Second Chance Friends (2 page)

K
aren gazed through the plate-glass window, her eyes wandering over the divots in the ground where the bus had crashed a month ago. She rubbed the side of her cell phone absently, her fingers bumping over the volume buttons, her fingernail scratching up against the
SILENCE
switch. Oh, how she'd love to “accidentally” flip that switch. If she never heard the phone ring, she wouldn't have to talk to anyone, right? She wouldn't have to answer the next time Kendall called. But she knew even if she did silence it, the peace would be short-lived. Kendall would only show up at her house or, worse, at her job, expecting her to pull strings she didn't have to make things easier for a son whose hide she wasn't sure she wanted to save anymore.

The girl had been calling all morning, congested with tears, begging. Blaming. Always blaming. As if Karen didn't do enough blaming for herself. You'd think, as a mother, Kendall would know that. Yet Karen had awakened to Kendall's tears and blame at the most ungodly hour, had been ripped out of a dream with it.

“Mom?” the voice on the other end had said.

Karen's heart had sunk. For one, she wasn't Kendall's mom. She was Travis's mom, and Kendall just happened to be the girl he was living with at the moment. Just as with Jessilyn and Margarite and that trashy girl whom Karen only ever knew as “Tag,” Kendall's calling Karen “Mom” wasn't going to make her any more permanent in his life. Travis wasn't the permanent-girl type of guy, as much as Karen wished he would be. For another, anytime Kendall was calling her “Mom” on the phone at—she had leaned over and checked—4:42 in the morning, it was not going to be good news.

“What's going on?” Karen had asked, wiping her eyes with her free hand, then slipping on her glasses. The world had sprung into focus and, just like that, her day had started.

And now, an hour and a half later, she sat at the Tea Rose avoiding her not-daughter's phone calls, because she knew what the calls were about. Travis was in jail. Again. Drunk and fighting. Again.

Only this time he did a real job on the guy. This time the guy might not pull through.

Dear God, would that make her son a murderer? Was
that how it worked? Someone went from hothead to killer in the flip of a switch?

You'd think she would know. She'd worked at Sidwell, Cain, Smith & Smith for twenty years. Surely they'd defended drunk guys who had accidentally beat other guys to death in that amount of time. Kendall clearly thought Karen should know what to do.
You've got to help him. You've got to get him out of jail. There's the baby to think of, you know.

Oh, yes,
that
much Karen knew. Her one grandchild. Her grandson, to be exact. Sweet little Marcus, born approximately eight minutes after Travis dumped Tag, seemed to be one of the few good things to come from her son in years. But that also made Kendall more permanent than the others, a fact that Karen wasn't ready to live with just yet. Kendall certainly wasn't any worse than those girls, but she wasn't any better than them, either. She hadn't shown it full-on just yet, but Karen suspected the girl had a shifty side to her. And a vengeful one.

Yes, they had the baby to think of, and Karen had her own baby to think of. It didn't matter if your child was two or twenty-two, she decided—you still hated to see him suffer, even if he brought it on himself. And if this man that Travis had beaten up was to die, Travis would be suffering for many years, she feared. She didn't even want to think of what that road would look like for her. A son in prison for life? How would she ever admit that to anyone?

On cue, her phone rang, and even though she'd been expecting it, she still jumped when it vibrated in her palm,
causing her to slosh a dime-sized dollop of coffee onto the table. Predictably, Kendall's name flashed across the screen. For a moment, Karen considered upending the phone into her mug, letting French vanilla crème drown out Kendall.

But in the end, she couldn't do it. Abandoning Kendall would mean abandoning her son. What kind of mother could do that?
The kind whose son is in jail every other weekend could do that,
her mind nagged her.
The kind who should have toughened up on him long, long ago.

She held the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Mom? It's me.” Karen could hear the baby crying in the background. She focused on it. Tried to conjure the scent of the top of Marcus's head, the clench of his fist around her forefinger. Concentrating on Marcus helped calm her, helped remind her why she hadn't already washed her hands of the whole Kendall situation. “You find out anything?”

“I haven't even gone in yet.”

“But it's a special circumstance.”

I wish,
Karen almost said.
I wish this was something that rarely happened.
“Nobody will be there at this hour,” she said instead. Though that was a lie. As far as she could tell, Mr. Sidwell practically lived there. She'd found him sleeping on his office couch more than once.

