“I know. Which is why I’m scared to death about leaving our house.”
“We talked about this, Kora,” he said. “You need a fresh start, and when Danny comes back to us, he will, too. Living in that house, with that nursery—it was killing you both.” I didn’t remember Jake ever being all that patient a guy, but I’d come to know him so much better over the past eleven months. He wasn’t just Danny’s friend anymore. He was mine too.
In some ways, my only friend.
Others from our gang came to visit now and then. Less frequently than they had in the beginning. But none of them stayed long.
And I didn’t ask them to. Frankly, their looks of pity were harder to take than being there alone.
“There has to be a healthy balance between what’s good for Danny and what’s good for you. Living in the old neighborhood isn’t good for you.”
“I know.” I was living with ghosts there. Danny’s ghost. William Daniel’s ghost. Mattie’s ghost. Bailey’s ghost. The ghosts of lives past. There was nothing in the present but aloneness.
“Did you make an offer on the bungalow?”
I’d found a little house down by the river. It was closer to school. And to Danny. I’d given the address to Jake. Arranged with the Realtor to have Jake go check it out for me. Which he’d done the week before.
“Yeah.”
“Was it accepted?”
“This afternoon.” I’d told Danny first thing. I’d been excited. Now I wasn’t.
“Congratulations!” His smile was big. And genuine. Dissipating some of the dread holding me down. “With immediate occupancy?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. You’ll be settled before school starts.”
That had been the plan.
“Have you told your folks?”
“They know I found a house I liked, but not about the offer. I...They...they’re moving to Florida, Jake.”
“What?” His mouth hung open as he gaped at me. “Your parents are leaving Pittsburgh?” I heard leaving you?
“Yeah. Daddy got a buy-out offer and the house sold in less than a week and they have that place on Sanibel Island...”
It made sense. Mom and Daddy had purchased the Sanibel place when I was in college. They’d been renting it out, with plans to move down there while they were still young enough to live it up a bit. Daddy wanted to buy a boat. To fish. Mom wanted to learn how to sail. And to paint. On the boat. While Daddy fished.
“I know they’ve talked about going for years, but I didn’t think they’d really do it. Not now. Now with you...with Danny...”
“There’s nothing they can do for me here,” I said. Except drive themselves crazy worrying about me. That was driving me crazy. And it didn’t benefit any of us. I was going to do what I had to do, no matter what anyone said. “I’ve been to their house once in eight months,” I told him. “For a couple of hours on Christmas Day.” And only then because the doctors had all but kicked me out of Danny’s room. “It’s not like it’s going to make any difference if we talk by phone across Pittsburgh or across a few states.”
It would make a difference. If I had an emergency and they were here in town, they could be with me in minutes. But we weren’t going to live life waiting for emergency.
He was still shaking his head. “I just can’t believe they’d...” His words faded.
“They want me to go with them, Jake,” I finally told him. Knowing that I’d been holding back because I’d been afraid he’d agree with them. “They want me to have Danny moved to a center in Fort Myers, to apply for teaching jobs down there, and move in with them until I get settled.”
They had it all planned, down to a room and a team of doctors already reserved for Danny. His own mother had married again, this time a guy from Kentucky. He was nice, a retired minister who’d never had kids. They’d visited a lot. I liked him and knew Danny would, too. Danny’s own father had only been to see him once since the accident.
“Florida might be good for you.” He said the words I’d been afraid he’d say, but without the conviction I’d expected.
Walking over to Danny, I sat beside him. Held his hand. “You’re right. It’ll be good for me to know I have a place where I can vacation that won’t cost an arm and a leg.” If I ever got to the point where I could leave Danny long enough to even take a vacation. I wasn’t living in the future. Or thinking in terms of weeks and months. I was living in minutes. From one to the next.
“You’ve made up your mind.”
“Yeah.”
He nodded. Grinned. And I saw a bit of the old Jake there. The one before life shit on all of us. “I think it’s a good decision. Danny hates Florida.”
I knew that. I also knew my husband was going to wake up someday. When he was ready. And once he did, he’d need his life back.
My job was to preserve it for him, while getting on with my own.
The new house was my compromise.
“I had an email from Bailey.” Jake’s voice fell into the peace that had settled over the room.
Without meaning to, I squeezed Danny’s hand so hard he would’ve let me know he’d felt it—if he could. And then, watching him, I did it again. To see if I’d missed some kind of reaction.
I wanted to stomp on those lifeless fingers. To make him hurt so badly he had to fight his way back just to make me stop. I needed to yell at him for hurting me. And himself. For hurting us.
For Bailey.
“She bought a place. Sent me her new address.”
I didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to be able to picture her...anywhere. I missed Mattie, though. Unbearably.
Mom and Daddy showed me pictures of him regularly. He was getting so big. And Mom told me that when she’d talked to him on the phone the last time, she’d actually been able to understand a few words.
