The Best of Friends

by Berry, Lucinda

  “Ted’s coming with us tomorrow,” he announced while we were finishing up the dinner dishes.

  My back was to him while I scrubbed the last pot, so he couldn’t see my shocked expression, and I quickly rearranged my face before turning around. “Really?” I asked.

  “He’s taking a red-eye out shortly after midnight, and his flight doesn’t get in until four thirty this morning. He’ll grab a few hours of sleep in one of the hotels by the airport and meet us down at the police station by eight.” He pointed to the stack of Tupperware lids in his other hand and asked, “Where should I put these?”

  He acts like I’m so dumb. As if he could bypass the bomb he dropped in our kitchen by changing the subject. But I’m not nearly as stupid as he thinks. Or naive. Maybe I used to be, but not anymore.

  He didn’t need to tell me which Ted. We only have one friend named Ted, and Bryan uses him for anything legal, as if he specialized in all areas of law rather than commercial property. He lives in Upper Manhattan in a bachelor’s loft that Bryan swoons over on Instagram whenever he posts a picture of it.

  Being single and never married is a badge of honor he wears proudly, and he never misses an opportunity to drop it into conversation. None of his relationships have lasted longer than a year, but he thinks he can give Bryan marital advice. It makes me so angry, and I gave up pretending I liked him years ago. Eventually, he quit coming around, but it didn’t stop Bryan from finding a way to make it out there at least once a year. He comes home talking like he regrets being married and tied down with kids. It always takes him a couple of days to come back to reality.

  At least Ted’s not staying here. He’s the last person I want in my space.

  My stomach curls in on itself just with the thought of tomorrow. The investigators have been tiptoeing around us until after the funeral in an unspoken understanding to honor the Mitchells’ loss, but they’ve taken their kid gloves off. They made that clear when they called Bryan this morning and told him about the gun.

  How many times have we told the kids not to play with the gun?

  “What was I supposed to do?” Bryan asked after I got upset that he hadn’t consulted me about Ted coming to the police station. “You would’ve said no even if I’d asked you. Don’t even try to pretend like you wouldn’t.” He sneered at me. “You care more about what your damn girlfriends think than you do your own family. The boys used our gun, Dani—our gun. And the police know it.”

  The intensity of the grief surrounds us, filling the police department waiting room with thick, suffocating energy. Chairs line each wall in front of the door that I can’t take my eyes off because any minute someone is going to walk through it and start whatever grueling process we are about to go through. It’s different from any waiting room I’ve been in before. There are no cheap prints in frames on the walls. No tables with old magazines for us to read while we wait. Nothing to distract us.

  Kendra and Paul sit huddled in the corner. Paul’s arms are wrapped tightly around Kendra, and her small frame is buried inside his. He had to hold her up when they came through the door. Her sweatpants dragged across the floor, and her baggy long-sleeved shirt was dotted with stains. I tried to make eye contact with her, but she kept her face down, her long blonde hair falling forward like a shield. I shot Lindsey a worried look, but she quickly turned away, clearly ignoring me because she’s still upset about the lawyer. I sent her a bunch of apologetic texts last night, begging her to talk, but she didn’t respond to any of them, and she never would’ve done that unless she was mad.

  It feels like we’re sitting in the principal’s office, and I hate getting into trouble. Bryan grips my hand. His palms are sweaty. Ted still hasn’t arrived. We got here first and grabbed seats on the row of chairs lining the right wall. Lindsey and Andrew came next and sat beside us, leaving the other wall to Kendra and Paul, like there’s an imaginary line separating the parents who have lost their child from those of us who haven’t.

  Except that line might not be so clear.

  Tears fill my eyes. Caleb wet the bed last night, and he hasn’t done that since kindergarten. He was too wrecked to even be embarrassed about it. I cleaned his sheets, then lay in bed with him, holding him tightly and running my hands through his hair while he sobbed.

  Neither of us fell back to sleep.

