The Beautiful Daughters

by Nicole Baart

  “Should I be?”

  “Yes,” he said after a long moment. “Yes, I think you should be.”

  Harper had been in some awful situations, had felt scared and alone and at risk, but nothing compared to that terrible moment on the top of a rock in BC with David Galloway before her. She had thought that she knew him, that she could pinpoint the things that had made him such a bad boy. An enchanting, excusable rebel who just needed the right kind of love to bring him back from the edge. She had believed herself the woman for the job, the perfect counterweight to his unique brand of instability. But she was so far out of her depth, it was downright terrifying.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  But David ignored her. “I should just end it all. Stop inflicting myself on other people.”

  “David—”

  He had already turned away from her. He was walking to the lip of the outcropping rock, looking over the edge as if the answer to every mystery was contained in the shifting water below.

  “Don’t be an idiot.” Harper took a few hurried steps after him, but there was a fine gravel over the surface, a million tiny pebbles that made her feet slip precariously. She caught herself, pulse pounding in her ears, and slowed down. Crept to the side where David stood, leaning over the precipice as if it was the most inviting thing in the world. “Back up,” she commanded, taking him by the hand.

  “Or what?” David’s arm slid around her waist, pulled her close. “Maybe I’ll just ruin everything right now. Destroy both our lives. What if I blew this whole thing sky-high and took you while Adri was watching? Right here.”

  Over his shoulder, Harper spotted her. Adri was far away, but not so far that Harper couldn’t see her friend’s face turned toward them. The book was abandoned in her lap, the sunshine highlighting her cheeks as if nature itself had deigned to blush her. Even at a distance, Adri looked exquisite. Eyes wide, lips slightly parted in what Harper interpreted as shock.

  David’s hands were on her. His fingers clawing beneath the hem of her T-shirt and scraping against the warm skin beneath. She burned in the places he touched her, but it wasn’t from desire.

  “No!” Harper grabbed his wrist, but David was stronger. He twisted out of her grip and lunged for her again, yanking her tightly to him; she could feel his hot, ragged breath against her cheek. He snagged a handful of the waistband of her jeans and the button strained against the stiff fabric as he struggled with it.

  “You wanted to tell her,” David hissed, warm and wet against her neck. “Let’s show her.”

  The thought skittered through Harper’s mind that David didn’t just want sex. In fact, she doubted this had anything to do with sex at all. It was an act of violence that would destroy everything once and for all. The games they played, the illusions they clung to. David was going to burn them all to ash.

  When David leaned in again, his lips parted to kiss her or bite her or whisper more things that Harper didn’t want to hear, she didn’t think. She just gathered every ounce of strength she had left.

  She pushed him away.

  The silence was absolute. Adri stared at Harper, eyes round and unblinking, for several long moments, and then, impossibly, she laughed. It was a cold, mirthless sound. She said, “You did not push David.”

  Harper didn’t know how to respond. “Yes,” she stammered, “yes, I did.”

  “I watched the whole thing.” Adri was getting louder by the second, her entire body facing Harper now as she tried to make her friend understand. “I wasn’t reading that stupid book, and I watched you two from the very first second you climbed onto the top of that rock. I could tell you and David were fighting, and I was terrified when you went so close to the edge. But, Harper, I saw David hug you. And then I saw him step backwards.”

  Harper was shaking her head. “No,” she whispered. “I pushed him. I pushed him away because he was going to . . . kiss me.”

  Adri sat back suddenly, her face frozen. She seemed paralyzed for a few heartbeats, but she managed to squeeze her eyes shut before she said, “You were having an affair with him, weren’t you.”

  It wasn’t a question, and Harper didn’t answer it. She didn’t have to. “Adri,” she breathed. “I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.”

  Of course, a five-years-late apology was nowhere near enough, and Harper wasn’t the least bit surprised when Adri threw open the truck door and slid out. Slammed it shut behind her before she took off toward the stable.

  But Harper had come too far to play shy now. She hopped out of the truck and jogged after Adri’s narrow form. “I’ve never been more sorry for anything in my life!” she called, anxious to make Adri listen, to make her understand. “I’ve spent the last five years hating myself for what I did to you—to us. Everything that has happened from the moment I kissed David until now has been a downward spiral that—”

  Adri whirled around and caught Harper by the shoulders. Harper hadn’t realized she was following so closely, and she was both surprised by the strength in Adri’s slender hands and a little scared of what the smaller woman might do. “I knew about the affair,” Adri admitted, pinching Harper’s upper arms until numbness seeped into her elbows and beyond. “Or at least, I guessed. It’s one of the reasons I suggested you take David on your little hike to the top of the cliff.”

  “One of the reasons?” Harper parroted, lamely.

  “I wanted him to go. I wanted you both to go. I needed a minute to breathe.”

  “But—”

  “Look, Harper, I’ll be the first to admit I was naive.” Adri let her hands fall to her sides. Searched Harper’s face helplessly. “And I was blinded by what I thought was love. But I knew things were going sour. I knew that David had feelings for you.”