Neither of my parents mentioned Bailey to me. Not after that one time at the beginning, when Mom told me that Bailey claimed she and Danny hadn’t slept together. I got sick to my stomach. And it wasn’t mentioned again.
But I was glad they were in touch with her. It felt...right.
When I started to wonder what Bailey thought of their moving to Florida, I looked at Danny and checked the fluid levels in his bags. I pictured where a hospital bed could go in our new house if it came to that.
“You can’t ignore her existence forever, Kor.”
Maybe not. But in this moment I had to. If I let myself think about Bailey Watters, the pain would engulf me, take away the air I needed to breathe, the calm that had sustained me through the past year.
Anytime someone mentioned her, I’d see her face as it had looked that last day, so shocked, so flushed with guilt. I’d start to feel the knife slicing inside me. No matter what anyone said, nothing was going to change that look of guilt. Something had been going on between Danny and Bailey. Something she felt guilty about. Something that was going to hurt. Bad.
And I just couldn’t go through that right now. Danny was taking everything I had to give.
“Bailey said in her email that you saw her and Danny together that last day. She seemed to think I knew, that you’d told me. She said she’s written to you about that day several times, but you never respond and she didn’t know if you read the emails or just deleted them. Apparently she also sent you a letter that was returned unopened.” He cleared his throat. “She said you weren’t wrong to think you’d walked in on something, but she wanted you to know that she and Danny never slept together. She wanted me to know, too.”
He said the words quickly, as though they were as painful for him as they were for me. I held onto my husband’s limp hand, in spite of the sweatiness of my palm. In spite of my sudden desire to walk out of the room and leave him lying there.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
I wasn’t going to discuss this with Jake. Or anyone. Even if Danny and Bailey hadn’t been sleeping together, it was obvious that the embrace I’d witnessed had been fraught with emotion. They’d had something pretty powerful between them, and they’d done whatever they’d done behind my back.
“She seems to think it does, and based on your reaction, I’m beginning to think so, too.”
“My reaction? I have no reaction.” Not quite true, but close enough. “I saw them, admittedly fully clothed, in an intimate situation in her living room. Foolishly, I ran. Danny followed me. Obviously he loves me or he wouldn’t have done that. And I love him. He’s my husband. I’m his wife. And here we are.”
The same. And completely different.
Back then, I’d trusted without question. I didn’t anymore.
And I was no longer sure that people had souls or spirits that recognized each other, or that they shared connections beyond the physical.
Life’s unknowns were what I ran from.
They were what scared me most of all.
* * *
Bailey liked the new firm. She had a corner office, because it was the smallest, but the building was in an older part of Boston and from her desk she could see a courtyard filled with flowers. She’d found, and purchased, a very nice—translation: expensive—condominium in a historic building that had been converted to large, separate homes, and not only was it within walking distance to work, but the woman below her was a fairly recent widow who loved babies and was looking for something to fill her days.
Delores and Mattie were a good fit, and best of all, she’d watch him in their home. And didn’t mind evening hours if Bailey had to meet the partners for dinner or attend an evening function. At a senior partner’s suggestion, she’d begun doing once-a-month pro bono work at a counseling clinic on their block—giving legal advice to women who were thinking about getting divorced.
All in all, eight months after she’d started her new life, she felt she’d made the right choice.
She’d met a couple of men. One at a bar where she’d gone to talk with a new client who didn’t want her husband to know she was seeing a lawyer. The man had been watching Bailey the entire time she was speaking with her client and had approached her when the other woman left.
A bar pickup wasn’t something she was really open to, but she’d liked the guy. Had met him for a few dates, at various restaurants and would probably see him again. His name was Tom, he was divorced, had two kids, and was in retail, buying men’s clothing for a line of department stores. The other guy, a lawyer she’d met at a symposium, was nice, too.
She was out at lunch one Wednesday in October, sitting with a senior partner from her firm at the place next to their office, when she saw a familiar shape, a familiar walk—and her heart flipped over.
For a second there, she’d thought it was Jake.
“Someone you know?” Sheila asked. She was a woman in her forties, happily married to a man ten years younger than she was. Sheila’s husband was a teacher. Bailey had been telling her about Kora. The good parts of their history.
“No, just someone who reminded me of someone—” Her voice broke off as the ghost from her past materialized beside their table.
“They told me next door that I could find you here.”
God, he looked great. From the tip of his short dark hair to the tips of his perfectly shined shoes. She’d bet there wasn’t a wrinkle in his perfectly creased shirt and pants, and his tie, knotted tightly at the neck as usual, was pure silk.
Bailey had to restrain herself from jumping up and giving him a hug. Something Kora could have gotten away with. Never her.
“Jake?” She wasn’t going to gape or anything, but...
It seemed like eons since she’d left her old life behind.
“You want to introduce us?” Sheila’s smile was playful, but assessing as well.
“This is...Jake,” Bailey said, as the sunlight coming through the window glinted off the wedding ring on his left hand.
