Bailey needed me there alone. And he’d been fine with that. Bailey had been in my life longer than he had.
Danny might not be close to Bailey, but he didn’t ever get in the way of our connection. He respected its sacredness. Half an hour later, our coffee cups empty, we moved from chairs to the couch farther back in the room. Bailey’s shoulders were drooping, her long dark curls falling limply around her face. Putting my arm around her shoulders, I pulled her against me. Danny had already called the sub line for me, requesting a substitute teacher the next morning.
“We’ll get through this,” I assured her. “You and me. Together.”
“I know.”
“I love you, Bail.”
“Love you, too.”
* * *
With her head on Koralynn’s shoulder, Bailey contemplated sleep—the same kind of sleep her mother had embarked on when she’d taken an overdose of sleeping pills eight hours earlier.
The kind where you didn’t have to worry about waking up.
And there was the difference between her and Mom. She thought about it. Mom did it.
“I should’ve been with her,” she said. Mom had called. Wanted to meet for dinner. Bailey had a moot court competition in the morning and had put her mother off in favor of preparing to win the case. She wasn’t just vying for grades; a win could give her the positioning she’d need to get on with a reputable firm as soon as she graduated.
Or could have given her. There was no way she was going to the competition now.
“You were with her all the time, Bail.” Koralynn’s voice wafted over her. And Bailey listened. After two years of law school, she trusted people less now than she ever had, except for Koralynn. But she still believed in Koralynn. Believed Koralynn.
Her best friend, and maybe Mama Di and Papa Bill, seemed like the only people left on earth who still honored the truth.
“I could tell by her tone of voice that she was struggling.”
“She was always struggling. You held off going to law school right after college because she’d just found out the judge was having an affair and she thought she was getting divorced. You took money from him for your first year of law school because she begged you to—so she could prove you were all one big happy family. Then last year when they separated you took her to live with you. You’ve spent every weekend with her for months. And some evenings, too. You’re in your last year of law school, with more on your plate than most of us could manage, and you think you haven’t done enough? She should be giving to you, Bail. Maybe that would take her out of herself a little. She’s your mom—you should be able to expect help from her, not constantly feel guilty for not giving her more!”
“I should never have encouraged her to file that complaint against him.”
“She did the right thing. It’s the judicial commission’s mistake that they ruled unethically. Besides, that was six months ago.”
“Yeah, but she never got over it.”
“Which is why you helped her write a request for reconsideration. And she could talk to the reporter from Political Times. Or go to Channel Six, since they do exposés. She has a lot of options.”
Like moving away from Pittsburgh, for one.
“I should’ve known tonight was different.”
“How was it different, Bailey? She’s been at the end of her rope for more than a year. For most of our lives, it seems. I’m sorry to sound harsh, especially now, but it kills me to see you try so hard and then lose so much of yourself because she doesn’t come through. Her journey is hers, and she probably does her best, Bail, but what I see is that you do everything for her, ask nothing for yourself, and then feel like you don’t do enough.”
Bailey told herself she should sit up. Hold the weight of her own head.
“I want you to promise me something, Bail.” Koralynn’s voice sounded more serious than usual.
“Of course. Anything.” She could give Koralynn everything she had for the rest of her days and never be even.
“Promise me that if you ever need anything, you’ll come to me. Promise me you’ll ask me for it.”
“Of course.” She always had. Didn’t Koralynn know that?
“Because I promise you, from the depths of my soul, that if there’s anything I have that you need, no matter what it is, I will give it to you.”
“You know that’s how I feel about you, too. Right?” Bailey asked, although she couldn’t imagine that Koralynn would ever need her in such an elemental way.
“Yes.”
“I’d give you a kidney,” Bailey said into her friend’s shoulder—something they’d started saying back in high school, when a classmate of theirs had donated one of his kidneys to save his father’s life. They’d spent long hours talking about the gruesome details of the sacrifice, the pain and inconvenience, the danger, and decided it was the supreme act of love.
“I’d give you both kidneys, Bail. I swear to you. You are not alone.”
But an hour later, when the doctor came out to tell them that Bailey’s mother had died from the overdose of painkillers she’d consumed the previous evening, Bailey had never felt more alone in her life.
Chapter Four
May 2009
“You want a drink?” Jake Murphy, dressed in a designer black suit with a red silk tie knotted perfectly at his starched white collar, slid an arm around Bailey’s waist as he came up behind her.
“I thought you’d never ask,” she told the man who’d escorted her to so many functions over the years she’d lost count of them.
“Tom Collins?”
Her drink of choice back in college—because it hadn’t tasted like alcohol. Not that she’d shared that piece of information with anyone but Koralynn.
“Red wine.”
Judge Weiner, the man who’d been her mother’s sixth and final husband, was making his way toward her and, catching his advance out of the corner of her eye, Bailey slipped her arm through Jake’s and accompanied him to the bar.
“This is quite some shindig the Mitchells have put on for you,” Jake was saying.
Most of the students graduating from her law class were having parties, the majority thrown by their families.
“They’re the best,” Bailey said, instinctively looking through the crowd for Koralynn, who’d been by her side for most of the past year while she simultaneously grieved for her mother and completed her last year of a very grueling law program.
Weiner had stopped for conversation. And was still looking at Bailey.
Not
