decision that could be wrong for her.

  When all the results were in and I’d been assured, multiple times, that Danny and I had both tested out fine, the first thing I did, after squealing and hugging my husband, was pick up my phone to call Bailey. I dialed my mother instead.

  The rest of my life was a happy affair. I couldn’t avoid being a little superstitious, worrying that I’d take it all for granted and cause something bad to happen, but mostly I tended to my own responsibilities. I tried to remain aware of those around me, tried to give back the good I’d been given, as Mom always put it.

  Mary Ephrain was looking so different these days. Not only was she wearing ribbons in her hair and clothes that didn’t look like her brother’s castoffs, she had a new place to live, with the help Daddy had provided Liza in finding a better job than the laundry so she could support herself and her kids. Mary also had a whole new set of friends.

  I was thrilled to discover that I was one of them. The little girl stopped by my classroom pretty much every afternoon. And I started to think that someday I was going to have a little girl just like her.

  She’d have Bailey’s strength and resilience, like Mary did, and my ability to reach out to people. I hated to think what might have happened if that little girl hadn’t stayed after class for a hug the last day of school. I’d like to think I would still have been compelled to stop by her house over the summer. But I wasn’t sure that was true.

  What was true was that I couldn’t wait for the first weekend in October. It was Homecoming at Wesley and a whole group of us had a block of hotel rooms and were going to party like the
old days. With a bit more discretion, of course. I was still trying to get pregnant, and we were twenty-nine now, not nineteen. All of us except Bailey whose birthday wasn’t until the end of October. I’d just had mine, during the third week of September. For those five weeks, my best friend and I were a year apart in age. A fact I’d found excruciating when I was eight.

  At the last minute Jake called to say he was going to be joining us. He had a girlfriend, a woman he’d told Danny he’d been thinking of marrying, but he needed one more shot at Bailey before he could be sure he’d moved on.

  I, of course, told Bailey that Jake was going to be there. Danny agreed that I should, but he also knew I would’ve done so regardless. It was the right thing to do. After much painful heart searching and deliberation, I’d decided not to tell her about Jake’s real reason for being there, or about his potentially pending marital status. I didn’t want to push Bailey into any kind of desperate reaction.

  Nor did I want to mess with whatever fate had in store for Jake.

  And it was up to the two of them to fix whatever had gone wrong between them—or to move on without each other.

  I had my fingers crossed, metaphorically speaking, as Bailey and Danny and I made the familiar drive to Wesley. As the trees flew past, and familiar signs came into view, I couldn’t help feeling a little nostalgic.

  In some ways, those college years had been the best of my life. And a big reason for that had been the fact that Bailey and I had lived together back then. That night, as Bailey and I sat on one side of an old wooden booth in the back of a too-crowded bar, while Danny and one of his Wesley football buddies stood in line for drink refills, I told Bailey what I’d been thinking on the way up.

  I was shocked when her eyes got moist. She’d only had one glass of wine so far and didn’t usually get emotional until after two or three.

  “I miss you, too, Kor, so much,” she said. “Living with you, sure, but even more, I miss you. Mama Di told me your good news about the baby and—”