“Well, will you call me after you've talked to them? Be sure to tell them Travis was in fear for his life. And he's got witnesses, too. I can bring the witnesses right to you. Be sure to tell them that.”

Karen pushed her finger into the drop of coffee, let it sit
there for a moment, and then swiped the stain away, wiping her thumb dry on her sensible—translation: law-firm stodgy—brown skirt. “Honey, I've told you. I'm a recruiter. Human resources. I don't really work with the attorneys. I rarely talk to them. I don't feel right asking for favors.”

“You work in the same office with them every day,” Kendall said.

“But it's not like we're on a first-name basis or anything. I don't even work in the same hallway with the others.”

“Just ask,” Kendall said with finality. Karen heard the baby's cry get closer to the phone, as if Kendall was picking him up, and then settle into sniffles and grow silent. “If Travis goes to prison, Marcus and I won't be able to afford to live here. We'll have to move, and who knows where we'll end up?” Ah, there it was. The shifty, vengeful thing she'd suspected was lurking underneath.

Karen closed her eyes and pressed her thumb against one, and then the other, not even caring if she was smudging her eye shadow. She was already getting a headache and could feel the backs of her knees begin to sweat inside her panty hose. It was going to be a very long day. A long, stressful one at that. She let out a breath she hadn't even been aware of holding. She understood the threat clearly. Pull some strings at work to get Travis off the hook, or never see sweet Marcus again. “I'll ask,” she said.

But when she hung up, she wondered whom. Whom at Sidwell Cain would she feel comfortable asking for help in getting her son off on a potential manslaughter case? God,
the humiliation. She could just throttle Travis for putting her in this position.

“Please don't die, whoever you are,” she said, her eyes turning toward the window again. She could see a shadowy reflection of herself, the outline of her hair. She spent way too much time curling it every morning, but it was short and unremarkably grayish brown, and hairstyle was the only style she really had going on anymore. Even though she was trim, middle age was starting to take its wrinkly, saggy toll, and the dress code at Sidwell Cain could be described as “litigation drab.” She felt like she needed to make a daily effort of some sort, and if that effort was a curling iron and half a can of hair spray, so be it. Absently, she fluffed at a flat spot of her hair, her gaze shifting to the lawn on the other side of the window instead.

“Still doing okay over here? You haven't even touched your coffee. I was going to top it off.” Sheila, the Tea Rose's only waitress worth her salt, leaned a hip against the booth. She rested the coffee carafe on the table and followed Karen's gaze out the front window.

“Hard to believe it was a month ago already,” Sheila said. “The grass is even starting to grow back.”

Karen nodded. This was where she'd been sitting when the crash had happened. She'd seen the whole thing as it unfolded one month ago—the bus screaming toward the intersection. She'd known it was going too fast. She could tell, even from her table, that it wasn't going to be able to stop in time. She'd watched as it wobbled and jerked on its
shocks. She'd watched as it hit the other car. She'd watched as both skidded into the grass, spraying chunks of sod onto the window right next to her. She'd watched without flinching. She'd been too rooted by horror to flinch. But she'd been flinching every day since.

“He died right there,” she whispered, and though she was sure Sheila had heard her, she wasn't saying it for Sheila. She said it to herself every day as she revisited her booth, unable to scrub away the memory of what had happened. Unable to forget Michael and Maddie Routh, the sweet couple in the red car, on their way to an early-morning doctor appointment. Unable to forget holding Michael's head in her palms as he died, catching his blood, catching his life.

“It seems so surreal,” Sheila said. But Sheila hadn't been there that day. She'd been on vacation. The other waitress—what was her name? Indie? Andie? Karen couldn't recall—had been there. She'd been out back smoking a cigarette, but had run inside upon hearing the noise and called 911 while Karen and the other two customers had rushed outside to help.

“Yeah,” Karen said. “‘Surreal' is a good word for it.” She gathered her purse and pulled out a few dollars. “I should get to work. Can't lollygag around all day.”

“A day off would be nice, though,” Sheila said.

“What are you talking about? You just got back from vacation,” Karen teased. “Some of us never went.”

In fact, Karen could barely even remember what a
vacation felt like, it had been so long since she'd taken one. Raising Travis by herself, she had no extra money for travel. And then by the time he was raised and out of the house, she'd been too lonely to take one. The idea of sightseeing without someone to point out the landmarks to seemed so terribly sad.