  Harper shook her head. “He loved you, Adri.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Yes, he—”

  “Just stop.” Adri put up both of her hands as if she could physically prevent Harper from saying another word. “I was engaged to him, remember? I knew him. David Galloway didn’t love me.” She turned around and walked away. Several long strides and she was at the pasture fence, her fingers wrapped around the uppermost board as she called the horses to her with a soft click of her tongue.

  Harper was rooted to the earth. She didn’t know whether to be depressed or encouraged that Adri had known the truth all along. Did that make things easier? Did it nullify all the angst, the myriad of worries that she had once associated with confronting Adri about her relationship with David?

  “In a way, it didn’t matter,” Adri said when Harper finally found her feet and made her way to the fence. “I was caught up in it all. The wedding, the improbable marriage, the perfect life. I wanted David Galloway before I even knew who he was. I wanted a fairy tale.”

  “Don’t we all,” Harper murmured, but Adri acted as if she hadn’t said anything.

  “I hate myself for pretending when I could have changed everything—everything—by just admitting that I had fallen out of love, too.” Adri paused for a moment, gathering herself, it seemed. “I hated him,” she finally admitted, an edge of defiance in her voice. “I hated him for what he did to me. When he fell, I was free.”

  And there it was between them, the truth that they had tried so hard to ignore. The realization that his hand against her, his fist, his mouth, his words, were more than sticks and stones. It hurt, all of it. But even more, it changed her and fractured love and shifted things deep inside so that the person she had been was buried beneath the weight of all that happened. Harper didn’t know how to comfort her sister, how to admit, “I know.” But she understood that purpled skin or photos that betrayed in the most irrevocable, elemental way, were wounds inflicted by bitter weapons. Adri and Harper were soldiers. They had seen war.

  Harper sighed. “Oh, Adri.” She had been wrung dry by the events of the last twelve hours—ma
ybe the last nine years—and at the end of all of her fears, she found that she wasn’t so much scared as she was exhausted. Coming clean felt like letting go, and though it pained her to know that Adri was hurting, in a way Harper felt freer, lighter than she had in years. Never mind the horrible muck of the place where they found themselves, the telling and the regret and the blame, or the fact that if (when?) Sawyer was caught he’d take his revenge and shout the truth to the whole wide world. Because whether or not Adri was willing to admit it, Harper knew what she knew. She had felt David’s chest beneath her hands. Its gaping absence when he fell.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” Adri was saying.

  Harper blinked, came to. She had heard every word, but all at once she wasn’t sure that she had been listening. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I’m telling you that it’s my fault.” Adri’s voice cracked on the last two words, and although it didn’t seem she had any tears left to cry, she was blanched white, and Harper put out a hand to steady her.

  “What are you talking about?” Harper asked. “None of this is your fault. None of it.”

  “You’re wrong,” Adri whimpered, shaking her head from side to side, looking as if she was trying to dislodge the thoughts that plagued her. “You’re so wrong, Harper. It’s all my fault because I knew that he was suicidal. I knew, and I didn’t stop him. I didn’t save him.”

  Harper shushed her friend. “Don’t be silly. David wasn’t suicidal.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “Fine. He was. But he didn’t jump.”

  “Yes, he did. And when he hit the water, I let him drown.” Adri was staring at the fence post blindly, and as Harper came closer she clutched at her clothes, her hands. A blind woman feeling for sight. “I could have saved him,” she said. “But he hurt me. And I was so, so angry at him. I let him drown.”

  Harper stroked Adri’s blood-stiffened hair. “That’s not true,” she said, lacing her voice with as much calm, as much comfort as she could muster. “David didn’t drown, Adri. He was dead the instant he hit the water. The force of the fall, the way he landed . . . No one could have survived it.”

  But Adri wouldn’t hear it. “I just sat there. I watched it all happen.”

  “That’s not how—”

  “I was a registered nurse. I could have done something. But you were there for him,” Adri broke in. “You climbed down from the cliff while I sat paralyzed in the lawn chair. You waded into the water and pulled him out. You held him for hours. Until the helicopter came.”

  Dazed, Harper floundered for words. Tried to speak but couldn’t, then tried again. It was no use. Nothing she could say would set things right. The earth was hung askew. She didn’t know where to begin.

  They sat in silence for a minute or two until Harper finally gathered her wits. She summoned the fortitude to take Adri’s chin in her hand. “Look at me,” she commanded with far more authority than she felt. “Adri, honey, look at me.”

  She did. For several long seconds, the two former best friends locked eyes. Everything they had loved and lost, all the hope they had forfeited and the years that came between were contained in the breadth and depth and width of their gaze. “Adri,” Harper said, “I need you to listen to me. You’re remembering it wrong.”

  “No,” she argued, “I’m not . . .”

  “Ask Will or Jackson or the emergency medics that lifted us all out of that godforsaken valley,” Harper pressed, because she had to make Adri understand, and it was probably one of the most important things she would ever communicate. “You were in the water with David. You held him for hours. And when the helicopter finally came, they had to pry David Galloway out of your bloodstained hands.”

  It was a shower, nothing but a run-of-the-mill, everyday shower, but as Harper watched the foamy water slip down the drain, she couldn’t help but wonder if she was washing away more than just the dirt on her skin.

