by Rea Frey
Lee shook her head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re right. You’ve been right all along. I’ve been so busy trying to be like you—dressing like you, losing weight like you, dating your father, living in your house, becoming a hairdresser…” She lifted her arms and dropped them. “I thought if I could prove that I was as good as you in some way, then I’d be worthy.”
“Worthy of what?” Lee was genuinely confused. Lee’s life, from the inside, was a mess. She was constantly trying to fix things, trying to escape a past she couldn’t escape. She’d become an alcoholic and still couldn’t kick the cravings. She had no romantic prospects. She was basically a babysitter for her father. Her job was her only saving grace.
“I don’t know. I just…”
“Listen, this is your life, Shirley. You don’t need to be anything like me. You’re a mother now. You have your entire life to do whatever you want to do. Is hair really what you want to do?”
She nodded. “It is. I love it.”
“So go after it. No matter what.”
“But how am I supposed to do that if I have no talent?”
“You do have talent. And I’m sorry if I seemed harsh in there. Look, if anyone can do this, you can. Look at you. Look how far you’ve come. You’re sober. You’ve become a phenomenal mother to Harry. You are getting your life together, and I couldn’t be prouder of you.”
Shirley collapsed against her chest. Harry yawned from the backseat. Lee’s heart swelled for her tiny brother in his bucket seat and her best friend in her arms. She wanted to help make this right. She wanted to help her succeed.
Shirley finally pulled away and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m such a hormonal mess.”
“You’re fine. It’s going to work out,” Lee said. “I promise.”
Shirley smiled through her tears, but doubt lurked just behind those pretty irises. “How do you know?”
“I just know.” A sinking feeling crept over her skin. Lee swallowed her apprehension and forced a smile. “It’s all going to be great.”
present
62
grace
Alice and Carol swirl their wine in Grace’s living room. After a few uncomfortable moments of silence, Alice leans in and places a hand on Grace’s knee. “Why didn’t you tell us any of this?”
She shrugs. “I wanted to. I should have. But I didn’t think it was my place to tell.” She’d finally shared a condensed version of what Lee had told her the night she died. About the man in the dark. What she’d gone through. How many secrets she’d kept. She left out the part about Shirley and Noah for now; that what Lee told her about her own sexual assault might not have actually happened. And how Noah may or may not fit into the puzzle. It was too complicated to get into.
The back door opens and shuts, and suddenly, her house is filled with male voices, both large and small.
Mason enters first and steps into the living room, slapping a tiny hand to his chest. “Good lord in heaven, people. You’re like a bunch of ghosts in here. Open a window! Turn on a light! Let’s bring some life into the room.” He claps his hands, thrusts open the curtains, and flips on the overhead light. “That’s better.”
Grace laughs. “How much sugar have you had, young man?”
“A lot,” Mason confirms. “Don’t judge. I’m going to read a book to negate the effects.”
Luca bounds in after and darts straight to his room without even saying hello. She hears Noah setting down grocery bags in the kitchen. He took the boys to Whole Foods to grab groceries and lunch—and she’s guessing ice cream or cookies too.
“Is it me, or is Mason becoming more humorous by the day?” Carol asks.
“And he doesn’t even know it,” Grace adds. She takes a sip of tea.
Carol leans forward and motions to Noah in the kitchen. Are you two okay? she mouths.
“Why?” Grace asks. Her skin prickles.
Alice chimes in. “Because we haven’t seen him lately.”
Grace sighs, closes her eyes, and adjusts her sweater. “He proposed.”
“What?” Carol and Alice both exclaim. Their faces crack into goofy grins, but she holds up a hand to interrupt.
“Don’t get too excited. I said no.”
“You said what now?” Carols shrieks. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want to get married.”
“Oh come on. You can’t base marriage on your experience with Chad. That’s not giving Noah a fair shot.”
Grace’s eyes flicker and she clears her throat. “It’s complicated.”
The women look at each other. “Life is complicated. Taxes are complicated. Marrying Noah? Not complicated.”
“I don’t know.” Grace drops her voice to a whisper and she leans toward the women, her palms working around the hot porcelain of her mug. “Doesn’t he seem—I don’t know—abnormally close to Mason?”
“What do you mean?” Alice asks.
Grace shrugs. “He just seems to have taken an unnatural interest in him. Something just feels off about it all.”
Carol and Alice share concerned looks. “Like, do you mean inappropriate or…?”
A ding interrupts their conversation. Grace sighs and extracts her phone. “Never mind. Forget I brought it up. I’m sure I’m just reading too much into it.” Her blood runs cold as she sees the new email. “Oh shit.” She sits up straight. “Guys.”
“What?” Carol sets her wine down.
“What is it?” Alice asks.
“Noah!” She glances toward the kitchen and then turns back to the email. “Noah, come here!”
The women anxiously wait as Noah enters the living room and says hello to her friends. With shaking fingers, Grace looks at the group. “It’s the autopsy and toxicology reports.”
“What does it say?” Carol asks.
“Finally,” Alice adds.
Grace blasts through the medical jargon, which explains death from internal injuries. That much they know. She scrolls to the toxicology report. She recalls the empty second bottle of wine. Did she or didn’t she?