Sheila rooted through her apron pockets until she found Karen's check. “It's a double-edged sword, though, you know? You get away, and by the end of your trip you start thinking about how good it'll feel to get home again. And then you get home and all you can think about is how amazing it was while you were away. This diner seems extra dingy ever since I got back. I want to smell sunscreen again.”

“I'll be sure to wear some next time I come in,” Karen said. She scooted out of the booth, then paused to offer Sheila a smile and a quick pat on the arm. “See you tomorrow. Try not to skip off to any tropical paradises while I'm gone.”

“You didn't even touch your coffee today,” Sheila said. “You sure everything's okay?”

Karen thought about Travis, tried to picture him in jail, his shaved, tattooed head gleaming under fluorescent jail lights. Miserable, in danger, but alive, breathing. She thought about the man whom Travis had beaten, hooked to tubes in a hospital bed. His family already grieving their loss.

No, things were not okay.

Her eyes roamed to the divots in the grass again.
Things were not okay, but she wasn't Maddie Routh, now, was she? And she wasn't that poor bus driver, God rest her soul.

“Guess I was just in it for the company today,” Karen said. She waved and headed to her car.

R
ecently, Melinda had been particularly struck by how truly easy it was to live a lie. How frighteningly simple it was to love someone, be totally and undeniably committed to him, build a life with him, and still be hiding a major life fact. Hard emotionally, perhaps. But in execution, a breeze.

She thought about this every morning at this time, studying herself in the scuffed bathroom mirror, washing her face, tying her hair into a limp ponytail (the only trick her hair seemed to know how to do), brushing her teeth, and unceremoniously popping that tiny white pill into her mouth.

Chewable. They made them chewable now. Which meant she had to think about it every day, not just wash it
down along with her feelings of guilt. Tiny white pill; tiny white lie.

Baby, baby, baby
, her jaw muscles seemed to creak at her while she chewed. Or more like,
Nobaby, nobaby, nobaby
. Door locked, pill packet crammed back into the bottom of the tampon box, where Paul would never look. Easy and done. She licked her teeth clean and gave one last study of herself in the mirror, faking a smile. She didn't look like a liar. She could forget the deceit had ever happened. Until tomorrow, when she had to do it again.

Paul was still sleeping. Curled around his pillow like a child, with his bare back, soft and warm as a biscuit, poking out from the top of the sheets. His cowlick knocked free by sleep once again. Melinda studied him while she wrestled earrings into her earlobes. He was perfect, really. The most perfect man. She was so incredibly lucky to have him, and she knew it. Most of the time, she waited breathlessly for him to figure it out and leave her. If he ever did, it would destroy her, yet she would somehow still understand.

He'd been her first. God, how embarrassing it was. Almost as bad as admitting it to the guys at work.
A twenty-four-year-old virgin,
they'd crowed.
If you need any volunteers,
they'd offered.
If you want some pointers.
Ha! Get it? Pointer? I'll happily volunteer my pointer!
The comments were humiliating, but she didn't take them personally. It was part of working with mostly men. They meant it no more seriously than when they razzed one another. In a way, it was an honor that they treated her like one of them.

She'd saved herself for Paul. She hadn't known that was
for whom she'd been saving herself until after they'd done it. And then she'd realized that, yes, this was the one. This was the man who was meant to take her virginity. This was the man who wouldn't abuse it, even if things didn't ultimately work out between them.

When Paul had lowered himself over her that first time, she'd lain there like a corpse, afraid to so much as touch his cheek. She'd cried, too, not because it hurt, but because it had finally happened and her chest felt so full of feeling for him she couldn't contain it. But of course he'd been afraid he'd hurt her. He'd pulled her into him and petted her hair, his bare feet finding hers.

“I'm so sorry,” he'd murmured over and over again. “I never want to hurt you.”

And she'd let him think that it was physical pain that had caused her tears, because she was too afraid of how fast and how fully she'd fallen for him. She'd half cried over the anticipation of the pain she'd feel when he came to his senses and left her for someone better. She didn't want him to know that even if he walked away, she'd still have felt it worth it to give herself to him.

