The Friendship Pact

But Bailey and Danny were still resisting each other, and I couldn’t go without Bailey. We were family. And that was that.

“But you like Jake,” I said now as Bailey, obviously restless, turned her head, glancing toward the closet. “Really like him,” I added, in case she thought this was one of those times I’d let her get by with less than the complete and painfully open truth.

Her head swung back toward me, and she stared silently. An acknowledgment that I was right. I could hear her and your point is? as clearly as if she’d said the words aloud.

“He likes you, too, Bail.” Most guys had the hots for my best friend. All of them wanted to have sex with her. They were attracted to the body; they just shied away from the person. But Jake...he saw beyond Bailey’s tough exterior to the sensitive, lonely and totally compassionate heart that beautiful, apparently cold exterior protected.

I wasn’t sure what it meant that Danny’s best friend understood Bailey way better than Danny did.

“I’m not going to date him.” Bailey’s face had stiffened, her voice adamant. “He’s over an hour away, and you saw how well all those girls at Penn State knew him when we were there last month.”

The three of us, Danny, Bailey and I, had gone home for the weekend and to be on Jake’s team at his frat’s annual fall kickoff.

“I didn’t notice Jake paying attention to anyone but you.” The guy was besotted with Bailey—not that he didn’t talk to other girls. He was twenty. Gorgeous. And Bailey wouldn’t grab him up.

“I’m not getting involved with anyone. I’m going to law school,” Bailey said, pulling a pair of blue jeans off the hanger and putting them on. It was the pair she’d said would go with the sweater because of the black stitching on the pockets. The pair that she always wore with the wedges I’d mentioned.

“But if I did want to date someone, it wouldn’t be a guy who’s an hour away and has girls falling all over him. Might as well put a Be Unfaithful to Me sticker on my forehead.”

She was dressing up for him, though. When Bailey grabbed the sweater out of my hand, I wisely kept my mouth shut.

* * *

June 2003

Bailey pasted on her best happy smile and started down the aisle, both hands clutching the plastic bouquet holder bearing red, white and yellow roses to match the gold gown she and Koralynn had chosen for the maid of honor. It was as close in style to Koralynn’s white gown as they could get and Bailey figured it was as close as she was ever going to get to a wedding gown of her own.

The roses’ scent wafted up, reminding her of the summer Koralynn and her parents, Mama Di and Papa Bill, had taken her with them on vacation to Hilton Head. The resort grounds had been full of roses.

Step. Pause. Step.

Debby Boone’s “You Light Up My Life” played through the sound system, resounding in the rose-decorated church as Bailey walked in slow, rehearsed steps toward the white-robed minister standing just in front of the altar. All eyes were on her. She could feel them.

Her cheeks hurt from the effort it was costing her to look so happy.

It wasn’t that she was unhappy. She was excited for Koralynn because Danny was crazy about her.

Step. Pause. Step.

He was standing up there to the left of the preacher, about as handsome as a guy could be with his muscled shoulders and football receiver long legs, wearing the black tuxedo she and Koralynn had picked out for him. His eyes turned her way as he gave her a distant—though she knew sincere—smile before his gaze moved past her. He looked like he was almost shaking with nervous anticipation as he waited for his bride to appear.

Bailey wasn’t sure why she and Danny had never been able to bond. Was it him? Her?

Lord knew she’d tried to be open with him. For Koralynn’s sake. Bailey would do anything for her best friend and she knew that her lack of closeness with Danny bothered Koralynn.

“And...fill...my...nights...with...”

Step. Pause. Step. She didn’t miss a beat. Koralynn and Danny had been sleeping together since the night of senior prom when Bailey, as class president, had crowned them king and queen. For a second, Bailey’s admittedly frozen heart warmed as she thought of her friend’s joy anytime Danny was around.

Step. Pause. Step.

Bailey’s gaze traveled from Danny to the man standing beside him, a couple of inches taller, a little lankier, but missing nothing in the looks department. Jake’s hair was a bit shorter, a bit more styled, than Danny’s. His eyes, though, were a lot more mysterious—probably hiding the jokes he was telling himself about everyone there.

Jake Murphy, Danny’s best friend.

He stared at her, his face expressionless.

They’d done it, too. Had sex. That same night. It hurt. He’d wanted to try again. She hadn’t. Until that damned Homecoming weekend her junior year at Wesley...

Step. Pause. St—

Passing the fourth pew on the bride’s side, Bailey saw her mother. Alone.

Stumble.

Her mother had married again after Stan. The guy from her firm, the one she’d had the affair with. But after the first year, he’d become a judge and she’d spent more time going it alone than with her husband. And the more she was alone, the more she drank.

It was always like that. Things started out great.

Step. Pause. Step.

Then after the wedding, that aura faded into familiarity. And bills. Responsibility and compromise. Wants denied. Arguments. Morning breath and flu. And then one day husband and wife couldn’t stand each other.

She reached the first pew. Mama Di’s smile was blissful—and she was looking right at Bailey. Her gaze told Bailey that Mama Di thought she was beautiful. Inside and out. It told her she was loved as only a mother could love a child.