Jenna. Jake was married.
And Boston was Bailey’s home now.
But when Jake said he was in town on business that had been put off until the morning, and asked if she had a free hour to take a walk, at which Sheila nodded, she couldn’t tell him no.
She’d have questions to answer later, but that didn’t deter her. Leaving her lunch half eaten and her senior partner to pay the bill, she pulled on her long sweater and walked out into the fifty-degree air.
“How’s Jenna?” She established the ground rules right from the start.
“Good. Traveling a lot.”
“As much as you do?”
“I’m actually not going to be traveling as much,” he said. “I was offered a director position, which will bring me back into the office. I’m taking it.”
That surprised her. Jake loved to get up and go. See new things.
“I...want to be able to spend more time with Danny,” he said. And she shivered.
She’d taken a chance when she’d sent that email, over the summer, telling Jake what hadn’t happened the day of the accident—about what had not been going on.
It had seemed like the right thing to do. At the time. He’d never responded.
She hadn’t been in touch since.
“Kora’s handling things pretty much alone,” he said, his hands in his pockets as they strolled along the busy sidewalk. Obviously taking no chances that their hands would brush. “But she seems to be okay with letting me help.”
She would be. Jake was Danny’s best friend. That gave him automatic rights. Just like Bailey used to have with Kora.
“Now that her folks are moving to Florida, I don’t know, the timing just seemed to work.”
“What does Jenna think?”
“She’s fine either way. As long as I don’t expect her to stop traveling and have dinner on the table every night...”
Jake, a better than decent cook, didn’t need anyone cooking his dinners. When they’d lived together, he’d done most of the cooking. She’d done the dishes.
They’d come to a corner a couple of blocks from her office. One more street over and a right turn, and she’d be home. She continued up the street. There was a park not far ahead, a busy place where they could sit on a bench and do the polite catch-up thing and then leave each other to get on with the rest of their lives.
“How’s Danny?” she asked as they crossed the street. She and Mama Di still spoke a few times a week. Apparently not enough time had passed for them to drift apart yet. She got regular updates. But Mama Di was like Kora had been. A Pollyanna. She always had hope. Always saw the best possibilities. Bailey trusted Jake to give it to her straight.
“In over a year’s time, I’d say the only change I’ve seen is a growing atrophy in his muscles. This is a guy who used to be able to kick the shit out of me. And now...”
In her mind’s eye she saw Danny as he’d been in her kitchen that last day. Big. Determined. Frantic.
She’d been the last person to speak with him.
And couldn’t picture his body lying, virtually lifeless, in a bed.
It was a picture that was reality to Koralynn every minute of every day. Bailey couldn’t grasp that, either. Except in a superficial way.
They didn’t say a word for another block. “I tried to get in touch with her a lot in the beginning,” Bailey finally said. “I stopped for a while, but I still email her now and then.” She knew her calls and emails were blocked. But one night, shortly after her move to Boston, she’d been so lonely, so empty, so afraid she wasn’t going to be able to keep it together for her son...she’d needed to talk to Kora. So she’d emailed her. Didn’t seem to matter that Kora wouldn’t read it. Just sending it to her had helped. She’d sent a few more, too. Only when she’d nee
ded Kora most...
“I know.”
She turned to look up at him then. “You know? How could you? She blocked any emails from me the week after the accident.”
“She must have unblocked you because she told me you’d emailed her. She also told me she didn’t read the emails,” he added.
Bailey didn’t care about that at the moment. Her heart was too busy soaring to come back to ground. Kora had unblocked her.
It was a step.
A small one. But Kora was the one who’d always said that as long as they took steps, there was hope.
Suddenly the day was brighter. And it didn’t feel so wrong, walking there with Jake. Like old times.
Until she remembered Jenna.
She was ready to turn around, go right back to her office where she wouldn’t be tempted to ask Jake if he had plans for dinner that night, when her cell phone rang. It was Delores, her new wealthy and widowed nanny, telling her that she needed to rush to the doctor to get antibiotics for a bladder infection. Apparently it was something that happened regularly with her.
Unfortunately Bailey had back-to-back appointments that afternoon, one of which was an important meeting to go over files for a pretrial conference she had in judge’s chambers the next day.
Telling Delores she’d be there in a few minutes, she tried to remember the number of the day care on the ground floor of her office building. Mattie had been there several times, daily when she’d first taken her job, and it was good for him to be around other kids.
“What’s up?” Jake asked, falling into step beside her as she changed course.
Looking for the day care number in her contact list, she told him. And was shocked when he said, “You don’t need to take him there. I can watch him.”
At first, she smiled inside. Then she came back to earth. “Forget it, Jake. In the first place, you know next to nothing about kids. In the second, you are not giving up your afternoon to watch my son.”
It couldn’t happen. “In the third place, it’s not necessary. I just have to call the day care and let them know he’s coming. He’s always welcome. And he loves it there.”
The Friendship Pact Page 21