  He’s been out of the psychiatric ward for four days, and each night follows the same routine. His nightmares interrupt his fitful sleep, sending bloodcurdling screams throughout the house and shooting panic through my veins while I race to his room and Bryan rushes into Luna’s. Caleb shakes in terror on his bed and clings to me like he’d climb inside me if he could. My pleas are the same every night while I hold him against me, doing my best to comfort him.

  “Please, Caleb, just tell me what happened,” I whisper.

  It’s been seventeen days, and he still hasn’t spoken. Not one word.

  He didn’t even speak the night of the accident when Miss Thelma found him wandering down her block covered in blood. She recognized him immediately when she spotted him across the street. She’s been walking her poodle, Mitzi, in our tree-lined neighborhood for as long as he’s been playing in it with his friends. He has knocked on her door with every school fundraising flyer since kindergarten and practically ran her over on his bike more than once. She called out to him, but he kept walking like he didn’t hear her, so she hurried down the sidewalk to make sure he was okay. That was when she saw his face and called the police. Miss Thelma followed behind him without saying anything until the police arrived. She hasn’t walked Mitzi since. Her daughter comes every day to do it for her.

  We still have no clue what happened that night. The reporters are calling it the worst tragedy since the Lindell fires. The newspapers and media outlets have taken to calling Caleb “the silent child,” and some of them have been so bold as to claim he’s faking his silence to keep himself out of trouble, but they didn’t see him that night at the hospital. He was transported to the psychiatric ward on the sixteenth floor in a wheelchair because he couldn’t hold himself up to walk. Andrew and I practically carried him into his locked room. His nurses allowed me to clean him up once the investigators had bagged all his clothes.

  I laid him in the tub and bathed him like I haven’t done since he was an infant, running the washcloth over his body and face again and again. Every part of his body was limp. His arms dangled like a doll’s. He gazed up at the ceiling, eyes unfixed, unseeing, as I washed away the blood of his best friends since preschool.

  The front door of the police station opens, interrupting my thoughts. All of us turn to look as Ted strides into the room. There’s no mistaking he’s a lawyer with his shiny briefcase and three-piece suit. He makes a beeline for Bryan.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late, buddy,” he says, pulling out a handkerchief from his pocket and swiping it across the beads of sweat on his forehead before sliding it back into his pocket in one swift movement.

  Paul lets go of Kendra and leaps to his feet. “You hired a lawyer? What’d you hire a lawyer for?”

  Bryan takes a step toward him, holding his hands out in a peaceful gesture. “It’s not what you think, Paul. He’s just a friend. He’s—”

  “A friend?” Paul narrows his eyes to slits. “All of us have friends that are lawyers.” He waves his hand around the room. “Do you see any other lawyers here besides yours?”

  People don’t speak to Bryan like that, and his body stiffens in response. I chew on my lip, hoping he’ll keep his mouth shut this once. He expels a deep breath like he’s letting go of his anger, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “We thought it might be a good idea,” he says.

  That’s not what we rehearsed. He was supposed to say that Ted was a family friend and there to help all of us because we were too emotional to think clearly, too close to the situation, so we needed someone to think rationally for us. That was the explanation we’d planned.

  “You thought it wou
ld be a good idea?” Paul’s anger radiates off him, his rage contorting his familiar features into a man I don’t recognize.

  Lindsey nudges Andrew, and he stands to join them. “Come on, guys. Let’s remember why we’re here,” he says, reaching out and grabbing their arms to form a lopsided triangle in the middle of the room.

  Images of the three of them huddled together like that flash through my mind in quick snippets—all the family vacations, school functions, baseball games, and playdates over the years. Kendra, Lindsey, and I have been so lucky. We’ve gotten to live the life we whispered about when we were little girls huddled underneath our blankets at sleepovers. We always talked about living in the town we grew up in, marrying amazing men, and raising our children together. We couldn’t believe it when our three oldest boys were as close as we were growing up. We knew how good we had it and how fortunate we were that our husbands got along so well.

  What will happen to us?

