Between Friends (18 page)

“What’s up?” I asked Ali.

“Oh my God, where the hell is she?”

“I don’t know, Ali, I’m sorry.” Her panic made me start to really worry for the first time. I just figured she’d skipped school and would show up acting innocent at any moment.

“Well, it’s not your fault,” she said, but she didn’t sound completely convinced. She was silent for a minute. “Give me back to the secretary,” she said.

“She wants to talk to you again,” I said, holding the phone out. The secretary took a breath and sighed it out before taking it.

“Yes, Mrs. Gutierrez?” She started typing on her keyboard. “I can’t give you any specific information about another student, but it doesn’t appear that way.” She handed the phone back to me.

“What?”

“I asked her to check Emily, to see if they skipped together, but it doesn’t look like it. Of course not. Emily has always been smarter than my daughter, dammit. I wish I knew that kid’s last name.”

Though I knew more about Letty and Seth’s relationship than Ali did, I’d never thought to ask his last name.

“Would you mind checking the house to see if she’s there before I freak Benny out?” she asked.

“Of course not,” I said.

I waited another ten minutes to see if Letty would respond to the announcement, but she didn’t, so I headed to Ali’s house. But Letty wasn’t there, either. And while I talked with Ali on the phone I drove by Emily’s, where nobody was home. Thinking she might have wanted to use the gift certificate she’d received for her birthday, I drove across the street to the mall and hunted through the stores she preferred, growing ever more disgusted at the clothing they marketed to teenage girls. As I sped through racks of half shirts and tiny shorts, Ali called again.

“I’m on my way; I left a note for her on the door. We can cover the mall faster together.”

We met at the entrance to one of the anchor stores, and in tandem we searched the mall, even having security make an announcement for Letty to meet us at the information office. But if she was at the mall, she wasn’t coming forward.

“What should I do?” Ali asked, turning toward me in the parking lot. “Should I call Benny, or should I wait?”

What I wanted to say was that I was sure Letty was simply being difficult, punishing her parents, and maybe even me, for her lousy birthday and she was likely right that second over at Seth’s house . . . playing house. I couldn’t keep Letty’s secret anymore.

“I have to tell you something,” I said, unlocking my car doors and motioning to her to sit inside. Just the hour that the car had been sitting in the lot had been enough to spike the temperature well over a hundred, and I lowered myself onto the old vinyl gingerly and blasted the air.

“Now, Letty did not want me to tell you this—”

“Cora, come on, just tell me, I’m worried enough as it is.”

“Okay. The night you picked Letty up at that party . . . she had sex. Letty and Seth slept together.”

“Oh my God.” Ali looked as if someone had hit her in the stomach, her face paling.

“I’m sorry—”

“How could you have not told me?” she said, turning on me, the color coming back now, her cheeks flushed with anger. “How dare you withhold this kind of information from me? You had no right, none. I don’t know what’s wrong with you these days, Cora, but ever since you’ve been back you’ve been acting like—” She stopped for a moment, searching for her next words. I had no idea what she would say, either, but I was giving her the time to figure it out.

“We’re not talking the way we always have,” she finally finished. “I know that’s my fault. Letty’s been with us practically every second, so I’m not blaming you. But it feels like you’d rather talk to her than to me these days, anyway. Are you mad at me or something?”

I shook my head and reached out to take her hand, but she pulled it away. “No, of course not, Ali,” I said. “I was just waiting for the right time—”

“There is no right time,” she said. “Do you know where she is? Is she okay?”

“Of course I don’t know where she is,” I defended myself. “I would tell you. You’ve had enough to worry about with Benny, and she was with us every second she wasn’t at school, so I figured that, for now, while she was grounded anyway, she was safe. I’m sure she’s okay. I imagine she and Seth skipped school. She’s probably at his house.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“If I did we’d have already been over there,” I said. “Now look, if I had any idea where she was, I would tell you. Stop acting like I’ve kidnapped your daughter.”

We glared at each other. I had never argued with Ali about Letty. I’d never even considered asserting my maternal rights. I had none. We weren’t co-mothers. And I had never felt that more pointedly than I did now.

Ali finally slumped back in her seat and covered her face with her hands.

“I can’t believe she’s having sex,” she whispered, and then groaned, as if saying the words physically hurt her. “What did she say?”

I repeated the conversation, making sure to lead off with the fact that Letty had assured me that they’d used a condom, and finishing with her assertion that they were in love. Ali snorted at that.

“Please,” she said. “She’s a child, a
child
. In love.” She groaned again, then took a deep breath, and when she spoke again, she sounded uncertain. “Is she, was she okay?”

“I asked,” I said quietly. “She said she was, but who knows. I don’t think she’d have told me if she wasn’t. I’m shocked that she told me as much as she did.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?” Ali asked, pain in her voice. “I don’t understand. She’s always been so open with me.”

She looked at me, bewildered, but I didn’t have much of an answer for her.

“I imagine she thought she’d get in even more trouble than she already was,” I said. “And I think she was afraid that you’d tell Benny.”

Ali rolled her eyes toward the roof of the car. “Oh my God, Benny’s going to kill this kid,” she said.

“Letty or Seth?”

She sighed. “Both, I imagine. Okay, so she’s in love, she’s mad that she’s grounded and can’t see him, so they took the day off school so they could spend time together. Ugh. You’d think they would have been smart enough to get back to school in time for you to pick her up.”

I shrugged. Yes, I would have thought Letty was smarter than that, too, but a new idea crossed my mind.

“I wonder if she’s doing this on purpose,” I said.

“Why? She must know she has our attention the last couple of weeks,” she said.

