When We Were Friends (8 page)

I stood and carried Molly-Jacqueline to the kitchen, but still I could hear Star’s panting, the scritch that came with each quick exhale. I walked out to the back deck and held Molly up to sit on the wooden railing, trying to keep my head from spinning.

What was going on? What the hell was Sydney doing? I knew her, and yes she could be sneaky and conniving, but this was on a whole different level. What could she possibly be thinking?

I knew I had to figure this out; if I didn’t go to the police now, tell them what was going on, then I’d never be able to explain why I hadn’t and might be arrested myself. But if I turned Sydney in, what would happen to Molly? She might be given back to her father, and I’d rather spend three lifetimes in jail than let that happen.

I had to find out what had happened, whether Sydney had just freaked out on her way to tell David I had the baby and blurted out a lie, or whether she had some other, more twisted plan in mind.

A light flicked on in the window of the duplex adjoining ours, and I glanced over to find Jeffy Hauser, the neighbor kid, watching me bleary-eyed. My stomach lurched as he turned away, and I imagined his squally little-boy voice, “Mom, that baby on TV! Dial 911!” I lifted Molly and strode back inside.

The panting had stopped. In the den, sure enough, Star was lying on the floor, arms splayed, face pale. I sat on the couch across from her, holding Molly tight against my chest. I watched Star’s face and imagined what she’d say if she were a real mother, a normal mother.
I’ll call the cops, tell them the truth. I’ll get this all straightened out, baby, so don’t you worry
.

“Unngh,” Star said, either because she was starting to wake up or starting to remember. And suddenly, for the first time in my life, I had this intense urge to slap her. I’d been embarrassed of her before, plenty of times, but I’d somehow managed to keep the anger crammed into a dark, impenetrable corner. But now that anger, decades of it, welled so high in me that it took on a life of its own. I
plopped Molly on the couch more roughly than I should have, knelt on the floor and whacked Star so hard that we both cried out in pain.

She gaped at me, a hand at her cheek, and I touched my own cheek and broke into sudden, unexpected tears. “Lai—” she said, “—nee?”

Molly sidled herself off the couch, falling hard on her butt, and she started to whimper, then broke into a wavering cry. I lifted her onto my lap. “I’m sorry,” I said hoarsely.

Star raised herself up on her elbows, then closed her eyes and lay back down.

Molly snuffled against my shoulder, and I remembered suddenly how Sydney had slung Molly over her arm like a rag. “I don’t want to call the police,” I said.

Star didn’t speak, just lay there with her eyes closed. I could see the welt my hand had left on her cheek. I turned away. “I don’t know what she’s doing, not exactly. Maybe she’s absolutely insane, maybe she’s playing some kind of twisted game with me, or maybe she actually thinks this is the best way to protect her daughter.”

“Accusing us of kidnapping?” Star’s eyes snapped open. “We’re going to jail!”

“If she’d given the cops our name, don’t you think they’d be here by now? I think she probably panicked, thought David might get violent and force her to tell him where the baby was. And who knows, if she’d told him he could’ve come here and hurt us too.”

I set Molly on my knee and watched her face, wishing she could tell me what she wanted and what was right, but she only punched her fist into her mouth and started to gnaw tearily on her knuckles. “What I don’t get is, doesn’t she think I’ll turn her in? Or leave the baby at some church in the middle of the night?”

But no, of course that was the thing, she knew me. She knew how easily I’d fall in love with her daughter, had some idea what my life was now. I was probably the only person she could rely on to stay clamped onto that love while I was kicked around. I steeled my shoulders, fighting to stay calm, to think. Damn Sydney. What the hell was I supposed to do?

I brought Molly to the kitchen and dialed information. I needed
to talk to her, figure out what she was thinking and what the hell she wanted from me. How did she expect this to end? For Molly to stay missing forever? Was she planning to pick her up in a day or two and disappear? How could she possibly expect to get away with that?

I asked for both Sydney Beaumont and Sydney McGrath, but there were no listings. I had no idea where she lived, so the only way of trying to reach her would be to stop by Six of Swords tomorrow. But what were the chances of her going to work the morning after her daughter’s “disappearance”? I didn’t know her number or her address; I was stranded here at her whim.

