The Friendship Pact

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  I’d only seen Bailey a couple of times and still didn’t want to be around her. But Jake was no longer married, and if he wanted to hook up with a woman who wouldn’t marry him, that was his choice. It wasn’t like I could tell Danny’s best friend he wasn’t welcome to bring his girlfriend around.

  “Counting what weeks?” I asked now, rubbing my neck in the hopes of easing the headache that had slowly set in that afternoon.

  “Since you’ve had a period,” he said. “I can’t be sure about the first few weeks I was awake, but I know for certain that it’s been more than six now and I think we should do the test.”

  We’d made ritual out of those damned tests the first few times I’d been late. Back when we’d been trying to start a family and had every reason to believe we’d conceive easily and have as many babies as we chose.

  I was too tired to come up with a good response, so I ran for the bathroom instead and threw up.

  * * *

  “I can’t believe it!” Danny came up behind me in the living room later that evening, just before Jake and Bailey were due to arrive—I’d wanted to cancel, but he wouldn’t hear of it—and lifted me off my feet, whirling me around.

  “Careful!” My voice was too sharp. I loosened his hand on my stomach. “I don’t want to throw up again.” I wasn’t feeling nauseous, but he didn’t know that. I was getting so good at lying. I was scaring myself.

  He’d wanted to call Mom and Daddy. And his folks. He’d wanted to tell the world that we were expecting a baby. I wanted to curl up and die.

  At least I’d been able to convince him to keep our secret for a little while. Just until we got past the first trimester. Which was going to be sooner than he knew.

  “Hey.” He turned me around. “You want this baby, don’t you, Kor?” he asked, his look so reminiscent of the past that I got tears in my eyes.

  “Of course,” I said, but I didn’t sound convincing even to myself.

  “Have things changed that much between us?” he asked then, taking a step back. “You don’t want to raise a family with me anymore?”

  “Of course I do, Danny!” I cried. “More than you’ll ever know...”

  He studied me a long time, but I was up to this one. There was nothing I wanted more than to have a family with this man, to grow old with him while our great-grandchildren played around us.

  “Then what...”

  I wouldn’t tell him most of the really devastating stuff, but...Dr. Gordon had instructed me to answer any direct questions.

  “We...A few years ago, we miscarried a—”

  I broke off as he nodded. “You’re afraid that what happened with William Daniel will happen again,” he said as though we spoke of our son every day. Or ever.

  “You remember him?” I asked, my mouth hanging open.

  “Of course I do, Kor. How could I forget something so important to both of us?”

  I couldn’t answer that.

  “I drove by his grave this afternoon before I went to the drugstore to buy the kit. Losing him was horrible. Hurt like hell. But we’ve got a second chance here, Kor. I don’t think William would want us to be incapable of joy because of him, do you?”

  “No,” I said, surprised at the ease with which the words came out. “I don’t think he would.” I was surprised, too, that Danny was now saying almost exactly what I’d said that day at William’s grave, on the first anniversary of his death.

  I felt a pang. A shard of the excruciating pain that had gripped me for so long after the baby’s premature death. But there was peace there, too, now. An ability to move on.

  “I guess time really does help, huh?” I asked him, feeling surreal. Out of place in my own life.

  “Life has a way of helping us put things in perspective,” he said, leading me to wonder how he’d grown so wise while lying comatose in a bed.

  Wondering, too, how time could ever fix the fact that the child I was carrying wasn’t Danny’s.

  * * *

  Bailey had always been the patient one. And that hadn’t changed. Mama Di was thrilled to hear that she and Kora were back in contact. Their unwillingness to let Bailey slide gracefully out of their lives, coupled with their belief that Kora needed Bailey, truly shocked her.

  Their faith also gave birth to her own.

  Kora was on the verge of collapse. Bailey could tell, even if others couldn’t. And Bailey was going to do everything she could to prevent that. She’d do it from afar if she had to. She needed a plan.

  “Talk to her,” Jake had told her on the phone one night when she’d mentioned her concern about Koralynn. “You two always had a way of dealing with shit.”

  A way of dealing with shit. Okay. Their way was to share the burden. To share a kidney if that was what it took.

  Getting herself worked up, just like Kora might have done in years past, Bailey left work early the fourth Tuesday in March and waited outside the elementary school, parked next to Kora’s old Mustang.

  “Hey,” Kora said as she approached and Bailey got out of her car. The expression on her face said what are you doing here?

  “Hi.”

  Unlocking her door, Kora looked like she was just going to get in and drive off.

  “You must’ve forgotten who you’re dealing with here,” Bailey said, astonished at herself, but feeling pretty damned good, too.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s me, Bailey. I’m the one who isn’t put off when people ignore me. What was it you said when my mom died? I just keep coming back for more, right?”

  It hadn’t been exactly that. Or in that context, but...

  “What I said was that you were not responsible for her choices. She wasn’t there for you, but you kept giving everything you had to try and help her anyway—”

  Kora stopped speaking abruptly and frowned.

