The First Time (50 page)

Susan smiled, her daughter tickling her feet as she played happily with Susan’s bare toes, and changed the subject, preferring to talk about her courses at the university. They were more tangible than dreams, and Susan was nothing if not practical. She’d quit school when she got married to help put her husband through medical school. Only now that his practice was established and going strong had she decided to return to school to finish her degree. Her husband was very supportive of her decision, she told the women, and her mother was helping out by looking after Ariel during the day.

“You’re lucky,” Chris told her. “My mother lives in California.”

“My mother died just after Tracey was born,” Barbara said, eyes instantly filling with tears.

“I haven’t seen my mother since I was four years old,” Vicki announced. “She ran off with my father’s business partner. Haven’t heard from the bitch since.”

And then the room fell silent, as was so often the case after one of Vicki’s calculated pronouncements.

Susan glanced at her watch. The others followed suit. Someone mentioned the lateness of the hour, that they should probably be getting home. We
decided on a group picture to commemorate the afternoon, and together we managed to prop the camera on top of a stack of books at the far end of the room and arrange ourselves and our daughters so that we all fit inside the camera’s scope.

So there we are, ladies and gentlemen.

In one corner, Susan, wearing blue jeans and a sloppy, loose-fitting shirt, balancing daughter Ariel on her lap, the child’s wiry little body in marked contrast to her mother’s quiet bulk.

In the other corner, Vicki, wearing white shorts and a polka-dot halter top, trying to extricate daughter Kirsten’s arms from around her neck, small eyes mischievously ablaze as she mouths a silent obscenity directly into the lens of the camera.

In between, Barbara and Chris, Chris wearing white pants and a red-and-white-striped T-shirt, straining to prevent her daughter, Montana, from abandoning her yet again, while Tracey sits obediently on her mother’s skirted lap, Barbara manipulating Tracey’s hand up and down, as both mother and daughter wave as one.

The Grand Dames.

Friends for life.

Of course, one of us turned out not to be a friend at all, but we didn’t know it then.

Nor could any of us have predicted that twenty-three years later, two of the women would be dead, one murdered in the crudest of fashions.

Which, of course, leaves me.

I press another button, listen as the tape rewinds, shift expectantly on my chair, waiting for the film to
start afresh. Perhaps, I think, as the women suddenly reappear, their babies in their laps, their futures in their faces, this will be the time it all makes sense. I will find the justice I seek, the peace I desire, the resolution I need.

I hear the women’s laughter. The story begins.