Just Between Us
Rebecca Drake
For Margaret Sophia,
with all my love and gratitude
“I can no other answer make but thanks
And thanks, and ever thanks.”
—William Shakespeare
We have been friends together,
In sunshine and in shade.
—Caroline Norton
And whatsoever else shall hap tonight,
Give it an understanding, but no tongue.
—William Shakespeare
Prologue
Funerals for murder victims are distinguished from other services by the curiosity seekers. Those who come even though they have no real relationship with the victim, but have been fooled by the publicity surrounding the death into thinking that they had a personal connection.
We watched them, these sobbing and wild-eyed men and women, and endured the long service in stiff pews, part of the much smaller crowd of the truly bereaved. We were very aware, in the way the others weren’t, of two guests who didn’t pass by the casket, men standing at the back of the chapel in forgettable suits, watching us with gimlet eyes.
They waited until we stood, stiff-legged, and followed the coffin, which rose and fell on the shoulders of the pallbearers like a small ship at sea. They waited until we’d stepped into the cold chill of that morning, blinking in the hard light, wind whipping the corners of our coats as we grabbed the hands of our children and loaded into our cars. They waited as we queued up to follow the body to its final resting place, high on a hill on the outskirts of town. And then they got into their nondescript sedan and joined our procession slowly wending its way through slush-covered streets toward the gravesite.
chapter one
ALISON
Sometimes I play the what-if game and wonder, what if we hadn’t moved to Sewickley when I got pregnant, and what if I hadn’t gone into labor in early August, and what if Lucy hadn’t slipped, wet and wailing, into this world a full three weeks early? If my oldest child had been born on her due date or after, then she wouldn’t have been eligible for school a full year earlier than expected, and I wouldn’t have met the women who became my closest friends, and what happened to us might never have happened at all.
So much in life hinges on chance—this date or that time, the myriad small, statistical variations which social scientists like to measure.
What if I hadn’t been the one handing Heather her cup of coffee that crisp fall morning at Crazy Mocha? And what if the sleeve of her knit shirt hadn’t slid back just a little as she reached to take it, and what if I hadn’t happened to look down and see what the sleeves had been meant to hide, and what if I hadn’t asked, “How did you get such a nasty bruise?”
A throwaway question at first.
I distributed the other cups to Julie and Sarah, barely paying attention but turning in time to see Heather startle, a tiny movement, before jerking down her sleeve to cover that large purple-yellow mark. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I must have bumped it on something.”
It’s only when I look back that I see this moment as the beginning, how everything started, though of course I didn’t understand the significance then.
We were in our favorite spot in the coffee shop on a Friday morning, a tradition started by Julie long before I moved to Sewickley, tucked in the back corner of a shop that itself was tucked in a back corner on Walnut Street. Our kids had been seen safely off to school, and the only child with us that morning was Sarah’s three-year-old, Josh, who dozed in a stroller by his mother’s side.
If I close my eyes, I can still see the four of us in our respective armchairs. Julie, red-haired and energetic, couldn’t sit still, her leg jiggling or toe tapping, always moving. Sarah, her counterpoint, small and still, dark head bent over her coffee, reminding me of a woodland creature in the way she pulled her legs under her, fitting her whole body in the seat. Too tall to do that, I slouched in mine, legs stretched out in front of me, hiding behind my mousy-blond hair. And then there was Heather, with her fine long legs hanging over the side of her chair, head back and golden mane hanging down, her thin neck exposed, looking both effortlessly graceful and vulnerable.
Sometimes I’d notice the glances we got from other mothers, desperate for adult conversation as they pushed strollers with one hand while clutching coffee cups with the other. I’d been one of those women once, coming here with Lucy and Matthew in a double stroller, envying the conversations going on around me. That was more than five years ago, when we’d first moved to town, before I met Julie and became part of the shop’s regular clientele.
What if Michael and I hadn’t been expecting a child? Our Realtor might have suggested a different, less family-friendly neighborhood. Or what if the male half of the elderly couple who owned the house we visited that day in Sewickley hadn’t had a stroke and his wife hadn’t decided that they should move to an assisted-living facility? If his stroke had been in December, rather than March, their home might have sold to someone else, and we might easily have bought a house in another neighborhood. This is the way of fate—all of these pieces that must slot into place, one leading to the other, a progression toward a conclusion that seems inevitable only after the fact.
Years before, I’d spent those first lonely visits to the coffee shop trying to entertain my children and wondering about the lives of the baristas and their patrons. Later I barely noticed them; my friends and I always had things to talk about—children, jobs, the school and other parents we knew, husbands, homes. That nasty bruise.
If I’d seen that injury on another mother from the elementary school, we would have all been talking about it, but Heather was one of us and she was sitting right there, blowing nonchalantly on her latte. I glanced at Julie and Sarah, but they were busy discussing whether it was okay to let their boys play football, even though the sons in question were barely nine and heavily involved in soccer.
I felt a familiar twinge—just a tiny twist—of jealousy. Not because I envied their conversation, but because before I moved to Sewickley it was Julie and Sarah, Sarah and Julie. They were friends first and that always irritated me, just a little.
Of course, it was stupid, because I shared that bond, too, soon enough. It’s just that I sometimes wished that I’d been Julie’s friend first. She was effervescent, one of those people who seem to be friends with everybody and everybody wants to know. Very social, gabby, an extrovert and a great organizer. It was no wonder that she became a real-estate agent—she was such a natural salesperson. Of course, I liked Sarah, too, but she was a little harder, a bit prickly at times, and mostly it was just that I envied the history they had that predated me. It was childish, this feeling, like being back in school and feeling upset because your prospective BFF has already been taken.
Julie and I first met at the preschool drop-off, hovering nervously around the entrance with the other parents as our little four-year-olds trooped inside with their teachers.