Molly’s headband was askew so I straightened it and nudged her fist out from her mouth. “Bad for your teeth,” I whispered. In response, Molly made a choked, defiant noise and punched her fist back in.

Which is when I realized how she really, truly looked like me. Not just the round cheeks, but the crookedness of her smile, the upturn of her nose, her blue eyes and long, pale lashes. Her ruddy face was more like mine than it was like Sydney’s. Star believed “signs” were everywhere, so wasn’t this a sign?

Okay, it was crazy, I knew that. But all my life I’d had these dreams of motherhood, someone to grip onto my finger, lean against me while I read bedtime stories, someone I’d teach how to count and jump rope. And paint. I knew how stupid it was not to call the police. But even if it was only for a few days until Sydney did whatever she was now planning to do, realistically this was my only foreseeable chance at pseudo-motherhood, without medical intervention or immaculate conception.

Star entered the kitchen and I stood a moment watching her, then ran water over a dish towel. She took it from me and pressed it against her forehead. “I feel better now,” she said, “I think.”

I filled a glass with water, held it toward her, but she ignored it. “You remember when you first brought Sydney home?” she said. “You were what, seven years old? And I was watching you two, you’re building card houses and Sydney’s not good at it, she loses patience. But you’ve built up a regular card condo, all thrilled because it’s the
biggest you ever made, you’re on your third deck. So Sydney asks all innocent for a soda and you run to get it. Soon as you turn the corner there goes her hand, swipe-smash and your condo’s gone. And I knew then about her. I saw it.”

I remembered that day, I actually did. Remembered turning just in time to see Sydney’s arm pull back and the wildness in her eyes. When I returned with the soda, she’d shaken her head slowly. “The floor shook when you walked away,” she said. “You should’ve been more careful.” And me, I’d just shrugged and handed her the glass and said, “Guess it had to fall down eventually.”

“You felt sorry for her, I realize that,” Star said. “You decided you’d try and make up for everything she was lacking in her life. Which she knew you would, that you couldn’t stand to see anyone suffer, so of course she took advantage. And here you both are, however many years later, doing it again.”

“She didn’t have anybody else,” I said. “And now it seems like she still doesn’t, or why would she have come to me of all people?”

Star’s face tightened. “Her mother was a self-centered monster, so she became one too. And now here we are …” Her knees wobbled slightly and she leaned back against the counter and closed her eyes. “If her mother never taught her to have a conscience then, how can you trust that she has one now?”

Sydney’s mother had spent much of her time trying to find men, mainly to support her drinking problem. Sydney had recounted sordid details of the men’s physical characteristics, giving them names—Blubber-Belly, Mister Boobs—both of us wondering whether her mother had any criteria at all for the men she chose. Sydney’s father had been one of those men, in his early fifties when her mother had been in her twenties. Already married, it turned out, and when she’d refused an abortion, probably not for Sydney’s sake but because she saw the opportunity for a permanent meal and drink ticket, he’d agreed to send two grand a month in return for her silence.

I remembered sitting with Sydney on her tenth birthday, first helping her style her hair and choose between dresses and then
waiting with her for her father to appear. For some reason, she’d gotten it in her head that on this most important birthday of course he’d finally come to meet her, so that they could celebrate together the first decade of her life. I’d sat with Sydney on the curb outside her apartment for hours, watching her jump up each time a car passed, her shoulders dropping slowly when it didn’t stop, turning back to me with her face stoic.

Who could blame Sydney after the role models she’d had, for turning into the person she’d become?

Molly was starting to fuss in my arms, pulling at my hair, so I set her down and let her crawl across the room. Star followed the baby with her eyes. “She never learned what it’s like to care about anybody other than herself,” she said. “The only person who really ever cared about Sydney was Sydney, so she took on the task of loving herself like a full-time job, put everything into it.”

“But she ended up marrying a child abuser.”

