The Pact

by Jennifer Sturman

  “That’s just at the edge,” she told me, flipping onto her back and fluttering her legs. “It’s balmy out here. Like a bathtub.” One that had been filled with barely melted snow. I gave her a dubious look.

  “Come on,” she cried again. “Don’t be a wuss.”

  “I’m proud of being a wuss. It suits me.”

  “You should just dive right in. Otherwise you’ll be there forever.”

  She was right, I knew. No amount of mental preparation could prepare me for the iciness that awaited, and the longer I waited the less likely I was to brave it. There was only one way to handle it. Before I could change my mind, I strode out onto the dock, and with a running start, dove in headfirst.

  “Aaacckkk!” I howled, as soon as my mouth reached the surface. “Jane, you rat, it’s freezing.” My teeth began to chatter. Surely water this cold should be ice, I thought. Perhaps lake water was special and didn’t actually freeze when its temperature went below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit? I knew I should have paid more attention in my high school chemistry class.

  Jane laughed. “Well now that you’re in, I’ll race you to the raft.” She took off with long, even strokes. I didn’t bother to try to race her; competition’s no fun when you don’t stand even a chance of winning, and Jane was probably in training for a megatriathlon or some such thing. I followed with a lazy sidestroke.

  The raft was anchored roughly a hundred yards from shore, a set of wooden planks that floated atop empty barrels. By the time I’d hoisted myself up the ladder, Jane had already stretched out on her back. “Slowpoke,” she said.

  “Show-off,” I answered, stretching out beside her. The sun-baked surface of the raft radiated warmth, and the gentle rocking motion was soothing. “Aah,” I sighed. “This is more like it.”

  “Mmm,” Jane murmured her agreement.

  “Oh, bugs,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I was supposed to get a fax from my office, and I forgot to check the machine.”

  “Relax,” she said. “Wall Street’s not going to implode if you take an hour off.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Besides, weren’t you supposed to be putting in fewer hours now that you’re a vice president?”

  “Yes,” I admitted, “but it doesn’t seem to be working out as planned. The head of my department keeps throwing deals at me.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “I suppose so. I mean, it’s helping me to reestablish credibility after that mess last year,” I said, referring to the deal Richard had screwed up.

  “Well, not to be too coldhearted or anything, but it looks like Richard finally got his payback for that,” said Jane in her no-nonsense way.

  “True,” I acknowledged. “But it would have been far better if the deal had never gotten so messed up in the first place. It’s like I’m on a probation of sorts right now, and I have to prove myself all over again.”

  “Do you think you’re going to stick it out?” she asked.

  “At the firm, you mean?” She nodded. “Yes,” I said, without hesitation. “I’m too close to making partner to give up now. Once I get elected, my hours really will get better, and I’d hate to think that all the years of drudgery I’ve put in so far would come to nothing. Plus, the money at that point will be pretty spectacular.”

  “That’s nothing to sneeze at. I just hope you don’t neglect your love life in the meantime.” Her voice took on a teasing edge. “You know, spend too much time worrying about your work, when exciting, seemingly eligible men are around.”

  “You’re a subtle one, aren’t you?”

  “I try,” she said modestly. “It’s just that I think Peter’s really great. Sean thinks so, too.”

  “He is,” I agreed. “Definitely a cut above the guys I’ve been meeting in New York.” Not that I really met anyone in New York—I was always at the office or in meetings or traveling on business. My romantic life of late had been limited to occasional blind dates, all of which had been fruitless except for the comic stories they yielded. Like the guy who brought his own utensils, plate and glassware to dinner and then lectured me on the fat content of every bite I ate. He’d nearly fainted when I ordered crème brûlée for dessert.

  I changed the subject. “What’s going on with you and Sean?” I asked.

