“What are you going to do with it?” I poured us both glasses of wine from the bottle she’d brought. Briar White, her fancy brand with the white rose on the bottle.
We’d both grown up with next to nothing, but Diana had moved up in the world. Nice house in Pennsylvania. Another at the beach in Delaware. She worked, but didn’t really have to. Her husband kept her in style, and it had become more and more obvious over the years that she’d become accustomed to it. We saw each other so infrequently now that it really stood out—but could I blame her? She’d chosen her prison, but it came with thousand-thread-count sheets.
“Spending her money feels dirty,” she said. “Like it could be enough to make up for everything she pulled. Like it could ever change what she did. I’ll never forgive her.”
She tucked the check into her pocket and sat beside me on the couch I’d rescued from the neighbor’s trash, her feet tucked beneath her. She looked too fancy. Some of her dark hair fell in tendrils around her face, the rest of it pinned up high. I wanted to reach around and yank it free. Mess her up a little. Get her down on my level. We used to be so alike when we were young, but we’d both changed.
“You don’t have to forgive your mom,” I said, “but don’t let that stop you from spending the money she left you.”
“And it is all mine. I don’t have to share a single cent of it. He doesn’t even know about it. See? It’s made out to Diana Sparrow. He couldn’t cash it even if he tried.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
“He met my mother once,” she said flatly. “Two months ago, when she came back around and said she wanted to make her amends. Whatever she felt she owed me with this check, Jonathan has nothing to do with it.”
She talked sometimes about how fast her husband went through money. Less often, she let it slip that he was a lot less cool about her doing the same. I’d mention that he was financially controlling. She’d point out that she lacked for nothing.
I’d never even met Jonathan before he and Diana got married. I’d heard her talk about him the few times she’d managed to visit me in Brooklyn. I went to the clinic with her when she decided not to have his baby. Nothing she’d ever said about him had made me think I needed to make the effort of knowing him, until suddenly they were engaged. I’d never tried to talk her out of it, the way I should have.
“Fuck Jonathan,” I said and raised my glass.
“No, thank you,” Diana replied. “You can be my guest, though.”
“He’s not my type.”
We clinked our glasses and sipped. No matter how long we spent apart, it was always easy to fall back into the patterns of our friendship. We talked about our celebrity crushes and how terrible her husband was and why I’d broken up with my last boyfriend, who’d really been a one-night stand that had lingered past the expiration date.
Another bottle of wine later, Diana pulled the check out of her pocket again with a triumphant flourish. “I know what I’m going to do with it.”
“Pay for a hit man to off your asshole husband?” I thought she’d chastise me—after all, it’s one thing to complain about the dude you’ve bound yourself to in unholy matrimony, but it’s another when someone else does it.
Instead, encouraged by sweet white wine and girl time, we both burst into peals of laughter. She shook her head. Drained her glass. Put it on the coffee table.
“Nope,” Diana said. “I’m going to buy myself a car.”
* * *
That was a little over a year ago. The money she’d inherited from her mother would have paid a year’s rent on my Brooklyn apartment, but Diana didn’t need to worry about anything as banal as her living expenses. True to her word, she’d used it to buy her precious red Camaro. She’d been as careless with that car as she’d been with our friendship, and now both were wrecked.
Thinking of that weekend and how she’d spoken about Jonathan, I run hot and then cold with chills of fury. If she’d left him back then, we wouldn’t be where we are now. When my phone pings with a text from her, I’ve had enough.
Swipe.
Block.
Delete.
I owed her for a long time because of what she did for me, but I don’t owe her anything anymore.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Diana
Cold rain hammers at my skull as I drop to my knees in the mud and dig, dig, dig. I pull clots of earth with my bare hands. There’s a hole at the base of the tree, and I am the one who made it.
I made this hole, the size of a child. The child I never had. The one I did not want.
I taste blood. My mouth hurts. My fingers hurt and are also bleeding; there’s blood and mud and rain, cold as ice. All around me. I’m digging. Deeper. My fingers work the earth, and worms wriggle between them. My hands part the earth, separate it, make an emptiness.
I’m putting something in the hole by the tree.
I’m covering it up.
I’ve buried something.
I’ve buried someone.
* * *
I wake from the dream with the sour taste of bile in my mouth and the uncomfortable heaviness of heartburn settled at the base of my throat. It’s only ten at night, but I feel like I’ve been sleeping for days. My collarbones ache, probably because I was writhing around in bed. The triangle pillow I’ve been using to prop me up and help ease the backache that happens from being unable to shift positions or to sleep on my side is shoved too far over, close to the bed’s edge.
Dr. Levitt has assured me over and over again that if I’d hit a person, not a deer, there’s no way I could have buried them in the back yard. Even if the first responders on the scene hadn’t noticed a dead person, my injuries would have made it impossible. I know that my guilt and fear stem from something totally unrelated from the accident, and yet the dream lingers.
Jonathan’s side of the bed is still made pristinely. I can see the emptiness in the glow from the window. I left the outside lights on for him, but he’s not home yet.
I steel myself for the pain as I push myself upright, feet onto the floor, and swallow over and over until the horrible taste fades. I need a drink. I swear I turned down the thermostat before I went to bed, but the room is sweltering. I’m sticky. I use the phone app to dial back the temperature to something more reasonable.
I want a lukewarm shower to rinse away the sweat of the nightmare. At this point, I think I would sell my soul to the devil for a long, luxurious shower and the ability to wash my own hair. I want to shave my armpits, which I am embarrassed to be able to smell. The slings are disgusting too, even though Harriett has tried to wash them for me. Grotty gray, and I hope I’m only imagining the faintly sour odor clinging to them.
The doctors have all told me there’s no set science about when collarbones heal “enough.” My next checkup isn’t until next week, but I am suddenly so desperate to be clean, to be healed, that I take off first the left sling and then the right. The right collarbone break was worse and hurts more, but I slowly raise and lower both arms and bite back the groans. This time I’m able to push off the bed and stand.
I need to do this. To get back on my feet. To take care of myself.