He was still looking out the door. “She’ll hate me one day.”
He was definitely in shock.
“What? No,” I said. “She could never hate you.”
“She will. I could have prevented this.”
Now he was just talking crazy. “Jenny—” Is? Was? I wasn’t sure what to say. “She’s healthy as a horse. This was some freak thing, maybe something genetic. A heart attack, or an aneurism,” I said, repeating what Sanjay had said. “I’m so sorry this happened, but you absolutely cannot blame yourself right now.”
Matt sighed and met my gaze. The whites of his eyes were now flooded red. He no longer resembled a movie star. No—now he looked like an ordinary man at the tail end of a several-day bender. “Oh, Penelope,” he said. “Jenny had serious problems. And I let her keep pretending everything was fine.”
FIVE
Problems? Everyone, no matter how perfect they seemed, had problems. Almost none were the kind that landed you in the morgue. I had no idea what Matt was talking about, but there wasn’t time to ask. “I’m going to find the police,” he told me. Then he disappeared.
I stood in the space between the foyer and the living room, staring at the stairs. Except rather than glass and steel, I saw Jenny splayed out in her armchair.
Any false hope I had been clinging to when I first found her was long gone.
Please end it for me.
Why had I texted her that? What if I had somehow planted the idea of death in her head? Forget Matt’s inexplicable guilt—what if I had done this to her? I had spent much of the day wishing for an escape, but now I really wanted to beam myself into an idyllic reality. No need for a white-sand beach and well-behaved kids. Jenny being alive would have been more than enough.
“Ma’am?” said a police officer as he approached me. “Can I ask you a couple questions?”
I had watched a few procedural shows in my day, and I guess I was expecting him to tell me I should come to the station, wherever that was, and had already begun panicking about what I would do with Cecily and my kids. Instead, the officer pulled out his notebook and shot off a series of questions: What was my relationship to Jenny and the rest of the Sweet family? What time had I arrived at their house? Had I seen anyone suspicious in the area at that time? What about the house itself; how had that looked? When had I last spoken to Jenny? Had I noticed anything amiss about her then? Then he stopped scribbling on his notepad, looked up, and said, “Was your friend known to have a drug problem?”
“Jenny?” I said. “No way.”
The officer was nearly a foot taller than me, with a neck the width of his head. “Sorry,” he said, not sounding the slightest bit so. “I have to ask.”
I hadn’t been offended. Whatever Matt may have implied, I knew for a fact Jenny was a lightweight; I couldn’t remember the last time I saw her have more than a second glass of wine. She wouldn’t even be photographed with a glass in her hand—it was off brand for her site, she once explained before setting down her goblet to prepare for a picture. She did not want to run the risk of ostracizing her followers, many of whom were young religious women who did not drink coffee, let alone alcohol.
“It’s fine. I’ve never seen Jenny—” I did not have the vocabulary to finish my sentence. Snort? Inject? I didn’t know what drugs he was talking about. “I’ve never seen her do anything illegal,” I finally said. “She barely drinks. I have to assume this was a freak health problem.”
The officer nodded, which seemed to imply that I was correct. Then he took down my contact information, closed his notebook, and said it would be best if I left the house while the investigation was underway.
He was halfway up the stairs when I called after him. “My friend,” I said lamely. “She’s dead, right?”
“That’s for the medical examiner to decide.”
“So . . .” What do I do now?
He looked me in the eye. “Your friend? She had a little girl, right?”
Had .
I nodded.
“Go be with her,” he said.
In the bathroom, Sanjay was playing a video on his phone with the volume turned on high. This had placated the kids, but only so much.
“Where’s Mommy?” Cecily demanded when I let myself in.
I stared at her, willing myself not to cry. It was a question I remembered all too well.
Worse, I knew what came after the answer.
“Why are we stuck in the bathroom?” said Miles.
“What was all that noise out there?” demanded Stevie.
“It’s a long story,” I managed.
“Golden arches?” whispered Sanjay.
I nodded, and he announced we were going to get Happy Meals. The chorus of questions was replaced by my children cheering—McDonald’s was a treat.
Cecily didn’t seem half as thrilled, but she didn’t keep pressing for answers, even after I made them wait in the bathroom while Sanjay brought the car around back and when we shuffled them out the back door. I tried not to look at her too much on the short drive to the restaurant. It wasn’t just that she was the spitting image of Jenny. To see her was to be reminded of what she no longer had.