  Surreal, Harper decided. The events of the last day were beyond her comprehension. There were so many ifs. If Sawyer was caught. If Will got better. If Adri was right. What if David had stepped over the edge, had meant to do exactly the thing that she blamed herself for? That had tormented her for so long? What if everything she’d believed to be true was a lie? What then?

  Harper’s world had been upended, shaken and thrown like dice that would land wherever fate or chance or circumstance dictated. And she was mid-spin, twirling over possibilities so quickly she hardly had time to consider what each outcome would mean.

  But Harper wasn’t the only one dealing with the fallout. Somewhere else in the mansion, Adri was taking her own purifying shower. Confronting her own demons. As Harper toweled off and wriggled into a fresh outfit from her small Goodwill wardrobe, she ached for her friend and the harsh reality of the truth that she was facing.

  How could Adri possibly have believed that Harper was the one who’d stayed in the river with David? If Adri had watched Harper and David together before his fall, Harper was the one with a gruesome front-row seat for all that happened after. The truth was, Adri was in the water almost before David broke the surface. She had tried to save him, even though he tried to destroy her.

  David had fallen all wrong. That much was painfully obvious, even to a pair of women who knew nothing at all about cliff jumping. Maybe it wasn’t far to fall, and maybe he would have been just fine if he landed feet first. But David tumbled backward, then rolled over halfway down and hit the water on his side. The sound was what surprised Harper the most. The dull, flat thud of his body breaking against the surface. It seemed there was no splash. And then, before Harper could even form a scream, there was a crimson cloud spreading beneath and around him, as if someone had poured out a bucket of paint. Harper fell to her knees, disbelieving, horror-stricken, but Adri was already in the shallows, dragging his limp body into her arms. Cradling David’s head in her quivering hands.

  Had Adri repressed the truth? Endured a minor psychotic break? Lived the lie of a false memory? Or maybe it was the simple burden of guilt. She had fallen out of love with David before he plummeted from the cliff. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to go to him, to rescue her fiancé from the water where he died, and had spent the next five years hating herself for the betrayal of her own brittle emotions.

  But maybe Harper had done exactly the same thing. Had she pushed David? Or had he jumped?

  When Harper descended the main staircase, Adri was on the phone. Her dark hair was still damp and she wasn’t wearing a stitch of makeup, yet Harper found her almost agonizingly beautiful. She wanted to hold her friend, tuck her chin against her shoulder, and weep over the years that they had lost, the lies that they had believed, the hurt they had endured. And the very next moment, she wanted to laugh. Because sometimes life was not at all what you expected it to be.

  Sunshine was streaming through the tall windows of the entryway as Adri clicked off the cell phone and stuck it in her pocket. She turned to face Harper, and suddenly the light from all the tall entryway windows haloed her dark head, blessing her shoulders with all the expectation of a new day.

  “You clean up nicely,” Harper said, and though she felt stupid for saying it, Adri gave her a tentative smile.

  “So do you.”

  There was an awkward pause, a few beats of silence as the two of them studied one another. Harper couldn’t pretend to guess Adri’s thoughts, but it seemed to her they were both trying to come to terms with what had happened and all that they had learned. About each other. About themselves.

  “I’m not lying to you,” Harper finally offered, wishing there was a way to convince Adri that she was only interested in the truth. After all this time, all the exaggerations, falsehoods, and lies, only the truth remained.

  Adri looked at her feet. “It’s going to take some time,” she said slowly. “I hated him in the moment before he died.” She looked up and caught Harper�
�s gaze. “And you.”

  Harper nodded, accepting.

  “And in a way, I think we are both to blame. Whether he jumped or you pushed him or I drove him to the brink, we all made this mess.” Her voice caught at the end, and Harper watched as Adri swallowed hard. “But this changes everything.”

  Harper knew exactly what she meant. She was having a hard time dealing with it too, but suddenly the world was a very different place. “Why didn’t we ever talk about it?” she wondered out loud. “Before our lives spun out of control. Before it was too late.”

  “We didn’t have a chance,” Adri said, and just the mention of those long hours after David fell took a visible toll on her. She crossed her arms against her chest, as if warding off the memories. “As soon as we were airlifted out of there, we were separated.”

  “I told them David fell.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Again and again and again. I think the police asked me the same question a dozen different times. And as many different ways.” Harper bit her bottom lip, remembering.

  “Our stories matched even though we both walked away blaming ourselves.” Adri shook her head.

  “Do you believe me?”

  Adri thought about it for a second. Nodded slowly. Gravely. “I think I do. Do you believe me?”

  Harper closed her eyes, pictured again the moment that David leaned in to kiss her, felt again the fabric of his shirt beneath her hands. His fingers rough and hungry against the flat plane of her stomach. She didn’t know exactly what had happened, but those long minutes on the ledge had been a nightmare. He had been so mad at the world, at his own prearranged life and the way he had wrecked it beyond redemption. Though Harper couldn’t understand it at the time, she knew now what it was like to have someone else call the shots. To grapple at some small power because it was the only expression of self she had left. It was a kind of oppression. And maybe that’s what David had been doing all along. Wrestling Adri into submission because his own life was out of control.