She Regrets Nothing

by Andrea Dunlop

  “Me too! You know we’ve barely been out all month? I’m only even seeing Larry once a week or so,” Nora added, reaching to Leo for the pipe.

  Reece surprised herself by feeling a great wave of sympathy for Laila. For who had lost more than Laila? She had no parents, no siblings of her own, and now she’d lost Liberty too. The twins had suffered a great loss, but they had each other, and they had their parents, however imperfect. Who did Laila have?

  Maybe, Reece thought, Laila had her.

  “How are you doing, Mama?” Cece came into Reece’s office the next morning and put the coffee she’d brought up—a latte from the Dean & DeLuca below their office—in front of her.

  “You’re sweet,” Reece said with a grateful smile. She took a sip. “Did you see?”

  She didn’t have to specify what.

  Cece cringed. “Yeah, kind of tacky. I mean at least it’s Megan Capshaw. Could be worse? I mean, I wouldn’t have done it, but . . .” She shrugged.

  “Did she tell you she was doing it?”

  “Nah. But I haven’t seen her in a while. We’ve kind of drifted apart, to be honest.”

  “Have you?”

  Cece shook her head. “She kind of went MIA when she met Blake. Which, like, I get it; some girls are just like that when they’re in love.”

  “But she and Blake broke up. . . .”

  “I heard that,” Cece said. “I tried calling her after Liberty . . . but I didn’t hear from her. I don’t know.”

  Reece rubbed her temples with her thumb and forefinger. It was all too much.

  “I feel like I should call her. I’m worried she doesn’t have anybody.”

  Cece nodded. “I get that.” She reached over and squeezed Reece’s hand. “As long as you’re taking care of you first.”

  “I have to admit, I was really surprised to hear from you,” Laila said, sliding into the booth in the corner of Cafeteria across from Reece after the two had exchanged a somewhat awkward hug and some rudimentary pleasantries. It was nearly October, and the days were getting crisper, shorter.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” Reece said with a shrug. “I just figured you could use some support right now. That you could use a friend.”

  Laila looked as though she might burst into tears. Upon seeing her walk through the door, Reece had known she’d done the right thing in calling her. She looked like a ghost of herself, dark circles blooming under her eyes, her skin pallid and her clothes hanging off her tiny frame.

  “I just keep replaying the moment in my head,” Laila said, looking down at the table, “and trying to think if there’s anything I could have done differently. I know it’s crazy, but I feel responsible.”

  “Laila, no one but Sean Calloway is responsible for Liberty’s murder.”

  The police had warned that the trial would be slow in coming, but no one had any illusions about the trial’s going his way: considering the state of the media coverage, the powerful families involved, and Sean’s own lack of resources—his exhausted-looking public defender his only ally—his conviction seemed a foregone conclusion by then.

  But Reece understood the guilt; she’d felt it herself. How many times had she gone to Trapdoor with Liberty? How had she never seen that something was off about Sean? His looks were a smoke screen. No one could imagine someone so handsome being a murderer. Ted Bundy, people said, but Ted Bundy was no Sean Calloway. And how much worse must it be for Laila, who’d had the misfortune of finding her?

  “Have you seen the fan sites?” Laila asked.

  “I’ve heard about them,” Reece said. There’d been a dozen sites that had popped up where “fans” of Sean could congregate. Just the day before, the Post had included an item about a documentary in the works about the phenomenon. Sean Calloway: Most Wanted. “It’s sick. I don’t know what’s wrong with these girls.”

  “And guys,” Laila added. A wry smile.

  “True. So how are you doing? I’ve been worried about you.”

  “You have?” Laila leaned forward subtly.

  “Of course I have.” Reece felt a wave of guilt. Why had she been so cold to Laila all this time? She’d been a snob.

  “Well . . .” Laila twisted her napkin in her hands. Just at that moment, the waiter appeared. The girls ordered a mountain of comfort food—milk shakes, fried chicken, mac and cheese—most of which would remain uneaten when they left.

