face fell. As her father led her away, she glanced back over her shoulder at Jenny with a sick look.
It was an hour later when Kate found them in the library. They’d changed into their pajamas, and were hanging out on the sofa with the door half closed, looking at fashion magazines, afraid to make a sound.
“We have to go,” Kate said, her makeup streaked from crying. “I’m not sleeping under his goddamn roof tonight.”
“What happened?” Jenny said.
“That bastard,” Kate said, her jaw set.
“Did he cut you off?” Jenny asked.
“God, no. Leave me destitute? People would know, and it would reflect badly on him. But you should’ve heard the way he talked to me. I can’t stay here after that.”
“Kate,” Aubrey protested, “it’s after eleven o’clock.”
“I don’t give a shit what time it is,” Kate said.
Jenny saw that Kate was beyond consoling. “If we hurry, we can make the midnight train,” she said. “It’s a local, it gets into Belle River at six thirty tomorrow morning.”
“The dorms are closed till Sunday,” Aubrey said.
“I’ll call my parents,” Jenny said. “They can meet us at the station. You can both stay with me.”
“Thank you,” Kate whispered, drawing Jenny into a deep hug. “You always know what to do. You’re the best. Just absolutely the very best friend, ever. Aubrey, you too, my little lamb, I love you to pieces. Get over here. What would I do without you guys?”
Aubrey joined in the hug. The three of them stayed there holding each other like that for a long time, and Jenny thought that even if sometimes she hated Kate, and sometimes she got incredibly frustrated with Aubrey, she also loved them more than she’d thought it was possible to love friends, ever.
“Promise me,” Kate said, and Jenny realized that Kate was still crying.
“What?”
“We’ll never let anything come between us. Not a guy, nothing. We won’t hurt each other. We won’t screw up this amazing friendship.”
“Of course we won’t, silly. We love each other too much for that,” Aubrey said, tears standing out in her eyes.
“Do you promise?” Kate said.
“I promise,” Aubrey replied.
Kate turned to Jenny. “You, too. Say it.”
“I promise I won’t let anything come between us,” Jenny said.
She meant it, and yet Kate’s urgency left her uneasy. You didn’t demand a promise like that unless you had a premonition of bad things to come.
Present Day
In June, Kate moved back to Belle River after twenty-two years away.
It was unseasonably hot for early summer, and the afternoon was as oppressive as her mood, with airless streets, black skies, and wilted flowers under dusty maple trees. The clouds opened just as Kate pulled up in front of the ugly brown house on Faculty Row. She sat in the BMW with music blasting and rain battering the windshield, her head on the steering wheel. It was all around her again. Carlisle, the past, her so-called friends. All the things she’d been running from for years now. Throw a rock from the front porch of this dump and you’d hit Briggs Gate. After a minute, Kate took her sandals off and tossed them onto the floor in the back, and lowered her seat into a reclining position. She’d take a nap. Who gave a crap what the neighbors thought? She didn’t know them, and didn’t care to. She refused to get out of her air-conditioned car and venture into this deluge in order to enter a place she was distraught to live in. She’d rather stay in her car all afternoon, or at least until the rain stopped, enjoying the plush leather seats. She had no job to go to, no prospects, and she couldn’t stand her husband. If she had more gumption – or more money – she would drive away and never come back.
Jenny pulled up beside the BMW in her minivan, leaned over, and lowered the passenger window. Kate saw Jenny’s lips moving. Sighing with exasperation, she turned down the music and lowered her window.
“What?”
“I said, what are you doing in there?” Jenny shouted over the pounding rain.
“What does it look like? Thinking about blowing my brains out.”
“Come on, enough of that. I brought you some cupcakes from that new place in Riverside.”
Riverside was a formerly industrial neighborhood in Belle River, full of warehouses and factories that were being redeveloped into lofts and restaurants. Belle River trying pathetically to be chic was what it was.
“I don’t eat sugar,” Kate said.
“I brought wine, too. You can’t tell me you don’t drink.”
Jenny held up a bottle, which got Kate’s attention. Damn, she could stand an ice-cold vodka right about now, but chardonnay would do in a pinch.
“Is Aubrey coming?” she asked. Jenny without Aubrey was too much to take.
“Of course. She’ll be here any minute.”
“All right, but do me a favor. Don’t act like this is some kind of party and you’re happy to see me, okay?” Kate said.
“I’m trying to make the best of this, Kate. You could at least help a little.”
Ugh, nothing ever changes, Kate thought. Jenny was still the priggish know-it-all of their youth; she was just more powerful and successful now, which made it worse. Jenny was the mayor of this one-horse town, with her finger in every plot. Jenny’s husband’s construction company had the winning bid on every Carlisle building project. How did that happen, you might ask? Kate could tell a few hair-raising secrets if she had a mind to, most of them involving her own father and his influence, and yet Jenny acted like Kate was the corrupt one. Jenny and Aubrey must know how Kate felt about them, about this place. Hadn’t they noticed that she never visited? That the three of them saw each other only rarely, and only when Jenny or Aubrey came to New York and tracked her down? Kate hadn’t even been in New York much over the last decade or so. Well, unfortunately the days when she went where she pleased were over, probably for good, and now here she was stuck with these two again, back in this shitty town.
Kate turned the engine off and collected her sandals from the back. Jenny pulled into the parking space in front of Kate. She had those annoying stickers on her rear windshield – the cartoon family complete with the mommy and daddy, the two boys with their sports equipment, and the dog for good measure. Gag me. As Kate watched Jenny get out and struggle with her packages, though, pulling boxes and bottles and finally a bouquet of Mylar balloons from the backseat in the middle of a downpour, she couldn’t help but crack a smile. Jenny always had a plan, you had to give her that. She forced the world to conform to her expectations, where Kate wallowed in her disappointments, and Aubrey,