She scans the page and lands on the number she fears the most: Lee’s blood alcohol level was 0.16 at the time of her death.
“You’re kidding,” she whispers.
“What?” Noah leans over her shoulder. “Oh.”
“Yep. She was drunk all right.” She passes the phone to Carol and Alice. That level means Lee basically downed the entire bottle. Because she went back inside the house, Lee slipped from sobriety. Because she’d slipped, she’d had an entire bottle of wine. Because she was drunk, she’d gone for a hike in the middle of the night and died.
“She was completely wasted. My God. This is all my fault.” She drops her face into her hands.
Alice and Carol murmur to each other as they reread the email.
“Hey, stop. It’s not your fault.” Noah slips an arm around her shoulders but it doesn’t help.
Grace thinks about how devastated Lee must have felt to turn back to alcohol; the news of Noah and the baby had made her that upset. The women finally put down the phone and stare at Grace with sympathy.
“At least we know now, right? There’s no more mystery. She was drunk.” Alice fiddles with her wine stem.
“Which explains why she fell,” Carol adds. “At least she didn’t jump.”
“We still don’t know that.” Grace sits back in the recliner. “I mean, yes. You’re right. She probably did slip.” She shrugs. “But what if she didn’t?”
Carol gnaws her bottom lip. “Grace, is there anything else about that night? Anything we should know?” She looks from Grace to Noah.
Grace swallows. “Like what?”
“I mean anything else that happened. Something Lee said. Any kind of warning or anything?”
“A warning? Like that she was going to do something stupid? No. Absolutely not.” Her face reddens as she works out what her friend is implying. “If I thought she was going to go jump off of a mounta
in, I wouldn’t have left her on the deck. We were in the middle of an argument. That’s all. I went back outside to look for her. I couldn’t find her.”
“Why didn’t you wake us up? We could have helped.”
Grace balls her hands into fists and stands. “Look. I have gone over this a million times in my head. I feel awful enough as it is. You two telling me what I should have done doesn’t help anything. She’s dead. She got drunk because of what I told her. I have to live with that, not you. Excuse me. I’m going to go lie down.” She storms off to her bedroom as a splitting headache pierces her between the eyes. Even her best friends don’t get it. She has to live with what happened that night—not them.
She hears Noah talking to them and then he knocks lightly on her door. “Grace?”
She sighs and rolls onto her back. “Come in.”
“Hey.” He sits on the edge of her bed and places a hand on her knee. “They’re not blaming you, you know. They’re just still trying to make sense of everything.”
She sits up. “I know. But I feel terrible. I feel so guilty, Noah.”
“Hey, stop. That won’t help anything. Come here.”
She folds into his arms—the first time since he proposed. She breathes in his familiar scent, sighs, and finally pulls away. “Do you mind if I rest for a bit? This baby is giving me a run for its money in the fatigue department.”
“Of course.” He kisses her forehead and pauses at the door. “It’s all going to be okay. You’ll see.”
He leaves the room, but for some reason, his words don’t bring her comfort. Instead, they bring with them a sense of impending dread.
past
63
lee
Over the past month, everything had gone downhill. Since that day in the parking lot, Shirley had become a different human being. It was like their conversation had never happened. She stopped eating again. She stopped nursing. She didn’t even take an interest in Harry. She’d given up on becoming a stylist and stayed holed up in Harold’s room.
Lee had taken on the child care almost exclusively, even with her busy work schedule. She kept waiting for Shirley to come to her senses and stop feeling sorry for herself, but a switch had been flipped. Gone were the days of Shirley fussing over Harry, singing him to sleep, giving him baths, and giggling at his sweet coos. It was heartbreaking. She didn’t know what Shirley was trying to prove, but she was desperate to snap her out of it. She knew part of it was punishment for bashing her portfolio, but Harry was the one who was suffering, not Lee.
Lee hired a babysitter to keep him placated on days that Shirley was wasted. She’d started drinking again, and an occasional drink had grown into blackout binges with her father. Lee was irate at her friend’s childish behavior. She still heard Shirley talking on the phone late at night or early in the mornings, and she often wanted to snatch the receiver out of her hand and scream at whoever was on the other end of the phone to help her. It killed her that Shirley wasn’t confiding in her, but she couldn’t save her all by herself.
She’d thought about finding Shirley’s family so many times and demanding they handle the situation. Yes, Harry was her brother, but Shirley was his mother. Someone had to talk some sense into her, and nothing Lee did made a difference.
Today, she had a four-hour training, and the babysitter couldn’t watch Harry. Sensing her hesitancy, Shirley had rolled her eyes at Lee.
“We’re his parents. We can handle it.”
She’d been completely sober when she said it, but Lee had still hesitated. “You haven’t exactly been the best role model lately.”
Shirley averted her eyes. “Just going through a rough patch. I’ll snap out of it.”
“Will you? You promised me that day that you were going to try with the job and for Harry. You were so excited. You were—”
“Lee, stop! Enough. I know. I know what I said. I don’t want to talk about it, okay? Just go to your stupid training.” She’d lost any amount of weight she’d kept since having the baby, now all sharp angles and ruddy skin.