  “Not much. The biggest news is that I’m going to be teaching trig this year along with algebra, so I’ve been busy prepping. Unfortunately, it’s hard to wing it when it comes to sines and cosines. And nothing much changes with Sean—just the usual valves and pipes.” Jane taught math at a private school in Boston, and Sean’s family owned a small industrial concern that supplied municipalities with pipes, fire hydrants and other pieces of equipment. It wasn’t glamorous, but it provided a healthy living for the large and close-knit Hallard clan.

  We chatted a bit more about the Hallards and their insatiable appetite for grandchildren before lapsing into a comfortable silence, each busy with our own thoughts. I hadn’t gotten much rest the previous night, and a wave of tiredness swept over me. I struggled to stay awake, reminding myself that I was supposed to be developing an action plan, but the bright sun and gentle motion of the raft soon lulled me to sleep.

  When I woke, I saw Hilary wading in the water near the shore with Peter. I used this opportunity to discreetly check out his body, which up to now had been hidden by relatively baggy clothing, and I was delighted to see that his torso was long and lean but nicely muscled. He was also wearing a pair of completely reasonable swim trunks that would never be a source of embarrassment to anyone who was with him. Swim trunks, perhaps even more than shoes, were an excellent indicator of what else might lurk in a man’s wardrobe. I shuddered as I recalled a Winslow, Brown summer picnic at which my date, who up until that point had seemed perfect in every way, showed up in a neon-green Speedo.

  Then I took in Hilary’s string bikini, in a shade that could only be described as shocking pink. However, it was unclear whether the shocking part was due to the color or the striking lack of material. A hot stream of jealousy coursed through my veins. Hilary had always had an easy, flirtatious way about her that was part of her breezy confidence and sensuality. But usually her tastes in men were so wildly different from mine that I’d never felt even remotely threatened. And if my romantic history was checkered, Hilary’s was a minefield. She went through men like Kleenex, seizing upon them eagerly when the need arose, then balling them up and discarding them without a second thought.

  You didn’t need a Ph.D. in psychology to understand her behavior. Although Harvard prided itself on its diversity, my group of friends was relatively homogenous, if not in terms of interests, at least in terms of backgrounds. Emma and Luisa both came from immense family fortunes, and Jane’s family was comfortably well-off. My parents had struggled to make ends meet on their slim academics’ salaries, taking out a second mortgage to help send their three children to college, but we’d never wanted for anything important. And we all had parents who were still married. My parents’ thirty-eight years of domestic bliss was nearly eclipsed by Jane’s parents’ forty years, the tight-knit clan of the Caselanzas, and, at least so I’d thought until this morning, the golden perfection of the Furlong family. We had a shared history of secure and stable childhoods.

  But while the majority of Harvard’s student body was on financial aid, Hilary was the only one among us whose parents were completely unable to contribute to her tuition. She was the only child of a single mother, and her father was nowhere in sight, having deserted her mother when Hilary was still a toddler. She made jokes about the times she and her mother had been on welfare and made do with clothes from Goodwill, but it was clear that these experiences had shaped her. Her mother blamed her father for their impoverished state, and her bitterness was not lost on Hilary.

  These seeds from her childhood manifested themselves in her fierce independence and her tendency to view men not as potential soul mates but as conqu
ests. She derived no small satisfaction from the act of seducing a man and then tossing him aside in an explicit assertion of her power. Her early experiences bore themselves out in her choice of profession as well. As a journalist, she’d flitted from one dangerous place to another. Her bylines had come from Afghanistan and Bosnia, Indonesia and Colombia. She seemed to court danger out of spite, eager to show that she was master of any situation.

  “Relax,” said Jane, following my gaze. “He’s not her type. And I don’t think she’s his type, either. She’s not interested. And she knows that you are. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  I flashed her a grateful look. It was remarkable the way she could still read my thoughts. “On a rational level, I know you’re right. It’s just that she’s gorgeous, and I’m—well, me.”

  Jane laughed. “Don’t be an idiot, Rach. You’re gorgeous, too. And he completely has a thing for you. It’s just that Hilary needs continuous affirmation.”