“Yeah, don’t you feel sorry for her? Poor Sydney, puts her baby in danger and tries to fix things by putting us in danger. It’s like she has a gift for screwing with people’s lives.” She threw the damp dish towel across the room and it hit the wall with a splat. Just as the phone started to ring.

We both stared at each other, then at the phone. It could be Sydney. Or, it could be the police. I slowly lifted the receiver.

“Lainey, oh thank God.”

I gripped the phone trying, unsuccessfully, to keep myself from yelling. “Dammit, Sydney, I just saw you on TV. What the hell were you thinking!”

“You saw?” She gave a broken sob. “I didn’t plan this out, Lainey, it just happened.”

“That’s like saying armed robbery just happened. This doesn’t make any sense! You were going to tell David you’d left her with a friend!”

Star watched me with wide eyes, her face pale, and I reached for her shoulder and guided her to a chair, forcing her to sit.

“I know,” Sydney said. “I know, and I realize how you have to feel.”

Star leaned forward and at first I was sure she was either about to faint or be sick, but she just pulled Molly onto her lap and huddled over her. I brought the phone to the hall.

“I had it all planned out what I was going to say to him,” Sydney said. “But then, I don’t know! I was standing there at his front door, and I started shaking. I was so scared of how he’d react. Please—” Her voice broke. “Please try and understand, Lainey, I know him and he’s dangerous, and I suddenly realized he was going to kill me if I told him the truth.”

“What do you think he’d do to me and my mom if he found out we were involved? What do you think the cops would do! Did you think about anybody but your own self?”

“It was the only way to save Jacqueline, don’t you get that? I got back in my car, and I was just sitting there with my head against the steering wheel trying to think, trying to figure out options, but all I could figure out was that there
weren’t
any good options. And then it was like the decision made itself, the car drove itself to the mall, my legs walked the empty stroller inside and suddenly … I don’t know … I just was screaming and telling people she was missing. If I was thinking straight I’d have done it different, because I know this puts you in a really bad situation. You have to believe I’m sorry about that, and when this is over I swear I’ll find some way to make it up to you. But right now all I can think about is Jacqueline. I don’t know what else to do.”

“So you used me because you knew I’d let myself be used.”

“Of course not! I told you there wasn’t any plan behind this before it happened. I left Jacqueline with you because you’re the only person I have in my life right now that I can trust. I know what kind of person you are, that even if you hated me—and I really hope you don’t hate me—you’d still be willing to help her even if it meant doing something dangerous.”

“You could’ve called when you were sitting in the car. You could even have called after you told people she’d been kidnapped. I had to see it on the news, Sydney. Do you have any idea what that was like?
And now here I am hiding Molly from the cops and from someone who might show up at our door with a gun.”

Silence. Then, “He’d only come if you let anybody know you had her.”

My shoulders tensed. “That sounds like a threat.”

“It’s
not
a threat. But I guess it’s a warning, Lainey. A very, very apologetic, concerned warning. What I’ve lived with the past few years, it’s like he literally loses his mind and something else takes it over. Even little things can provoke him; I mean he hurt Jacqueline and what could she have done except cry too loud? So I don’t know what he’d do to me, and to you and Star, if he found out what was going on.”

I sank onto the bottom step, the fear swirling through my stomach. “What do we do?” I said hoarsely. “You got us into this, so tell me what you expect us to do?”

“Just … hold tight. Stay inside as much as possible, and don’t let anybody see Molly. I’ll figure this out, I promise, just give me a day or two and I’ll find somewhere I can take her.”

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the banister. A day or two. I could keep Molly hidden for a couple days and then Sydney would come take her and our life would go back to almost normal. Just on edge as we tried to forget we’d played any role in the story that would soon be pervading the news. I listened to Molly’s voice from the kitchen, thinking what it would be like once she left, how the house would sink in on itself once again, and grow silent.

“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? And let you know what I’ve worked out, because I swear I
will
work something out. Tell Jacqueline I love her and I’ll see her real soon. And Lainey? You have so many things to hate me for, I realize that, and you’ll never know how sorry and grateful and sorry and sorry and sorry I am. But I hope you’ll at least try and understand and maybe someday forgive me for this one thing.” And then she hung up, without saying goodbye.