  Bailey was smiling. Her best friend had just defended her.

  But then Kora turned away. “It’s too late, Bailey.”

  Bailey couldn’t accept that. “You’re the one who always tried so hard to get me to see the side I couldn’t see,” she said now, the words coming from no place she recognized.

  With a groan Kora threw her purse and her satchel into the passenger seat of her car and turned around again. “We helped each other see different perspectives a few times,” she said. “Don’t make it out to be more than it was.”

  “There are two sides to every story.”

  “I can’t do this, Bailey. I told you....”

  “I want to know your side, Kor. Please. I don’t care what you say, I know you. Siamese twins and all that crap. And what I know is that you can’t go on like this much longer. You say you’d do anything to help Danny. You’re so determined to be the perfect wife. Good. I support that. I also know you aren’t going to succeed if you don’t start taking care of you.”

  “I’ve been doing just fine for a long time now.”

  “Really? Then why don’t you ever smile anymore? Why do your feet drag when you walk when they used to dance? How come you sigh every other breath, like you’re on your last one? And how come your hand trembles when you lift your fork to your mouth?”

  “The past twenty months haven’t been the easiest,” she snapped.

  “I get that, sweetie.” Bailey spoke in a gentle voice. She knew she was revealing everything she felt, everything she hoped. It wasn’t her way. Wasn’t even smart. But this wasn’t about her anymore. It hadn’t been for years.

  Not since Kora’s husband had given Bailey the life she’d always wanted. Not since she’d taken Kora’s kidney, in a manner of speaking—the kidney Kora didn’t even know she’d donated. It was time to give one back. Whatever the cost.

  “But Danny’s home now. Back at work. Life is filled with promise and all good th
ings, but you’re dwindling away. You’re getting weaker, not stronger.”

  “You don’t know everything.” Kora hadn’t turned away. That was key.

  “I’ve never claimed to. I’m asking you to tell me what’s going on. Talk to me, Kor. Even if you hate me, you have to know that talking to me can help you. It always has. That doesn’t have to make sense, but there it is.”

  From the very beginning, when two little girls with very opposite lives had started school, they’d been able to help each other.

  “What do you want from me?” Kora’s cry would have attracted attention if there’d been anyone in the teachers’ parking lot to hear her.

  “I want you to tell me what’s going on.”

  “I’m pregnant, okay?” She almost spat the words. As if it was Bailey’s fault.

  For once, Bailey was completely shocked. Out of her element. Speechless.

  “See? There’s nothing you can do,” Kora said, turning to get into her car.

  “Wait.” Bailey grabbed her arm, pulled Kora into her embrace. “I’m here, Kor, right here,” she said, not sure if she was offering or requesting comfort. “Don’t just get in your car and drive away.”

  “I have to go home.”

  “Danny’s still at work.” She opened her passenger car door. “Get in and let’s go someplace we can talk.”

  Kora hesitated.

  “Please.”

  Bailey didn’t dare breathe until Kora was inside and the doors were locked. Then she took a really deep breath and tried to figure out what to do next.

  * * *

  “Take me to your place,” I heard myself saying, although I couldn’t believe I was actually sitting in Bailey’s car. “I want to see Mattie.”

  If this was about me, about somehow saving me from the brink of disaster, then I’d take a few minutes and feed my soul. Little Mattie did that. Or, at least, he used to. I didn’t really know him anymore.

  Not since he’d begun walking and talking.

  “Vivian has him at the zoo this afternoon,” Bailey said. “There was some hands—on thing for toddlers in the small animal area.”

  I asked who Vivian was. And then laid my head back and let Bailey drive me wherever she decided to go. She was right about one thing. I was exhausted.

  And hardly noticed that we were in my neighborhood until she passed my house. Danny wasn’t home yet, but I couldn’t talk to Bailey there. Not that I really planned to say any more. I’d already said too much.

  I had to get myself out of the hole I’d just dug by blurting out news that only I and my still-forgetful husband knew.

  She made a turn and then another before pulling into a driveway. I lifted my head. “You live here?”

  “Yeah.” She grinned at me.

  “You chose to live close by?” I wasn’t sure whether I liked that idea or not. I didn’t want to. But kind of did.

  “No, actually, I purposely never asked where you’d moved. It was only after I bought this place and Jake came to see me that I found out how close you were.”

  It was too weird to think about right then. But the old me would’ve seen it as a sign.

  Of course, the old me had been wrong about a lot of things.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “I really should get home,” Koralynn said again. She walked around Bailey’s living room, looking at things, touching nothing.

  There were pictures of the two of them on the mantel. Kora moved by them without pausing.

  Bailey wondered who’d gotten her best friend pregnant when she’d been spending every waking moment either in class with third graders or at the convalescent center with her comatose husband.

  “You got new furniture,” Kora said.