  “To be honest, I didn’t think you ever especially liked me.” Oh, there it was.

  “Listen, I can be a little quick to judge sometimes. It’s . . . growing up like we did, you become suspicious of people. But it’s not right. And I’m sorry for that. I would really like it if we could be friends.”

  A smile of such intense gratitude crossed Laila’s face that Reece knew she’d done the right thing.

  “I think that would make Liberty really happy. I mean, I think that’s what she would have wanted.”

  “I do too.”

  For a while the girls just chatted, and Reece felt happy to be there with her. They talked about how much they both loved Cece and discussed the latest antics on The Real Housewives of New York City, a shared guilty pleasure.

  “So are you still going into the agency?” Reece asked.

  “Oh, no,” Laila said, absently stirring her melted milk shake. “I don’t think I could bear it.”

  “Understandable. So what are you going to do next?” Talking was good, but Reece wanted something she could do for the girl.

  Laila’s demeanor changed. “I don’t think you’re going to like the answer.”

  “No judgment, I promise.” Of course Reece knew she couldn’t actually promise this. She knew she’d also come to try to protect Laila—and the rest of them—from herself.

  “Well, I’ve had a lot of offers. A book, a documentary, even a reality show.”

  She didn’t need to say what the offers revolved around. They both knew.

  “A reality show? Really?” Reece kept her tone light, tried to force a smile.

  “Yeah, I know, weird. It’s one of those ones where they do televised therapy sessions. Some pop psychologist lady put the concept together. Basically they’re looking for ‘telegenic’ survivors of trauma. Famous if possible.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I know. I’m going to pass on that one; don’t worry. But the book, that could be more dignified, don’t you think? I learned so much from Liberty. It would be a memoir like What Remains by Carole Radziwill. Liberty loved that book.”

  She could feel the girl straining for her approval.

  “Here’s the thing,” Reece said, choosing her words carefully. “If you do one of these . . . projects, Liberty’s death, the case, that will be what people know you for. You’ll be defined by the worst possible thing.”

  Laila looked as though she might cry. “I know; I know that. But it kind of feels like my only option right now. Not to be gross about it, but I’m running out of money, and I don’t really feel like I can lean on my family right now. I mean, they’re dealing with their own grief. . . .”

  Reece reached out for her hand. “Listen, I’ll . . . we’ll help you, okay? Don’t worry about that. Just take some time and think about what you really want to do. If you want to work for a literary agency, I have friends at other ones, and I know lots of people in fashion if that’s of interest to you; we can find you something.”

  Reece felt a surge of righteousness on the girl’s behalf; she imagined she saw what Liberty had seen. Laila was someone the universe had forsaken: a doomed figure who seemed to lose everyone she might have loved, everyone who might care for her. She didn’t know exactly why she and Blake had broken up—only that it had been his doing—the abominable bad luck of its happening the same night as Liberty’s death was doubly horrible and seemingly in line with how the universe operated when it made someone its sorry target.

  “You’re so kind. I see why Liberty loved you so much,” Laila said, wiping tears from her eyes.

&nb
sp; “I miss her so much,” Reece said, “I can barely get out of bed some days. I haven’t been able to take her number out of my phone.”

  “I miss her too. I feel like she was the only one in the family who really loved me.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.” Reece shifted uncomfortably in her seat, because she was certain that in fact it was true. For the others, Laila was now an obligation and an increasingly inconvenient one, at that. She’d always thought Nora might be more kindhearted under her spoiled exterior, but now Reece wondered if she’d even really learned to be empathetic at all. Leo just couldn’t be bothered to care about much in general and had never been invested in Laila other than as a momentary amusement. Petra might have stepped up under any other circumstances, but she was too shattered.

  “I’ll help you,” Reece said, reaching across the table to take Laila’s hand, “I promise.”