“Have it your way.” Lee turned and slammed the door on her way out.
Now, every minute that passed, she wondered if Harry was okay. She’d fed him two bottles of formula before she left, changed his diaper, and put him down for a nap. She reminded herself that Shirley loved her baby and that she could give him everything he needed. She already had. If only she would try again. As much as Lee cared about him, it could never replace the love Shirley felt for her son.
After training, Lee raced out of the salon and called Shirley. No answer. She tried the landline, as her father refused to get a cell phone. Nothing. The panic hammered against her skull. She sped through town, hitting every red light, as if the universe was trying to keep her away. As the minutes ticked by, the questions began their assault: what if something happened? What if he’d choked or fallen out of his crib? Suddenly, the realization of what she’d done—leaving a three-month-old with irresponsible adults—shifted from conceptual to a horrific reality.
At the house, she unbuckled her seat belt and sprinted to the front door. She fumbled with the keys, dropped them, and finally found the right one to jam into the lock. She could hear Harry crying, even from outside.
“Oh God.” The smell of smoke hit her nostrils first. Harry’s cries intensified as she went through the kitchen and circled around to the living room. She searched for candles or cigarettes. Where was the cause of the smoke?
Harry was situated in his car seat, cartoons blasting. She lunged for the baby, unbuckled him, and folded him against her chest. His onesie was soaked with urine and yellow shit, his round face streaked from hours of strained tears. She shushed him against her. “Oh, Harry. Oh sweet pea. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Never again, I promise. Never again.”
She searched for the remote, clicked it off, and listened for other sounds in the house. The low hum of the television in her father’s room was the only indication that there was other life here. She got Harry cleaned up and warmed a bottle. She cradled him as he sucked greedily at the food, his eyes alert and then growing heavy as he fell asleep in her arms. She kissed his forehead and then lowered him into his bassinet and tiptoed across the hall, pressing her ear to the door. She wanted to kick it in, to finally let both of them have it. She didn’t expect much from her father, but Shirley was breaking her fucking heart.
She tried the knob and it turned in her hands. The room was dark and rank. The source of the smoke was immediate. There were two lit cigarettes in her father’s ashtray and a blazing candle with an inch-long flame. She blinked through the haze and saw her father on his back, legs and arms splayed. Snores strangled his airway as the fan, on high, whirred with the annoying click of the rusty chain.
She moved around the bed to Shirley. A pillow rested over her face. Shirley hated her father’s snoring and had all but threatened separate bedrooms if he didn’t do something about it. Shirley had taken to sleeping with earplugs, or, in rare cases, with a pillow over her face when socking him in the shoulder didn’t work.
The bedside table was littered with ashes, rubber tubes, and a small plate of something that had been boiled and was now burnt. Lee searched for the needle and found it beside Shirley’s left hip.
“Goddammit, Shirley.” Shirley had promised not to turn back to drugs. She’d promised to stay clean for Harry. What had been the catalyst to push her over the edge—and today of all days? Lee wondered if she’d secretly been doing drugs for the last month. She scanned the room as if she’d find the answer. There, on the floor, was Shirley’s hair portfolio.
Lee knelt by the book and flipped through it. Every single photograph had been destroyed. Photographs that had taken time and money, now unrecognizable. Lee closed the book. She’d criticized Shirley’s work. This was why she was so angry. Because she’d hurt her feelings. She looked again at the small plate of drugs. So she’d turned back to something that made her feel good.
She cast the disap
pointment aside, along with the book. Lee grabbed a small towel from the floor, pinched the used needle, and deposited it onto the nightstand. Enough was enough. She had to get her help. Get them help. Shirley could still have a good life. She just needed to get her away from her father and prove that she could be a good mother to her son. She’d help her get a good job. Shirley could be her damn assistant if she had to. But she had to get her out of this house.
Lee knew she hated to be woken up, but she’d had it. This was it. Harry could have died in there, alone and crying, and then she’d have to live with that for the rest of her life.
She gathered every bit of restraint she possessed and lifted the pillow. “Oh my God!” Lee jumped back as if something grotesque and monstrous had been hiding there. Shirley’s eyes were bloodshot and cocked up and to the left, her face a sickening shade of gray. Remnants of foam dusted the tops of her lips, which were ajar, as if she’d been surprised by something. “No!” She screamed so loud, she was sure her father would awaken, but he remained motionless too. She clutched her best friend, her waxy flesh cool in her arms, and prayed for a miracle. She screamed into her shoulder until she thought she would throw up.
She could not lose her best friend. Not after how hard she’d tried to save her. Not after all they’d been through. Not after she had a real chance to get her life together. Shirley’s story could not end like this.
Lee finally pressed two shaky fingers against the side of her neck. No pulse thumped beneath the surface. No twitches or automation of a body continuing to run after years of trying to destroy it.
“Come on. Come on, please God. Please be alive. Please.” As Lee’s fingers hunted for life, pressing so hard that she wondered if she was going to puncture the skin, she was reminded of that night at the party, when she’d kept Shirley in a tight spoon, consistently waking to check for her pulse. She rooted deeper and deeper, knowing but not accepting.