  Bailey told her about the condo she’d purchased in Boston, about the weird configuration of the living room and needing a sectional to fit the space. When Kora passed her as she sat on the sofa, Bailey pulled her down. “Please,” she said, “Talk to me. Or if not me, promise you’ll talk to someone.”

  “There’s nothing you, or anyone, can do,” Kora said, in the most defeated tone Bailey had ever heard.

  “What about the baby’s father?” Because they both knew it couldn’t possibly be Danny.

  “He has no idea. And he’s irrelevant.”

  “So it was a one-time thing?”

  “A five minute thing,” Kora said. She looked over at Bailey and the agony Bailey saw in her friend’s eyes nearly undid her. “I am so head-over-heels in love with Danny, I would never have started anything with another man.”

  “He’s been unconscious, vegetative, for eighteen months, Kora. It would be perfectly understandable—natural even—for you to seek companionship at some point. You’re young. And alive.”

  She shook her head. “Not natural for me. I married Danny for better or worse, in sickness and in health. As long as he’s breathing I will be faithful to him.”

  But Kora had thought Danny was unfaithful to her. With Bailey. Right? Bailey wondered if that was why Kora was so adamant about her own fidelity. But then, here she was, pregnant by another man.

  Aware of her own situation with Danny, Bailey knew, even more than Kora, what a mess they were in.

  “I don’t understand how it happened,” Kora was saying. “Between me and...the other man.”

  “Talk to me about it.” Bailey figured talking it out was better than wallowing in despair. “At least the parts you can.”

  “I’d had a scare with Danny that night. He’d stopped breathing.”

  Bailey hadn’t known things had been so touch and go. Jake had never indicated anything like that.

  “I just...Afterward, I came face-to-face with the realization that Danny might never get better.”

  “This was before he regained consciousness?”

  “The night before. Yes.”

  “So you had sex with someone and the very next day Danny woke up?”

  “I didn’t really even have sex.” Kora’s face twisted. “I mean, yeah, obviously he...Well, you know, but I wasn’t even turned-on. I just...for a second there, it felt so good to be held against a warm body and...”

  “The asshole took advantage of you!”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. We both kind of used each other. Not meaning to.”

  “And nothing’s happened since?”

  “God, no! Like I said, it didn’t even finish properly that time. I called out Danny’s name, he lost his erection and...and the condom came off. Neither of us have spoken of it again.”

  “So you’ve seen him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s going to know the baby is his.”

  “Eventually. I’m sure he’ll figure it out.”

  “Then you have to tell him,” Bailey insisted.

  “I know.”

  “He might want rights.”

  “No, he won’t.”

  “You sound sure about that.”

  “I am.”

  Bailey didn’t care who the guy was, or want to care. An orderly at the center, maybe. Or, more probably, Danny’s doctor. He probably would’ve been called in if Danny had been in danger of coding.

  “We need to make sure you’re protected, Kor. We can’t take a chance that this guy is going to take you to court someday, wanting his rights to your child.”

  She nodded, as though she hadn’t even heard.

  “I mean it. First and foremost, we have to take care of this. We have to protect your baby. Your family.” Clearly there was no way Kora would consider terminating the pregnancy. That possibility didn’t even exist in her realm.

  “What family?” Kora’s cry tore at her. “How the hell am I ever going to have a family?” she asked, tears in her eyes now. In a
way, Bailey was glad to see them. To know the Kora she remembered was still in there.

  But she hated it, too, because she knew the extent of her torment and didn’t want her to suffer anymore.

  “Does Danny know you’re pregnant?”

  “Yes. He thinks the baby is his, Bail. He doesn’t remember that he’s sterile.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit.”

  Kora sobbed quietly.

  “Okay, we’ll deal with this,” Bailey said, with absolutely no idea what they could possibly do to make it better. “Everything’s going to be fine.” It was what Kora had told her so many times in the past.

  “How can I possibly tell my husband that not only is this baby not his, but that he’ll never have a biological child of his own?” Kora’s anguish filled the room. And Bailey knew what she had to do. She risked losing Kora again. On the very day they’d finally, genuinely reconnected. But maybe there was a way to make this right for her friend.

  She got up. Retrieved her little purple bag. Handed it back to Kora. Their friendship pact.

  She couldn’t bear to keep the secret between them anymore. If it was better for Kora, then of course she’d do so. But considering what she’d just learned, it seemed pretty clear that knowing Bailey’s secret was about the only way Kora would ever be able to live with herself again. It could help Danny, too, when he eventually remembered the things his mind had tried so hard to escape.

  “You’ve changed.” They weren’t the words she’d meant to start with. But she was human. And maybe there was a small part of her that wanted reassurance that she’d still have Kora’s friendship five minutes from now. “You understand more. And believe in less.”

  “I guess.” Kora fiddled with the Kleenex she’d pulled out of her purse, leaving the little bag lying on her lap.

  “You remember what you wrote?” Bailey asked, motioning toward that velvet bag.

  Kora looked down at it for a long time. Then she said, “I’d give you a kidney.”