A lot had happened since that first night. Dates where he swept her off her feet. Arguments after which she was shocked and thrilled to find he still wanted her. That Christmas when they accidentally gave each other the same gift—DVD copies of
Fiddler on the Roof
, to commemorate their first date at an outdoor theater—and then Valentine's Day of the very next year when they accidentally did it again, this time with gold cross pendants. The engagement, the
wedding, the I-love-yous and the promises that Melinda could feel Paul really, really meant. House hunting—they found their perfect house on the first day—and furniture shopping, which should have taken agonizing months, but instead took only a few hours for the two of them to fall in love with exactly the same couch, the same bedroom set, the same dining room table, without having to really even talk about it. Slow dances in the living room, and fast dances at parties. Over time, she had come to accept that this perfect man did want plain-faced, simple her and her only—they were soul mates—though occasionally that same fear, that same unwarranted pain, crept through again. Most notably, every morning when her deception started anew.

She shut her jewelry box, and Paul stirred, turning over sleepily and opening one eye.

“Hey,” he said, breathing in deeply, as if he'd just come up from underwater rather than from a dream. He reached over and turned the alarm clock so he could see it. He rubbed his face. “It's early. I thought you were off today. Come here.” He swept a muscled arm open as invitation.

“Babysitting, remember?” she said, going to him, standing at the side of the bed. “My sister has jury duty.”

He curled his arm around her lower back and pulled her so that her thighs were butted up against the mattress and she was about to topple over on him. “Ah, babysitting is good practice,” he said. He reached up into her shirt and laid his warm palm flat against her stomach. “Who knows? Nine months from now we may be needing your sister to babysit our little guy.”

Melinda wriggled out of his grasp, tugging on the hem of her shirt. “Well, you know, it hasn't happened yet,” she said. She turned away, afraid he'd see guilt on her face, and pretended to look for shoes tucked under the bed.

“We can always try again right now, if you think last night didn't take. Hedge our bets.” Paul pulled himself to sitting, the sheet falling around his waist. He was still nude from the night before, and part of Melinda wanted nothing more than to slip under the sheets with him, to feel him against her.

But it hadn't been that way lately. It'd been purposeful, and in some ways relentless. She'd felt afraid every time he touched her these days, irrationally so. She knew that it wasn't going to happen. It wasn't going to work. The tiny white pill she took every morning made sure of that. But it was the fact that he so wanted it to happen, that he was so sure it was going to happen, that made it seem scarier, as if the pill would somehow be rendered ineffective just by the force of his desire.

“I'm late,” she said. “Sorry. Rain check?”

He let out a pouty sigh. “I was afraid you'd say that.” He pulled himself all the way out of bed and kissed her on the temple as he headed for the bathroom. “Have fun with the kids. I love you!”

Her heart tugged. “I love you, too,” she said. She paused, then went to the bathroom door and rested her forehead against it. “I really do.”

He opened the door. He'd put on a pair of boxers and stood in the light, scratching his chest. “Good,” he said. “I really do, too. Now, go, or I won't let you go.”

•   •   •

Her cell phone rang the minute she pulled out of the driveway.

“Where are you?” Holly demanded on the other end. Ever since they were little, Melinda's older sister seemed to have only one volume setting: loud and bossy. They were opposites in just about every way. Where Holly's hair was long, thick, and glossy black, Melinda's was shoulder length, thin, and blah. Where Holly was tall and curvy, Melinda was short and flat-chested. Where Holly was a palette of color on porcelain skin, Melinda was plain and makeup free on honey skin. But they were sisters—close, despite their differences. Or maybe close because of them.

“I'm on my way. Sorry, I'm a little behind,” Melinda said.

“Oh, great. Well, I'll just tell the judge that you were a little behind. I'm sure he'll feel sorry for me right before he tosses me in jail for contempt of court.”

“You're not going to be late. You live half a mile from the courthouse. And I seriously doubt they lock people up for being tardy to jury duty. Besides, if he tosses you in jail, I'll bail you out if it takes me a hundred years to do it.”

“Gee, thanks,” Holly deadpanned.

“That's what sisters are for,” Melinda said, grinning.

“Okay, well, since I'm obviously going to be leaving the second you get here, let me tell you some things now.”

“Shoot.”

“Mitchell has engineering camp today at the university. You have to have him there by nine.”

“Engineering camp? Is that a thing? He's eight. What about school?”

