Bryte nodded. “I can understand that. But it sucks.”
He laughed, more out of relief than humor. “That sums it up quite nicely,” he said. He looked over at Jencey, who was, it was obvious, trying to get away from the neighbor. “Just don’t let on that I told you, OK?”
She made the little sign she and Jencey used to use, swearing their silence to each other. They used to keep each other’s secrets. Now they kept secrets from each other. Jencey hadn’t told her about this. Jencey had told Everett and not her why she was even back. She drew two fingers across her lips, zipping them shut. “Mum’s the word,” she said.
JENCEY
Jencey had finally managed to escape the long-winded neighbor, walking quickly away as if the woman might whip out a lasso and yank her back like a cartoon character. She caught Lance’s eye, pretended to wrap her hands around her own neck and choke herself. He laughed. As she made her way back over to him, she scanned the pool deck like she always did, accounting for four children instead of two.
She spotted a woman hugging Alec on the other side of the pool, saw the familiar way her whole body inclined toward his, the possessiveness that hung in the air between them. This one’s mine, the woman’s body said. When the woman looked up and Jencey saw her profile, she recognized the face from the photos in Lance’s house. Debra. The name bloomed inside her like a poisonous plant, a Venus flytrap opening its leaves, inviting the unsuspecting to fall inside and be consumed.
She’d known this was coming, yet she’d hoped it wouldn’t happen, that she and Lance and the rest of them could somehow stay cocooned inside this summer forever. But what had they talked about just today? Summer was ending. The back-to-school commercials were coming on, the spiral notebooks and packages of paper crowding the endcaps in every store. She felt the mounting pressure to make a decision—stay or go, enroll the girls in the local school or find somewhere else to land. With each day that ebbed away, she was that much closer to having to pull the trigger. Watching Debra hug her son, she felt the gun go off inside her, the ricochet resounding in her heart as the trigger got pulled for her.
Lance’s eyebrows knitted together as she detoured away from him, her eyes seeking out Bryte instead, who was helping Christopher into the pool. She didn’t look back at Lance, didn’t want to see him see his wife for the first time in months. She beelined over to Bryte, feeling like the schoolgirl she once was, wanting to talk to her best friend about a crisis. She and Bryte had struggled to connect this summer. It was as if each wanted to say more than they could to the other. As if, once they started talking, they would say too much. So they said very little. Jencey felt regret for not opening up to her friend, for withholding herself. And yet she sensed Bryte had done the same.
She plopped down on the side of the pool just like she’d done that first time they’d talked at the beginning of the summer. Then she’d marveled over the changes in Bryte—the lovely, capable woman she’d blossomed into. She’d envied her, too: the house, the husband, the child, the contentment. But Jencey had felt an increasing uncertainty bubbling under the surface, recognized the discontent that had crept in over the course of the summer. Jencey didn’t know what had changed, and she didn’t feel she could ask. She sensed she was the last person Bryte would discuss it with, yet she longed to be that person in her friend’s life. Mostly because she needed Bryte to be that person in hers. She wondered if they could somehow make their way back, and figured that she could be the one to start carving a path in that direction. Maybe the one who did the leaving had to be the one to make the way back.
“So,” she said, getting Bryte’s attention, “looks like Lance’s wife just showed up.” She saw the shock register on Bryte’s face and would have enjoyed it if not for the situation. “You should see the look on your face,” she said, laughing a little in spite of herself. Bryte scanned the pool until she found the mother-and-child reunion taking place.
She turned back to look at Jencey. “Why aren’t you over with Lance, staking your claim?” she asked, a sense of urgency in her voice. She made a little shooing motion in Lance’s direction.
Jencey allowed a quick glance in Lance’s direction, saw that his eyes had now found what she’d already seen. She measured her words, stating them carefully, emotion free. “Because I don’t have a claim.”
She hoped she sounded like she meant it. She wanted to mean it. She tried not to think of the summer they’d had, the unexpected joy she’d found with him, the nights spent in his arms. He’d brought something back to her, carried it in his hands like a bunch of flowers and laid it at her feet. The word was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t say it, not even to herself. One night he’d tried to say it, but she’d laid her finger on his lips. “No,” she’d instructed. “Let’s not do that to each other.”
“Why?” he’d asked, a hurt look on his face.
She hadn’t been able to answer him. “Just . . . let’s not,” was all she said. As she watched Debra walk with Alec toward Lance, she felt all the words she hadn’t said come to her.
“It’s not too late,” Bryte said, sounding exactly like the Bryte she remembered.
“It might need to be,” she responded, forcing herself to look away from the sight of Lance standing to greet the woman who’d been in their midst all summer, a ghost that had haunted them as surely as if she’d dragged chains around in his attic.
Bryte continued to watch the scene. “Is he hugging her?” Jencey asked, then quickly said, “No, don’t tell me.”
Bryte glanced at Christopher, who was perfectly safe in the water with floaties on his arms, then back at Jencey. “He didn’t hug her,” she said. She raised her eyebrows. “Because he wants to be with you.”
“I’m not going to break up a family if there’s still a chance for them.” She looked at Bryte, willing her to understand. She wouldn’t wish what she’d been through on anyone.
Bryte met her eyes. “I know you wouldn’t,” she said. “You’re a good person.”
Jencey smiled. “So are you.”
Bryte rolled her eyes. “I don’t know about that.”
“Are you kidding?” Jencey gasped. “You’re like the best person I know.”
“Well, you don’t know everything,” Bryte responded.
Jencey heard what her friend wasn’t saying. She felt the years and distance between them finally begin to erode. She had no right to know Bryte’s secrets. And yet, sitting there with her, talking like old times, it was possible that they could somehow get back to a place where she did.
Her eyes flickered over to Lance and Debra, chatting politely. She wanted him to walk away, or her to leave in a huff. She wanted him to stride over and sweep her into his embrace, give her a kiss like a returning soldier. And yet, Jencey understood, there were the things she wished were true, and there was what was actually true. She was learning that there was usually a great distance between the two.
LANCE