  27

  * * *

  REECE AND Cameron had never been through a true tragedy before: grandparents had passed away and an uncle they’d seen a few times a year. But never anyone so central to their lives, and so young, as Liberty. There couldn’t have been anyone whose loss they would feel more—Reece’s best friend, Cameron’s fiancée—and both of their lives had been thrown off their central axes by her death. Reece had hoped to be able to lean on her brother, but he was heartbreakingly absent: wrapped in his own grief, retreating to his town house alone. The week after Reece saw Laila, when Cameron hadn’t answered her calls for days, Reece stopped by unannounced after working a late night at the office, brandishing takeout from Veselka.

  “Cameron?” she called out, turning her key in the door. Immediately, she saw something was off. The normally immaculate house was in disarray. She walked into the kitchen, leaving the takeout on the counter. She called his name again, and this time he came down the stairs shirtless and disheveled in sweatpants, several days of blond stubble coating his chin and cheeks. The look did not suit him, for the hair on his face was so similar to the color of his skin that from a distance it made his face look bloated and warped.

  “Reece. What are you doing here?”

  “Nice to see you too,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, stepping forward to envelop her in a hug, “I’m just surprised to see you; I didn’t know you were stopping by.” He didn’t smell as bad as he looked, but still a sad, stale aroma clung to him.

  “Well, you might if you answered your phone when I called. Anyway, I brought chili from Veselka. Have you eaten?”

  He shook his head and leaned over to kiss her on the forehead. The chili was his favorite thing, she knew, along with the giant, squishy rolls that came with it.

  Cameron shoved a pile of papers to the side, and they sat down at the countertop.

  “Okay, Cam, I have to say, it is a pigsty in here. What’s the deal?” Reece pulled a wad of napkins from the take-out bag.

  He shrugged. “I’ve been home a lot; I didn’t want the maid to be here while I was here. It always makes me feel awkward. Also, I’m not really in shape to see anyone, as you can see.”

  “Even me?”

  Cameron tucked into his chili with the flimsy plastic spoon, not even bothering to use his own silverware; normally he ate even takeout on his fancy flatware. “I just want to be alone.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Reece said. “Actually, I want to be with someone who misses her as much as I do. I want to be with someone who understands what I’ve lost.”

  “Sorry to be a disappointment, sis.” His voice was cold, defensive.

  “You know, Mom is worried about you,” Reece said, trying for a safer tactic.

  “Well, how’s that different from any other day?”

  “This time, she has a good reason. I’m worried too, to be honest. Are you seeing a therapist or something?” Reece had seen close-up the changes that Liberty had produced in her brother, how he’d blossomed since returning from London: he was less callow, calmer, more sensitive. She worried this bettered version of Cameron might now be lost forever.

  Reece herself was seeing a therapist, of course, someone she’d been to before when she was having trouble recovering from more quotidian heartbreaks and malaise. Everyone in Manhattan had therapists; it was like having a hairdresser. Therapy wasn’t helping her much at the moment, but it made her feel as if she were doing something, which was better than nothing.

  “Nah.”

  “So you’re just going to white-knuckle it?”

  “I guess so.”

  Reece retreated for a moment into her chili.

  “I saw Laila the other day,” she said, softly.

  Suddenly her brother’s gaze became steely. Reece pushed down the memory of walking in on her brother with Laila in the hospital—the flash of momentary fear in his eyes. Why was she thinking of it now? Laila and Cameron had nothing to do with each other, at least not that she knew of.

  “Why?”

  Of course, she thought, he was as unsympathetic to her as the Lawrence family. Resentful of her appearance on the morning show, as glad to discard her as Nora and Leo appeared to be.

  “Because she’s hurting too. I want to be a friend.”

  “It’s not like you two were friends before,” Cameron spat.

  “It’s different now; you know that. Liberty would want us to look out for her.”

  “If you say so. What’s she up to, anyway?”

  Reece groaned, glad to have someone to share this information with.

  “She’s getting a lot of offers after the morning-show thing,” Reece said.

  Cameron stopped eating. “What do you mean, offers?”