Bailey smiled. She hated the trembling in her lower lip.

Step. Pause. Step.

And turn.

The “Wedding March” began.

Chapter Three

I couldn’t believe it! It was finally happening! In a few short minutes I was going to be Koralynn Brown. Mrs. Danny Brown. I supposed I should be nervous. Mom told me I might be. That I could get scared and start to worry about all the changes that were happening so quickly. College graduation. Bailey going to law school. My first teaching job. And now, marrying Danny and moving into our own place.

But I wasn’t nervous at all—unless you counted the irrational fear that the world would end before I could make it down the aisle. Or there’d be a fire. Or one of us would get deathly sick or in a car accident or...

“You ready, baby?”

Daddy’s voice had an unfamiliar quiver and he squeezed my hand. I glanced up at him and for a second there, I did panic. I was getting older. Which meant Daddy was, too. And Mom.

“I’m just getting married, Daddy,” I whispered, alone with him in the vestibule at the back of the church. The “Wedding March” was supposed to play one stanza before we started up the aisle, to give everyone a chance to stand before I appeared.

We’d been talking about the ceremony for months. And had rehearsed the whole thing the night before.

“It’s not like I’m leaving town, or anything,” I said, still looking up at him. “And it’s not like I’ve never lived away from home. My college dorm was way further than Danny’s and my house is.”

He smiled. Nodded. Patted my hand.

And had tears in his eyes.

I got all choked up, too.

The second stanza started.

“I love you, Koralynn Mitchell,” Daddy said, taking the first step forward. “You might be exchanging my name for his, but you’ll always be my baby girl.”

“You love Danny, “ I reminded him, on the next step. But I think I was asking for confirmation, too.

“’Course I do, baby,” Daddy said. “I’m just being a silly old man, having trouble giving up my girl.” We were at the door to the sanctuary.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” I told him, clutching his elbow for all I was worth. Mom had worried that I might stumble in my shoes. I hardly even knew I was wearing the four-inch spike heels. I’d taken years of ballet, so walking on the balls of my feet came naturally.

“I’m proud of you, Koralynn,” Daddy leaned over to say as we walked through the door and the music swelled. “You’ve made my life perfect...”

The way I figured it, Mom and Daddy had given me a perfect life. So perfect that sometimes I worried that something bad would happen to spoil it all. Obviously I was prone to irrational worries...

I smiled as Daddy and I started up the long aisle, excited and a bit uneasy, too, as I met the eyes of so many people I’d known my whole life. Everyone I loved was in that room. Would we ever be together like this again?

For a happy occasion?

My gaze sought Bailey’s. She was up there waiting for me. Jake was up there, too. Waiting for Bailey, or at least that was my theory. And I hoped my best friend would find the strength to open her heart to him before he moved on.

“You made a good choice,” Daddy leaned over to tell me.

I nodded. Smiled. And then I saw Danny. We’d talked about whether his tux should be brown or black. His shirt gold or rose colored. I forgot all of it as I looked him right in the eye and knew that my life was just beginning.

I wasn’t marrying this man because my parents liked him. Or because, as Bailey said, he was crazy about me. Plain and simple, I was marrying him because I couldn’t imagine life without him.

October 2008

Hands trembling, I sat down on the cold hard chair next to my best friend, took her into my arms and held on.

“Oh, my God, Kor. Oh, my God.” Bailey’s voice was muffled against my neck.

“I’m right here, sweetie. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Bailey’s older brother, Brian, accompanied by his state-supported part-time caregiver, was on a flight up from Florida, but wasn’t due for another couple of hours. Which left Bailey and me alone in the ICU family waiting room.

“Oh, God, Kor, I didn’t...I had no idea....”

Nestling my face against her hair, I spoke just above her ear. “There’s no way you could have known,” I said. Bailey’s mother’s life had been like a roller coaster since before Bailey was born. Who could have predicted that this latest divorce would cause her to...

“He was a judge,” Bailey said. “How could I possibly think she’d win against a judge?”

“You trusted the justice system,” I told the woman who was currently ranked at the top of her class in her last year of law school.

“This is the man who used his power to get out of paying every single contractor they’d hired to remodel their house. Threatening those companies, saying he’d cause difficulties from the registrar of contractors, was wrong. And that’s only the beginning of his duplicity,” Bailey said. “But he wins.”

She sat, seemingly staring at nothing, her expression more vacant than I’d ever seen it. Worse even than the night she’d told me about Stan, the pedophile asshole who should be in prison for what he’d done to her.

I thought, for the hundredth time, that I shouldn’t have promised Bailey I’d keep her secret. I should have told Mom. Should have known that Bailey would need counseling, at the very least. Instead, I’d helped her lock herself deep inside and now, all these years later, I feared she’d never find her way out again.

“He had her arrested for driving her own car,” she reminded me.

“It was in his name.”

“But she’d had exclusive use of it since they’d purchased it,” she said. “And he’d never told her she couldn’t continue to drive it after they separated. Sending his deputy after her was clearly a misuse of power.”