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Ted interrupts, sounding every bit a lawyer, and I hate him for it. There’s no hesitation on his part as he moves to stand between Bryan and Paul. “Let’s all take a step back and mellow out.”

  The door opens just as Paul starts to speak, and a detective strides into the room. Everyone stills. It’s Detective Locke, the same one from the hospital. He wears a crisp white shirt buttoned to the top with a dark tie and matching jacket. His first name eludes me even though I’m pretty sure he was in my freshman algebra class in high school.

  “Everything okay out here?” he asks. He doesn’t smile at any of us as he scans the room.

  The men exchange awkward glances. I try to catch Lindsey’s eye again, but Bryan’s body blocks my view. Detective Locke motions to Paul. “Let’s start with you and your wife.”

  THREE

  KENDRA

  Detective Locke has been bombarding us with questions for over an hour. Maybe longer. I can’t make sense of his words. They come from his mouth and float around the room. I don’t bother to chase them. What’s the point?

  My son is gone, and he’s never coming back.

  Nothing changes that.

  I keep waiting to wake up, for Paul to jiggle my arm and tell me I slept through my alarm clock again. I want to wipe the sleep from my eyes, push the horrid images back into the land of sleep, and wake in a world where Sawyer still exists.

  “Kendra?” It sounds like Detective Locke is calling me from the end of a long tunnel. “Kendra?”

  How long has he been calling my name? I lift my head and try to focus on him as he peers at me from across his desk. His face is a perfect square. Green eyes with specks of gold surrounding his pupils. They’re deep, impossible to read. The light coming in through the window behind him is too bright. It makes my head hurt.

  “Did Sawyer mention being angry with Jacob or Caleb?” He gazes at me with hawklike precision.

  “No, not to me.” The Xanax makes my tongue thick. I speak like I have a mouthful of marbles.

  “Did you notice any recent changes in his behavior?”

  It takes too much effort to shake my head.

  Paul answers for me, “We didn’t notice anything weird. He was moody, but he wasn’t moodier than any other teenager.”

  Sawyer is our happy one—the easy kid. Reese is our problem child. Always has been.

  “Any changes in his sleeping patterns?”

  “He slept a lot, but all teenagers sleep a lot.”

  Except mine. He won’t sleep again. The loss claws at my chest, stealing every wisp of air from my lungs. I’m going to scream. That’s what happened in the bathroom. Not again.

  I grab for Paul’s knee next to mine.

  “Paul . . .” It’s all I can get out. My mouth is too dry to speak. Teeth stick to my gums.

  Detective Locke turns his attention back to me. The intensity of his stare is gone and replaced with concern. “Are you okay?” he asks, getting up from behind his desk.

  I shake my head. Screams bubble like lava in my chest, exploding in sounds that must come from me, but I’ve gone behind the glass in my mind, where it’s safe. I place my hands on the cool surface as I watch Paul take me into his arms as if it’s possible to comfort me.

  FOUR

  LINDSEY

  Detective Locke looks just like he did in high school—square shoulders, angular jaw, clean cut—like he came out of the womb ready to join the military, and that’s exactly what he did as soon as we graduated. He was at boot camp the week after our ceremony. I haven’t seen him since and had no idea he was Norchester’s lead detective until he strode into Jacob’s hospital room the first night. We were never friends, but our graduating class was under two hundred people, which meant everyone knew everyone else. Most of us stay in touch, especially those of us who live close, but he’s never attended any of our high school reunions, and I haven’t seen him at any of the weddings of former classmates.

  He had a partner at the hospital that night who followed him around as they hovered in the background outside of Jacob’s room, but he’s by himself today. I still don’t know anything about him. I’ve scoured social media and can’t find anything. He doesn’t even have a Facebook profile. What kind of a person doesn’t at least have that?

  He points to the two chairs sitting in front of his desk while he moves to take the swivel office chair behind it. I slide into the straight-backed wooden seat on the right, still warm from whoever sat here last. Was it Dani? Bryan?