  “I don’t mind affirmation. In fact, I actually sort of like affirmation.”

  “It’s not the same. Sometimes I worry that Hilary doesn’t know who she is if she’s not getting attention from men. I mean, most of the time she’s the one doing the breaking up, but the few times when she’s been on the receiving end it’s really been a mess. She doesn’t handle rejection well.”

  “Nobody handles rejection well,” I argued. “Rejection sucks.”

  “I know, but with Hil, it’s totally out of proportion. When Richard dumped her in Los Angeles—”

  “What?” I interrupted. This was too much. How had I missed out on this, along with the prenup and everything else? Within any group of friends, there were clearly some relationships that are deeper than others. After all, Emma had remained my closest friend of all of our roommates, no doubt due to sharing a room freshman year. Still, I was always surprised when I learned that somebody else knew things about one of my friends that I didn’t.

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t know about Richard and Hilary?”

  “Know what?”

  “They dated. When she was in journalism school at USC, after we graduated. You didn’t know that?”

  I searched my memory. Right after college, I’d been in an entry-level position at Winslow, Brown. If my hours were bad now, they were unspeakable then. The two years I’d spent there before returning to business school were a blur to me, a montage of sleepless nights, too much caffeine, and piles of paper swimming with numbers. Weeks would go by without having the time to have a conversation of any length with my friends or family.

  “I think I was sort of AWOL right after college,” I confessed when my recollection yielded nothing.

  “Well, Hilary dated him for a while when she moved to L.A. They went out for about six months, and then he dumped her, and I assure you, it wasn’t pretty.”

  “And I thought she just hated him for the reasons the rest of us did.”

  “I’m sure she does. But she also has a reason of her very own.”

  Great, I thought. Just great. I felt my stomach churn as I made a mental note to add Hilary to the list of people who had an extraspecial grudge against Richard. I rolled onto my side and propped my head up. “This isn’t good, Jane.” My voice sounded shaky. I hadn’t meant to share my various suspicions with anyone until I’d gotten to the bottom of Richard’s murder, but Jane was one of the least likely suspects among us, and I needed to unburden myself.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, Richard’s dead, and it wasn’t an accident. I told you all about Emma arguing with her father. And apparently Emma met Richard last night after everyone else went to sleep.” I related what Peter had said about Richard’s rendezvous and seeing Emma from his window. “That’s bad enough, but then Luisa said…” I trailed off, not sure I had the right to tell Jane about what Luisa had confided.

  “That Richard raped her?” asked Jane.

  “How do you know?” I asked, shocked. Luisa said she’d never told anyone.

  “I guessed. I mean, it never made sense—Sean and I saw them together that night, and I knew how she felt about Richard. And then the way she rushed off the next morning. It’s true, though, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “And then, finding out about Richard and Hilary…it’s just too much. One bad thing keeps piling on top of another, and no matter how much Richard had it coming, I don’t want to think that someone I care about was the one responsible.”

  Jane sighed. “Well, here’s something else to add to the pile. You know that Sean and I are staying in the room next to the one that Luisa and Hilary are staying in?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I couldn’t sleep much last night. Sean was making an unholy racket with his snoring. And I heard them.”

  “Heard who?”

  “Luisa and Hilary. Not what they said, but I could hear their voices.”

  “So?” I asked. It wouldn’t be the first time Hilary had kept someone up half the night with one of her monologues.

  “They left their room. Around three-thirty. And they didn’t come back until around four.”

  CHAPTER 16

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Sean and Luisa come out to the end of the dock. “Jane,” called Sean, “you’re up.”

  “Okay,” she answered. “I’ll be right there.” She sat up reluctantly, combing her hands through her damp hair. “Yuck. I was sort of hoping they’d forget about me. But I guess it’s probably time.” She paused and turned to me, taking in my tense expression. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to say anything about Luisa and Hilary last night. And relax, Rachel. I’m sure it was all nothing. I know it looks bad, but there’s probably a very simple, very innocent explanation for everything. There usually is.”

