It’s possible I’d gone a little too long without sleep.
We went upstairs to the homicide unit, where D.D. turned on her computer and I stopped breathing for the second time that day.
RANDI’S PICTURE CAME UP FIRST. Her beautiful wheat blond hair blown out straight, one side tucked behind her right ear, long bangs swinging gracefully down the other side, drawing attention to huge, doe brown eyes. She was sitting next to a planter of pink petunias, maybe on her front porch in Providence, because I didn’t recognize the backdrop. But I felt the weight of her large, soft smile. The familiar gesture of her fingertips, brushing across the strand of pearls above the neckline of a dove gray cashmere sweater.
Her grandmother’s pearls, gifted to her on her sixteenth birthday by her parents. Jackie and I had oohed and ahhed over them. We weren’t pearl people, but we understood how much Randi loved them. We knew that she’d wear them every day, whether entertaining or gardening or grocery shopping, and look perfect doing so. And if Jackie was jealous her best friend had received such an extravagant necklace, she didn’t show it. And if I was jealous my best friend had inherited a family piece from a grandmother who’d known and loved her, I didn’t show it. We were happy she was happy.
Randi had glowed that day. She’d opened that box, and her normally quiet face lit up until she appeared even more lustrous than the pearls.
I couldn’t help it. I reached out. Touched the image on the flat monitor, as if I could still feel the warmth of my friend’s skin, feel the indent of her dimple, hear her call my name.
Charlie, Charlie, Charlie! Look at this! Can you believe it? My grandmother’s pearls. Oh, Charlie. Aren’t they beautiful?
The words came out before I could stop them. “I failed her.”
D. D. Warren was watching me. Looking and seeing. “Why do you say that?”
“I was the glue. That was my job. Jackie organized us, Randi energized us, and I…I held us together. Through petty fights and minor squabbles and all the ways three girls can become two against one. We were better together. I appreciated that. So it was my job to keep us on track, reminding us even when it was difficult that three was better than two which was better than one. Except then we turned eighteen and drifted apart.”
“Why?” D.D. asked the question flatly. As if she already understood the answer mattered, was the real reason I now couldn’t let my friends go.
I took my eyes off my friend’s picture. I studied the detective and I started to understand the real meaning of being tough. The trait shared by Detective Warren and my firearms instructor J.T. and his wife, Tess.
They looked at life without blinders. They had the confidence to not dodge the blow, but stand there and take the hit.
“I was embarrassed,” I told the detective quietly. “I let us fall apart, because I didn’t just love Jackie and Randi, I knew that I loved them more than they loved me. So I never told them about my mother. If I had, then maybe Randi would’ve told us about her abusive husband. And Jackie and I would’ve helped her and we would’ve stood together, instead of scattering and dying apart. But I couldn’t tell them about my mom. I loved them so much, I couldn’t risk them thinking less of me.”
Detective Warren leaned forward, peered at me intently. “What should you have told them about your mother, Charlene?”