The Friendship Pact

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  She had to make arrangements. Brian had appointed her executor several years ago. Even before she’d finished law school. Brian had always said he wanted to be cremated.

  Maybe he’d never regained consciousness after the initial attack. Maybe he hadn’t had a chance to be frightened.

  Thoughts flew through Bailey’s mind so fast she didn’t realize she’d buried her face in Kora’s neck until she started sobbing uncontrollably.

  * * *

  “He used to joke about me singing at his funeral.”

  “I know.” I sank onto the living room couch with Bailey. I wasn’t going anywhere until we’d made whatever arrangements had to be made immediately.

  “Because I have such a terrible voice. He figured it would make people laugh.”

  “I remember.” I smiled, but it was taking all I had not to break into tears myself. I’d adored Brian as a kid.

  But he wasn’t my brother. This was one of those times when I had to be the strong one.

  Bailey had a legal pad and pen in one hand, her cell phone in the other. And sat staring off into space.

  At bare walls. She’d wanted to paint before she’d hung anything, and Danny and I had spent the previous Saturday afternoon with her, getting several walls done, but there was still more to do.

  “He didn’t suffer,” I said, when I could speak without my emotions spilling over. We’d been told that the end of Brian’s life, as the disease progressed, could become difficult.

  “It’s so sudden. I was just with him and he didn’t seem to have regressed much at all since we were there a year and a half ago....”

  “Thank God you went to see him over Christmas,” I said. At the time, I’d hated her going. Had feared that her compulsion to make that choice marked a definitive change in our relationship. Like fate was compelling us to move on—away from each other.

  Turned out fate’s goal had had nothing to do with us at all.

  * * *

  Inevitably, Brian’s death changed Bailey. I’d taken personal leave from work and gone to Florida with her for the funeral and to give moral support as she closed out Brian’s affairs.

  She pushed her way through everything, sometimes a little callously. But that was nothing new for her. It was her almost attention-deficit manner that alarmed me. It was as though she was being driven from within to take care of everything in her life at once.

  “Slow down,” I told her, as we worked together to put her living room together after we’d painted one weekend in March. She was going to scratch her wood floor if she didn’t wait for me to help her move things. “We’ve got all day.”

  “I need you to go over some paperwork with me, too.”

  “What paperwork?”

  “My will. You’re all I have left, the only person I really trust, anyway, and I’m leaving everything to you.”

  My heart froze. “You’re...going somewhere?” Was she taking a risky trip of some kind? Or...

  “Of course not. At least, I don’t plan to go anywhere, but Brian didn’t plan to go right now, either. We thought we’d have warning signs as the disease progressed and...”

  I understood. Time would heal some of this sense of dislocation she was feeling. I just wished I could help her more. “Like I said, I’ve drawn up my will,” Bailey continued as she grabbed one end of the sofa. I grabbed the other. She would’ve moved it without me if I hadn’t. “I named you sole beneficiary and as executor of my estate, too.”

  “Okay.” Most people our age didn’t think about wills, but if she needed to, I’d do it for her. And that brought up another topic.

  One I’d been eager to share.

  She’d picked up a small table on her own and moved it in front of the sofa. She was reaching for a piece of colorful, handcrafted three-dimensional art we’d bought at a festival a few years back. I caught her hand and pulled her down to sit with me.

  I shouldn’t be nervous to tell her but I was.

  “What?” she asked, dropping reluctantly onto the couch we’d just repositioned. “I stopped by the clinic on my way here,” I told her.

  “You’re sick? What’s wrong?” Her voice was worried.

  I shook my head, my insides ready to tumble out and fly around the room. I’d almost blurted out my news the second I saw her, but the lost look on her face when I’d let myself in and found her sitting on the floor of her living room had made my news pale in comparison to her immediate needs.

  “I did a home pregnancy test this morning.”

  “Remember false negatives are common.” Her rush to reassure me showed me, once again, just how generous she was. “Which is why I went to the clinic....” I tried to breathe deeply and maintain control, but then broke into tears. “I’m pregnant, Bailey! I can’t believe...I’m...it’s finally happened. I’m going to have a baby....” I was blubbering all over the place but didn’t miss the glow in Bailey’s eyes as she realized my news was good, not bad.

  “You’re pregnant?” She came as close to a squeal as Bailey got. “For real?”

  “Yeah,” I said, wiping my tears. More fell right after them. It was as though a dam had burst and I couldn’t stem the flow. “It’s early yet, only a few weeks and I’ve been telling myself over and over that it’s true but until I just said it out loud I didn’t believe it. I don’t think it’s set in....”

  “Oh, my gosh, Kor!” Bailey jumped up, and then sat back down and gave me a hug. Something Bailey offered freely maybe twice a year, me being the more demonstrative one. “I can’t believe it, either. I’m so relieved and...what did Danny say?”

  “He doesn’t know yet. He’s at some all-day convention downtown and I didn’t want to tell him over the phone. But I couldn’t keep it in.”

  “You didn’t call your mom?”