“Well, maybe not. Last night, after you went to bed, Letty said she overheard you and Benny talking about having another baby.”

Ali gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.

“I told her she must have misunderstood.”

She tilted her head back against the seat and stared up at the sagging headliner. “Oh, this is just not at all how I pictured this. I was waiting until this thing with Benny worked itself out before I mentioned it to you.”

“Did she hear correctly? Are you really thinking about doing it again?” I asked. She lifted her head up and looked at me.

“Yeah,” she said with a small smile. “I am. Actually, I’m doing more than thinking about it. I really want to do it. Last night, Benny said we could talk about it. He was against it at first, but I guess not having us there made him give it some more thought. And I’m—I think we’re going to go home this weekend. Benny says he feels much better now that he’s talking with Dr. Weist, and I’m ready. I’ve missed him so much. So, yeah, I want another baby. What do you think?”

“Wow,
that’s
what I think,” I said with a laugh. “I don’t know, I guess I’m not sure what to think. You’d go through it all again? I just don’t think I could do it.”

“Well, we have nine embryos left. I’ve been paying to keep—”

“Whoa,” I said, holding my hand up, “wait a second. Still have embryos left? Mine?” I stared at her wide-eyed, dismay filling my belly, making me nauseated.

Ali looked taken aback. “Well, ours, I mean, mine and Benny’s . . . yes, yours, I guess.”

“Oh no, no, Ali, you can’t!”

“Why not?” she asked, clearly shocked at my reaction.

“They can’t possibly still be good,” I protested, certain that my shock was greater than hers. It had never crossed my mind that she might want to use the original embryos. How could that be possible? I’d never imagined that Ali would have continued to pay for storage of them for this many years. I’d also never thought about what would be done with them if she decided to stop paying to store them.

What did they do with them?

“I think they could,” Ali said. “An Israeli woman gave birth from twelve-year-old embies, and in 2006 a Spanish woman gave birth from thirteen-year-old embryos. They’re saying there’s no telling how long they could remain viable. I mean, I know it’s a long shot, but it was a long shot to begin with and we did it.”

She was glowing as if she were already pregnant. I tried to rein my feelings in. I had to tell her, of course, but neither of us would have the time we needed to discuss it, not while we still didn’t know where Letty was.

“Okay, we should talk about this, we
will
talk about this. But first, what are we doing about Letty?” I asked.

“Oh God, I don’t know,” she said. “Okay, let’s call some of her friends. Damn, I wish Benny hadn’t taken her cell phone away. Hey, let’s grab her cell phone. It’s in my closet. I bet this guy’s number is in it.” She looked triumphant.

“Good idea,” I agreed. “I’ll meet you there.”

“No,” she said, “I don’t want Benny to realize anything is wrong yet. I’ll grab the phone and meet you back at your place.”

I drove her back to her car, wishing I could feel as relieved as she clearly did. Before she got out she reached over and squeezed my arm. “It’s going to be okay,” she said, and I nodded and smiled automatically, then drove home with the nausea in my belly returning.

Now, not only did I have to tell her how sick I was and how sick the child I had made for her might get, but I got to crush her dreams of having another one.

I managed to get home before Benny and didn’t bother to turn the car off, leaving it running in the driveway like a burglar. The house had the stale air of a home without a family, and an overwhelming sense of sadness stole over me as I dashed into our bedroom.

I groped along the top of the gun safe, assuming my hand would quickly connect with Letty’s purse, but all I got was some dust. I stood back and craned my neck to get a better view and couldn’t see it. I’d watched him put it up there. I jumped once, twice, and it was definitely not there. I looked around the closet, wondering why he’d moved it.

I looked through the rest of the house, but it definitely wasn’t there, and I finally gave up and headed back to Cora’s.

She was in the guest room when I got back to her house, looking through the closet. She turned as I walked in, her face somber.

“Some of her stuff is gone,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked, gazing into the closet with her. I was the one who took her to school, and she hadn’t had anything but her backpack. But now that I thought of it, it had looked more full than usual.

“Well, what the hell?” I asked, baffled.

“I don’t know. She left plenty of things, so I don’t think she actually ran away, but other stuff is definitely gone, so I don’t know, maybe she did and just didn’t want it to look like it? Or, her bathing suit isn’t hanging in the shower anymore, and her beach towel is gone, too, so maybe they just went to the beach and lost track of time,” Cora said. “Did you find her cell phone?”

“No,” I said, still looking at the closet. “It was in our closet, but Benny must have moved it.”

“Your closet in your room?” Cora asked.

I just looked at her.

“She went in your room when we went to the house to pick up some of her clothes on Tuesday,” she said.

“Oh, I am just going to kill her,” I said, running out of the room and grabbing the phone, dialing her number with shaking fingers.

“Answer, answer, answer,” I pleaded softly as Letty’s phone rang . . . and rang. At the sound of her voice, her recorded voice, I still felt enormous relief. At least there was this tether to her, taken on purpose, evidence that she was doing this by choice, not hauled along somewhere against her will.

“Letty, it’s Mom,” I said, willing myself to remain calm. “I need you to call me immediately. I get it. There’s been a lot of tension, a lot of fighting with all of us, Dad, me, you. But I need to know that you’re okay. I’ve not said anything to your dad yet, but, Let, I’m going to have to soon if I don’t hear from you. I’m at Cora’s, and my cell is on. I’ll give you . . .” I looked at my watch and calculated how far I could push it with Benny. “Until seven o’clock. If I don’t hear from you by then, I’ll have to get your father involved. And you know what that means. I know about Seth, I know—everything, and it will be—” The tone sounded that I had run out of time, and I jabbed the off button in irritation.