  I wished I was as sure, I thought, as I watched her dive cleanly into the water and swim off. It must be nice to have such a confidently benign view of the world.

  Sean helped her climb up onto the dock, and Luisa handed her a towel. I saw Hilary steal up behind them, and I knew what she was going to do before Luisa even hit the water. She surfaced spluttering and indignant, a stream of Spanish epithets pouring from her mouth.

  “Dammit, Hilary! This bathing suit isn’t supposed to get wet.”

  “Brilliant, a bathing suit that’s not supposed to get wet. Where do you find these things?”

  “Chanel,” said Luisa as if Chanel was the most natural place to shop for swimwear. “You wretch,” she added, almost as an afterthought. She began swimming towards the raft with a ladylike breaststroke. Hilary dove in after her, and a moment later Peter followed from the shallows. They all joined me on the raft, spattering drops of icy water as they pulled themselves up the ladder.

  “Geez, Rach,” said Hilary, poking me in the leg. “You really need to get more sun. You’re practically see-through.”

  “Not all of us can be bronzed goddesses,” I said.

  “True,” she agreed, plopping her nearly six feet of long, tanned self down.

  Luisa carefully lowered herself into a sitting position on my opposite side, safely out of Hilary’s reach. “Do you think we can convince someone to boat out to bring us back to shore? The water’s freezing.”

  “But at least the cold water keeps the sharks at bay,” said Hilary.

  “Funny,” said Luisa, still peeved. “I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, but I’m going to get you back, Hilary.”

  “Okay, I guess there aren’t any sharks. But there’re probably fish and snakes and eels. And leeches. Definitely leeches. Leeches are good, though. There’s nothing like a close encounter with a leech for building character.”

  “I have more than enough character, thank you. And it’s so soon after lunch—what if I get a cramp when I swim back?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “I earned a gold medal in lifesaving at Camp Hiawatha.”

  “See, you’ll be fine,” said Hilary.

  “Camp Hiawatha, my foot,” grumbled Luisa. “That hardly inspires
confidence.”

  “Rachel,” explained Hilary to Peter, “was the star of Camp Hiawatha. She earned gold medals at the Camp Hiawatha Olympics in just about every single sport.”

  “I have a feeling there were lots of gold medals given out at Camp Hiawatha,” said Luisa.

  “They were big on building self-esteem,” I agreed. “Sometimes you got a medal just for participating.”

  Peter chuckled and sat down facing me. Beads of water glistened on his arms and legs.

  “So, how do you guys think we can get O’Donnell to take a break and come swimming?” asked Hilary. “I would really like to show him my bikini.”

  “What there is of it,” said Luisa.

  “It seems to have shrunk since I bought it,” said Hilary happily.

  “Well, let’s just hope it doesn’t shrink anymore. You’ll get arrested for indecent exposure,” Luisa replied.

  “Do you think O’Donnell would do the arresting?”

  “For your sake, Hil, I definitely hope so,” I said. She giggled and rolled over onto her stomach, propping her head up on her hands.

  “So, Peter,” she said, a mischievous glint in her eye, “why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself?” I groaned inwardly. For a writer, Hilary didn’t place much value in segues, and I had a pretty good idea what was behind her abrupt change in topics. Peter was about to be interviewed for the position of my boyfriend, whether he was ready or not.

  “Sure,” he answered. “What do you want to know?” Poor man. He had no idea what was coming.

  “Well, tell us about where you grew up, and where you went to school, and what your family’s like, and what you do for a living. And if you have any pets.” She might as well have asked for copies of his grade school report cards, medical records and tax returns.

  “You already know he’s from San Francisco,” I protested.

  “There are millions of people from San Francisco,” she retorted.

  “Indeed,” added Luisa, but I held out little hope that she wasn’t going to play an active part in the interrogation.