Which didn’t matter at the moment. What mattered was that Bailey’s mother was on life support, lying in a hospital bed a few doors away, because she’d attempted suicide earlier that evening.

“He’s going to pay for what he did.” I offered her what I could.

“He’s a judge, Kor,” she said again. “He doesn’t just know how to work the system. He is the system. And he’s connected to everyone else who’s part of it, too.” Bailey’s voice sounded dead. But at least she was talking.

“By law he’s held to a higher standard, not a lower one,” I said.

Bailey sat up, the expression in her eyes bleak. “And who’s going to prosecute him? An attorney who’ll have to appear before him? An attorney whose paying clients will be facing him at some point in the future? Because it’s damn sure that my mother, a five-time-divorced paralegal who has a history of problems with alcohol abuse and has had numerous affairs, including one with this very same judge, hasn’t got a chance.”

“It was the right thing to do, to report his misuse of power. To report the contracting debacle.” I clung to the one time Bailey’s mother had had enough backbone to stand up for herself.

Because Bailey had stood behind her and guided her all the way, and I wasn’t going to have my friend beating herself up about it.

I clung to what I knew was right. What Bailey believed was right. And I clung to my friend, giving her every ounce of strength I had.

“Anyway, when I said the judge was going to pay, I wasn’t talking about paying in a court of law,” I added softly as the silence ticked slowly by. “The one thing he’ll never be able to escape is his own karma. Somehow or other, he’ll pay for this....”

An hour passed with no sight of the doctor. No further word. We were waiting for them to stabilize her so we could see her. Bailey and I walked down the hall for cups of weak, machine-dispensed coffee. At half past midnight, we were the only nonemployee, nonpatient people in the waiting room.

“Danny probably wants you home.” Bailey’s voice sounded loud in the corridor as we walked back to our seats for the umpteenth time.

Hard to believe I’d been married for over five years. Seemed like five weeks. And forever, too. Danny was my life. Danny and Bailey.

“He wants me right where I am,” I told her. He’d offered to come to the hospital with me, but I knew 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 seeing Kora, Bailey stood next to Jake at the portable bar set up by the pool. Mama Di and Papa Bill had chosen a lovely resort for the festivities. They’d invited her father, who’d sent a card, a check and some flowers, and Brian, who hadn’t been well enough to make the trip. But she had Kora.

She kept her back to the room, but she could still feel those eyes on her. Boring into her.

He reminded her of Stan. And for a second there, out of the blue, she remembered the roughness of Stan’s fingers in her pants. It wasn’t the first time she’d remembered. Wasn’t even the hundredth. She pushed the memory away with the familiarity of long practice.

Weiner didn’t give a shit about her. It was all about appearances—his acceptance by his deceased ex-wife’s only daughter, a young lawyer who couldn’t afford him as an enemy. Their small world would have talked if he hadn’t shown up. And although he hadn’t been invited—and would’ve known why—he would also have known that she’d never make a scene. Not here.

Just as Stan had known she’d never tell...

Bailey listened as Jake ordered her wine and a scotch sour for himself.

In high school, he’d been a beer drinker. In college, when the four of them had met either at Penn State or at Wesley, it had been Jäger bombs. Not until Koralynn’s wedding had she seen him drink scotch sours.

The judge, who’d financed his stepdaughter’s first year of law school, was getting closer. She could hear his booming voice.

Jake handed her a glass of wine and held up his highball. “Here’s to you. I’m proud of you, Bail.” His grin did that crazy thing to her, and for a second she was willing to lose herself in sensation. To lose thoughts of Stan to something healthier.

Until she heard the voice again. The fake, professional tone. With almost no resemblance to the biting demands it had issued at home.

“You feel like a breath of air?” she asked, leaving the bar and making a beeline for the pool outside. A hundred or more strings of little white lights gave the outdoor area a festive glow.

But before she made it to her goal, Bailey was stopped by a close friend of Mama Di and Papa Bill’s. A woman she’d known most of her life.

And then there was a couple from the church she’d attended when she spent the weekends at the Mitchells’. Jake joined in the conversations and in some private ones of his own. A steady presence by her side. She wondered if he’d recognized Weiner. If he was purposely keeping himself between her and the older man.

It wouldn’t work for long. She knew the man. He got what he wanted. Always.

“He’s gone....” Koralynn’s whisper right behind her changed Bailey’s world yet again.

Bailey turned, that irritating lump in throat, but her friend was no longer there. A couple of seconds later, she caught a glimpse of Koralynn’s retreating back just as she and Danny greeted another one of their many guests.

As if on cue, Koralynn turned around and gave her a knowing look, and Bailey sent her a silent thank-you. Koralynn’s smile brought peace back to Bailey’s evening and she relaxed as she sipped her wine, hardly daring to believe that she’d really graduated from law school.

That all these people were there just for her.

When the Mitchells had purposely and deliberately failed to invite the judge, the only member of the currently seated Pittsburgh Superior Court bench not to receive an invitation, Mama Di and Koralynn and Bailey had suspected he’d show up anyway—to save face among his peers before whom he’d played the grieving widower. Bailey had assured them it would be fine if he did. She was going to have to face him in court eventually.