  “Tell-all books, oh, and get this, some kind of awful trauma-survivor reality show where they tape them in group therapy or something. I can’t believe that such a thing exists, except that I can. The world we live in.”

  “She can’t do that.” Cameron’s voice was dark.

  “I’m doing my best to talk her out of it. I mean, I don’t think she wants to do any of it. But the Lawrences are shutting her out; I don’t think she knows what else to do with herself. And these producers are such vultures, you know?”

  “Well, she needs to find something else.”

  “I told her that. I told her I’d help her.” She’d e-mailed Laila about an assistant job opening in her firm just that afternoon. It would be competitive, she’d told her, but she could put in a word. Laila had thanked her and told her she was still putting together her résumé.

  “That’s not your job.”

  Reece looked at him curiously. Where had her brother gone all of a sudden? Was he simply so deep in his grief that he could not be reached? She tried to shift the conversation, make small talk, to which she received indifferent grunts. Then she tried talking about Liberty, which was what she really wanted to do.

  “You know, Liberty was always so kind to Laila. I realize now that she did so despite her family, not because of them. But she was like that. She always found enough room in her heart for everyone. God, that sounds like something from Pinterest, but it’s true.”

  Reece wanted to remember her friend. She needed to remember her friend, accept that she existed now in the past tense, to quit waking up in the morning with the thought that she should call her for lunch today. But the mention of her name shut Cameron down completely.

  “Listen, sis,” he said, “I’m going to head to bed soon.”

  “It’s nine o’clock!”

  “I know, but I’m exhausted. Thanks for coming by, though. Thanks for the chili.”

  Reece looked at her brother as he stood, threw away the take-out containers, and started to move toward the door. She felt that she’d somehow done and said all the wrong things. Things were never like this between them. Even when her brother had been gone to London for those two years, or when he was off at Harvard before that, they always reconnected in a second; it was always as if no time had passed between them.

  “Cam,” she said, “please talk
to me.”

  “About what?”

  She’d never seen him so cold. It was his defense, she knew. She’d just never seen it raised to this level, and not in her direction.

  “About how you feel.” She reached out and put her hand on his arm.

  “How do you think I feel? My fiancée was murdered.” His voice was exasperated, as though Reece were being deeply unreasonable, assaulting him with this conversation.

  “She was my best friend,” Reece said wistfully.

  “Is it a competition?” He pulled back from her several inches, and his face hardened.

  “Of course not! I’m just saying that I’m hurting too, and it would be nice if I could talk to my brother about it. I loved her too.” Now Reece had tears in her eyes. It hit her in unexpected moments that Liberty was truly gone, and it was happening now. There would be no end to this suffering she shared with her brother—a lessening, perhaps, a fading, but her death had happened, and it would reverberate throughout both of their lives forever. She knew that her brother’s stoicism was a way of denying, or at least delaying, the reality of it all: but in shutting the pain out, he shut Reece out too.

  “Well, I’m sorry I can’t grieve the way you want me to grieve.”

  Reece gave up. She would wait for him to soften, for him to come back toward her. She had no choice.

  “Okay, let’s not fight about it. Jesus. I just . . .”

  “Listen, it’s fine. I’m not mad. I’m just exhausted. I can’t do this right now.”

  In truth, this was a classic move of Cameron’s, of most men, really: to act as if normal human reactions, when coming from a woman, were undue burdens to them. It had never bothered Reece until now. She accepted a lackluster hug from her brother and went off into the night.

  28

  * * *

  THE PARTICULARLY lovely days of that fall felt almost cruel. The heat and angst of summer receded, and the gentle days, with their golden light, seemed an affront to Reece’s senses. Winter would suit her better, and it would arrive soon enough, she knew. But at the moment, the crisp, delightful air was making everyone in New York a little too cheerful for her taste. Without her brother to lean on, Reece turned increasingly to the twins. Being with them reminded her of her friend; Leo more so than Nora. He had a degree of Liberty’s wit and warmth, and he had her beauty, of course.