  I guess I should have. I shook my head. “I know, it’s crazy. I’ve been waiting so long and now that it’s finally happening...I can hardly grasp it.”

  “Then let’s grasp it!” Bailey jumped to her feet, tossed my coat at me and grabbed hers.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Baby shopping,” she said. “We’ll buy him or her his first present and put it in the future nursery. That’ll be the first step. The beginning...”

  Of a new life.

  I was ecstatic. Scared to death. And very very glad that Bailey was there, starting that new life right alongside Danny and me.

  Chapter Sixteen

  In March, Bailey took on more cases than she’d ever attempted before. She handled them all with precision, dedication and thorough attention to detail. Her hearing schedule looked like a sorority date book, and her deposition file was too big to fit on her flash drive.

  So she bought a new flash drive. Wrote motions. Filed interrogatories. Attended mediation and settlement conferences. And even helped pick a jury for a two-day civil case trial over damage a husband had done to a residence after he’d locked his wife out of their home.

  What she didn’t do was sleep much. Eat enough. Or talk to Kora a lot. Professionally she was excelling beyond even her own expectations. Personally, she couldn’t find a place to land.

  Her house was shaping up. She loved being in the same neighborhood as Kora and Danny, though she’d been taking the long way home so she didn’t have to drive by their house every night. All her other thoughts, everything that wasn’t connected to work, seemed to be accompanied by a sense of panic, or urgency, as she preferred to term it, that she could neither alleviate nor explain.

  Life could end any minute. After Brian’s death, she suddenly felt so aware of that. And if hers did, she’d disappear, little more than a forgotten breath because she’d created nothing to leave behind. She had no family, except for a father who was mostly removed from her life., No one, other than Kora, to even miss her.
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  She had a house and no one to come home to.

  She had a job but no one with whom to share the fruits of her labor .

  She had a heart filled with love and no one to give it to.

  She had a purpose, but couldn’t seem to figure out what it was.

  She was slowly losing her mind with the nothingness.

  And one night she called Jake. He’d phoned her a couple of times since the first of the year. First, to tell her that he’d gotten married. She hadn’t answered. He’d left a message. She’d choked back tears at the sound of his voice, but had appreciated the respect he’d shown her by calling to tell her himself.

  The second time had been when Brian died. She didn’t pick up then, either. Or listen to his message. She hadn’t trusted herself to keep an appropriate distance.

  He picked up on the first ring. “Bailey?” Anyone there with him would have heard him say her name....

  “Is Jenna home?” She’d purposely called from her office, after dinnertime, when Jake and his wife would likely be together. She wasn’t a home wrecker.

  “She’s out of town. On business.”

  Somehow that made the phone call better. And it shouldn’t have. She’d decided this was her favorite time at work. When all the nervous tension masked by busy cheer, office chatter and serious discussion had dissipated, leaving a sense of...quiet.

  “I’m sorry to bother you....” That wasn’t like her. Hesitating. But she was finding very little about herself that she recognized these days.

  “No! You’ll never be a bother, Bail. We’re friends, right? Isn’t that what we said? Why we ended things? So we could at least be friends?”

  That was what they’d said. But then he’d gotten married. She hadn’t. And...

  “I needed to talk.”

  “Sure. I’m always here for you. You know that.”

  He probably shouldn’t sound quite so eager, though. She pictured him at home, in the condo she’d stayed at often before he’d moved in with her., She could imagine him sprawled out on the big plush sectional, his tie still tight at his neck while he sipped a scotch.

  And yearned to get naked, get him naked, and go wild. Ashamed, disgusted with herself, she issued a silent apology to Jenna Murphy and said, “I don’t want to give you the wrong idea or anything. I really do just need to talk.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, but not surprised.”

  “You shouldn’t be sorry, either, Jake.”

  “Of course I’m sorry,” he said and she could hear the ice clink in his glass.

  “You love her, don’t you?” No! Wrong question. It wasn’t any of her business, either way.

  “Yeah, I think I really do.” She had no business being disappointed either.

  Looking out her office window, she could see the lights of Pittsburgh in the distance. Greens, probably street lights, reds, mostly whites. Running her finger down the sharp crease in her black pants, Bailey flicked back the hair that had fallen over her shoulder.

  “I’m struggling, Jake.”

  “Can you give me a little more information here? Struggling with work?” More ice clinks. Making Bailey wish she had a glass of wine at least. The partners had wet bars in their offices; a couple of the attorneys she worked with had refrigerators with mixers in their offices. Bailey, ever aware of how her family had ended up, didn’t want to get started down that road.

  “I’m lost, Jake.”

  “This isn’t about work.”

  “No.” He’d always been able to read between her lines. Not like Kora. But well enough.

  “Tell me you aren’t regretting your decision not to marry me.”

  “Of course I’m regretting it,” she said because he deserved the truth. “But if I had it to do over again, or had it to do today, I’d make exactly the same decision.”

  More clinking of ice. He’d emptied his glass and was shaking the ice in it. Probably assessing whether or not to have another. She figured him for a yes on this one.