  Kendra and Paul were in and out quickly. Kendra’s wails cut their meeting short. Her sobs started small and worked their way up to a heart-wrenching crescendo reverberating throughout the building. I’ve never heard someone cry like that. It took everything in me not to go to her. Andrew sensed my knee-jerk response, and if it weren’t for his arm around me, I might not have been able to stop myself. We all stood when Kendra came out like we were honoring the bride at a wedding.

  The Schultzes went next. Their session dragged on for over two hours. Dani looked stricken when they came out, but she can’t stand anything hinting at trouble, and this room reeks of it. There’s nothing on any of the dirty white walls except chipped paint and scratches. His desk is cluttered with papers and files. His meticulous appearance obviously doesn’t transfer to paperwork. There’s not a single picture frame on his desk. Does that mean he doesn’t have a family or that he prefers to keep his personal life private? Gosh, I hope it’s the latter, because people without kids have no idea what it’s like to be a parent. They think they do, just like I did before I had kids, but they’re clueless.

  Am I supposed to call him Martin? Detective Locke? I clear my throat, anxious to get started. I can’t stand being away from Jacob for so long. He had a terrible night last night. Spiked a 102-degree fever and sent all his machines into panic mode. Andrew’s fidgeting next to me isn’t helping my anxiety.

  “Was Jacob depressed?” Detective Locke asks, wasting no time on formalities and small talk like he did in the hospital.

  “Not at all,” I answer without hesitation. “I know everyone says that teenage boys are the worst communicators and you can’t get them to do more than grunt in response to your questions, but Jacob wasn’t like that. We talked every day. Our relationship was open and honest. He came to me with things. All my children do. If he was having problems or feeling down, I would’ve known about it.”

  He looks at me like I’m in denial about what he’s getting at, but I’m not.

  Self-inflicted gunshot wound.

  That’s what the doctors in the emergency room said when they told us about Jacob’s injuries. The same line is listed in his chart, but I skip over it whenever I scan his reports for the latest lab results and neurology tests. He might’ve shot himself, but he would never kill himself on purpose. Never. Jacob was happy, and happy kids don’t try to take their own lives, especially when they have everything going for them.

  “Sometimes depression looks different in teenagers than it does in adults. Did you notice any ir
ritability? Change in his appetite?”

  Andrew bursts into laughter that’s quickly followed by red-faced embarrassment at his poor timing. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . you obviously don’t know Jacob.” He wrestles with his emotions before continuing. “Our boy likes to eat. There’s no problem there.”

  I reach for his hand and lace our fingers together. He squeezes back. I’ve never been so grateful to have him by my side as I have been these past couple of weeks. His leave of absence from the medical practice got approved today, and one of the other rheumatologists from Oak Park will see his patients while he’s out. This way one of us can keep staying with Jacob while the other manages things at home with Wyatt and Sutton. We’re going to work out a schedule later tonight.

  “Has he ever tried to hurt himself before?” Detective Locke stares at me like there’s a clue hidden somewhere in my face.

  “Absolutely not. That’s not the kind of kid he is.” I lean forward across his desk, pushing a stack of papers aside with my elbows to create space. “I know you’re doing your job and that all of this is a part of it, but our son would never hurt himself on purpose.” I stare at him pointedly.

  “I understand how you feel, Lindsey, and I sympathize with you.” He leans across his desk in the same way to meet me in the middle. “However, with all due respect, the forensics taken from the scene paint a different picture. Jacob’s injuries and finger placement on the gun are all consistent with an attempted suicide.”

  “He might have put the gun up to his head and pulled the trigger, but I promise you that he didn’t know the gun was loaded, or he never would’ve done it. He knows better than that.” I wait a beat before continuing, making sure my words get a chance to sink in. “And besides, it’s not like he was the only one who touched the gun. All three of the boys’ fingerprints were on it. Anything could have happened.” I throw the information in his face like he wasn’t the one who shared the report with us when it came back from ballistics.