“Aunt Penny?” said Cecily as I placed her Happy Meal in front of her.
“Yes, love?” I said.
“Mommy doesn’t let me go to McDonald’s.”
My eyes smarted, and I blinked furiously and made myself think of Russ’ nose hair. “I know, sweetie,” I said as Miles slipped beneath the table. “But I think this one time will be okay. All right?”
“Ow! Miles, stop right now !” yelled Stevie before Cecily could respond.
There was a thump under the table, and then my son reemerged, bawling. “You’re mean!” he said to Stevie. “Mean! You’re a—”
“Miles, please,” interjected Sanjay. “Sit and eat your cheeseburger.”
“She kicked me in the brain,” he said, starting to cry again. He glowered at Stevie. “You’re a fat turd log, and you smell like one, too.”
“Penny,” said Sanjay, staring at me. I stared back, imagining throwing a carton of fries at him, because what he was asking was for me to parent them. Of all the days—of all the times—could he not step up? His argument was always the same: our children didn’t listen to him when I was around. They didn’t listen to me, either, but Sanjay was counting on me to pull out my bag of mothering tricks and either guilt or cajole them into compliance.
“Do you guys want a story?” I asked the kids. My voice sounded wooden, but my kids didn’t seem to notice. They stopped squabbling and began making requests—mutant alligators, a princess who only wore pants, kryptonite. This was our routine: they supplied the characters and key elements, and I devised a plot. Even Cecily began chiming in to say she wanted the princess to have a pet frog.
I had just had the princess’ frog swallow the kryptonite in order to defeat the alligators when my phone began buzzing in my bag. I steadied myself, expecting to see Matt’s name or maybe even a hospital number on the screen.
It was Russ. Checking in to make sure you actually got home, he had written.
“One second, guys,” I said to the kids, trying to sound as though my heart had not just sunk yet again. Russ’ text had just reminded me that there were nearly a million dollars riding on a proposal that I had not yet written and would not write at any point that evening. Worse, I had forgotten to tell Russ, who would have to be the one to inform George Blatner that we had nothing to show him. I began to type.
So sorry! I didn’t, because—
I quickly erased this and tried again.
I’m really sorry. I’m not going to be able to do—
I erased that, too. Thumbs trembling, I wrote, My friend Jenny is dead. I haven’t done the proposal and I won’t be in tomorrow. I’ll make it up to you.
Damn, Russ wrote back seconds later. I’ll take care of it. I’m sorry, Penny.
His uncharacteristically gracious response made the situation feel . . . real, somehow. I took a long drink of my soda to wash down the sob in my throat.
Beside me, Sanjay was shoveling fries down his gullet. “Anything?” he said, half a fry still hanging from his mouth.
“No. It was work.”
Across the table, Cecily had removed a miniature knock-off Barbie from its plastic packaging, but was still regarding the rest of her cardboard-box meal with suspicion. I expected her to ask me to finish my story, and honestly, I was hoping she would—even a world with mutant alligators was preferable to the red-and-gold blur of the restaurant, where children were screeching, the odor of burger patties and fries was permeating my clothes, and I was forced to grapple with the reality that I no longer had a best friend.
But when she looked up at me with saucer-wide eyes, Cecily said, “Aunt Penny? Where’s Mommy?”
Storytime was over. “I’m not sure, Cess, but I think she’s with your daddy.”
Who was aware your mommy had a problem that I knew nothing about .
SIX
Our Happy Meal trick may have worked, but the kids were markedly less enthused about the sleepover Sanjay and I proposed on the way home. Stevie, who took sleep almost as seriously as Sanjay did, complained that she was too tired. Miles whispered that he didn’t want Cecily to know if he had an accident.
And Cecily—well, Cecily was no fool. “Mommy said I can’t spend the night at someone else’s until I’m ten,” she said crossly from the backseat. “I’m not ten for another three and a half years. I want to go home.”
“Well, this is . . .” I couldn’t exactly call it a special occasion. “This is an exception. Like McDonald’s,” I said, though Cecily had barely touched her meal. I cringed as I began my next lie. “Your parents are in the middle of something important. So, you’re going to stay with us, just for a little bit.”