  “So that means you’re calling either about Kora or...the other issue,” he said after a long pause. She could hear ice fall into a glass. She’d guessed right. And hoped he was okay, sitting there alone, drinking scotch. And talking to his ex-lover.

  She shouldn’t have called.

  “It’s the other,” she said now. But really, it was both. Or she’d be talking to Kora. “I really need to do it, Jake.”

  “So do it.”

  “Kora doesn’t think I should. Nine times out of ten, when she feels this strongly about something, she’s right. I waited because I wanted to see if my feelings changed. I really trust her judgment.”

  “Have you talked to her about it recently? Maybe she’s had a change of heart.”

  “I mentioned something a couple of weeks ago. Asked her if she had anything new to add. She teared up, but said no.”

  “She’s getting emotional a lot lately,” Jake said. “More than usual. Because of the pregnancy, I assume.”

  The words gave her a wrench. Who would ever have thought Jake would be explaining Kora to her? She and Kora still saw each other, but there was a distance between them that had never been there before. A disconnect.

  She knew it was because of the babies. The one Kora was having and the one Bailey wanted.

  “Do you have a donor yet?”

  “No.”

  “So what do you want from me?”

  A night of sex so hot it would obliterate everything else in the universe.

  “I want your honest opinion. Do you think I’m crazy to want to do this?”

  Ice clinked again. She heard him sigh. “If it was anyone else, Bailey, I’d say hell, yes, I think you’re crazy not to even try to have a traditional family. But you just aren’t built that way. If anyone knows that it’s me.”

  She had tried. She really had.

  “Honestly, and I hope you don’t ever tell Kora I said this, but I think this is what you need.”

  Smiling, she leaned forward, tired all of a sudden.

  She was going to do it.

  * * *

  I was beside-myself crazy. The baby was all I seemed able to talk about. I weighed and measured everything I ate. Read everything I could find. Made an appointment with my ob-gyn and we bought a crib. Danny and I talked incessantly about baby names, ending up laughing so hard tears were streaming down my face.

  Mom and Daddy were on the phone every day, asking how I felt. I hadn’t told the kids at school, but my fellow teachers knew, and their congratulations followed me around the halls.

  I’d expected that as soon as I got pregnant, my world would be perfect, but in some ways it was the worst it had ever been. I was going through the happiest time of my life—and Bailey wasn’t there.

  Oh, she was...there, but she wasn’t there. I knew the fault was mine. Most of it, anyway. I toned down my joy when I was with her to spare her—because she wanted a baby, too. But also because I was afraid that my pregnancy was going to drive her into a choice that could hurt her. I didn’t show her all the things I’d picked out in magazines and on the internet, or discuss nursery decorating ideas with her. I avoided looking at maternity clothes when I was with her.

  And it had to stop.

  I wasn’t showing yet and wouldn’t be for another eleven weeks or so, according to my doctor. It was the beginning of April and I was five weeks along. I wouldn’t need a maternity clothes for a while, but I’d waited so long to get pregnant, I couldn’t contain myself. I told everyone! I had all my lists of things to buy and had made a number of selections already. It was time to think about clothes. I couldn’t buy my first maternity outfit without Bailey.

  I suggested we go to the mall after fitness class that Thursday in April. Summer fashions were in and I wanted to get
started on my wardrobe before the best choices were gone.

  When she responded with immediate enthusiasm, I was relieved. And then worried. Was this like taking an alcoholic to a bar? Tempting her?

  I shook my head, pulled a long-sleeved short cotton dress over my leggings, waited while she did the same, and told myself to quit being so paranoid.

  Bailey looked tired. I told her so. She just shrugged and said, “Things have been insane at work.”

  We had the mall mostly to ourselves. Another hour and they’d be closing. But at least we could walk at our own pace and talk freely.

  “You never did tell me where you were when I called yesterday.”

  Bailey had called back a few minutes later. She always did. But she’d sounded odd. And had talked right over any attempt I made to find out where she was.

  “I had some errands to run.”

  In the old days she would have listed them.

  I stared at her. “Are you seeing someone?”

  She didn’t want me to get my hopes up. I got that. Or make a big deal where there might not be one. Fine. I’d be careful. But, oh my gosh, the world really would be perfect if...

  “No.” Bailey turned into the Mommy To Be store we’d passed so many times as kids, giggling and talking about what it would be like when we were pregnant at the same time. We’d decided we’d both have girls first. So they could be best friends just like us.

  As eager as I’d been to get to the clothes, I had no interest in them anymore. Pulling her back, I faced her outside the store. “What’s going on?”

  I knew what it meant when she used her long dark hair like a veil.

  “Bailey?”

  “I’ve been interviewing donors again.”

  Shit. No, I shouldn’t have that word in my vocabulary. I was going to be a mother. But...shit.

  “I know how you feel about this, Kor, but I’m afraid you’re never going to understand, and I can’t let my whole life pass, waiting around when I know for certain that this is what I need to do.”