“Shush, I'm not finished. I've packed him a lunch—just grab it out of the fridge before you go. Reenie was up teething all night, so good luck with that. She can have more Tylenol at noon, but I wouldn't expect her to eat anything at all today. And Gregory is . . . well, he's just Gregory.”

“Got it.”

“You sure? Maybe I should write some of this down. I'll write it down.”

“No, come on. This isn't that complicated. Gregory goes to basketball camp, Reenie has a lunch in the fridge, and . . . what's the name of your third kid again? The one with the hair?”

“Darn it, Linds, it's not a good day to mess with me! I've had three hours of sleep, there's spit-up on every item of clothing I own, and with my luck I'll spend the night in the clink because my inconsiderate sister doesn't think being late to jury duty is any big deal.”

Melinda chuckled. “Relax, Hols, I'm just teasing you. I've got this. But listen, I'm on the road, so I need to go.”

“Okay, okay, Safety Officer Sam, I'll let you go. But hurry up.”

Melinda hardly ever talked on the phone while driving. And never texted. She'd seen the result of those decisions too many times. Someone thinks he's making an innocent phone call to say he's on his way home and wraps his car around a tree and dies. Blip. Just like that. Nothing that she, or any of the other paramedics, could do about it. The worst was when they got to a scene and the victim's hand was still wrapped around the phone.

Scratch that. The worst was actually when they got to a scene and the victim's hand was still wrapped around the phone, and the phone was still working.

Of course, there were so many things that could go wrong in a car. Things people really couldn't control. She'd probably seen them all. Bad brakes, someone falls asleep, a squirrel runs out into the road. Once a rollover accident she'd been called to had actually begun as a fistfight in the driver's seat. And there was the time a guy had a seizure and ended up sitting in his car in a stranger's living room.

But cars weren't the only way to go. Not even the most surprising, Melinda supposed. People died all the time from accidents they could never have prevented in a million years. Hell, for that matter, she could choke on one of her clandestine birth control pills and die in the bathroom with sexy, naked, sleeping Paul clueless on the other side of the locked door. Wouldn't that be a surprise for him? So many layers of surprises, he wouldn't know what to do with them all.

“God, morbid enough, Melinda?” she said aloud, and flipped on the radio. She was going to be spending the day with two rowdy boys and a teething toddler—she needed to lighten up a little or it was going to be a very long day.

The song ended and a local newscaster came on. “Today, on the one-month anniversary of the deadly school bus crash in Caldwell, parents of the injured children have announced that they intend to file suit against the school district. . . .” Melinda's attention perked. It had been a month already? How was that even possible? She hadn't been back
to that diner since the crash. It had seemed like only yesterday, though.

She listened to the rest of the newscast, and then turned the radio off.

“One-month anniversary,” she muttered. “Like it's a celebration.”

As if on autopilot, she found her car turning onto Forest, and then Shady Tree, and finally onto Highway 32, heading toward the intersection where the crash had happened.

Melinda knew she was on borrowed time, and that Holly was ready to kill her as it was. But Caldwell was a small community. You could get from one end to the other in just a few minutes, especially this early in the morning. You could drive from your house to the Tea Rose Diner, for example, in plenty of time to still arrive at your sister's house before jury duty convened.

She couldn't explain it, but she felt pulled. Like she needed to see it, to be back at that scene on this one-month milestone. Like she needed to kneel next to those god-awful divots that everyone could see from the highway. The city really should have filled those in.

She'd still been clutching the stick, for Christ's sake. That girl, that Maddie Routh, had still been holding the white stick so tightly her nails were digging into her palms. Her husband's whole body had been crushed, the car flattened, every window busted out, every door sunk in, but she didn't drop the stick. It had been covered with blood—whose? hers? Michael's? who knew?—and her hand was
slicked with blood, too, but she would not let it go. The pink plus sign was crowded out by the crimson, but she would not release it. Even after they freed her from the vehicle, she held on to that test stick. As if it would save her from something.

Melinda didn't think she would ever forget that pink plus sign.

She didn't think she would ever eat hash browns and sausage and banana pancakes again.

She didn't think she would ever be able to pull into that parking lot another time.

But she was wrong. She was pulling in. She was getting out of her car. She was walking toward the divots. The grass was starting to regrow in them. Soon nature would do what the city had not done. Time would fill in the ruts, and there would be nothing left. No reminder of what had happened that day.

Except for the memories in her heart.