I Swear

26. KATHERINE

Aunt Liza sent me a text message as I was parking for my deposition at Daddy’s firm on Monday. It made me laugh because she’s the last woman in the world I expected would start texting.

In all caps, the message read: REMEMBER WHAT AUDREY SAID.

I smiled to myself and took a deep breath. I had been honest in front of the whole world. If I could do that, I could drop my poker face in front of the lawyers here today.

Out of habit, I pulled the rearview mirror over to check my makeup, then smiled at myself when I heard what I knew Aunt Liza would say.

You didn’t lose your pretty since last time you checked, sugar.

I fixed the mirror, grabbed my purse, and opened the car door.

• • •

Daddy walked me to the door of the conference room, then turned to me in the hall and dropped his chin until we were nose to nose. His eyes were warm and clear.

“You know I love you, no matter what.” His voice was a husky whisper, like a warm sweater on a cold night. I wrapped my arms around him, and he rested his chin on my head. “Nothing you could ever do would change that.”

“How can you be sure?” The voice that left my mouth was thin and reedy. I wasn’t a beauty queen under lights with perfect poise. I was a little girl shaking on the inside, hoping this big bear of a man would be able to prop me up.

“My sister Liza was right, sweetheart. You’re more than just brains and beauty. You have special ears that always hear what’s right.”

As he walked away, he turned and gave me a thumbs-up. “I’ll be in my office when you’re done.”

I stood there in the hall for a moment, listening to the ring of his shoes on the tile as he strode down to his office. Behind the door in front of me was the true test. All I had to do was listen for the truth, then say it out loud.

Time to drop my poker face and show my cards.

• • •

I walked into the room and shook hands all around the table.

I raised my hand and swore to Lauren Wolinsky and God that I would tell the whole truth.

Then I sat down, and Kellan Dirkson started in with the questions.

I told him the whole story. How I met Macie and how Macie pulled a fast one on Jillian and made me her running mate for student government. How she convinced me that all I needed to get into the pageant scene was the help of one woman, Denise Gatlin, and how her daughter was in desperate need of a friend.

I told Kellan Dirkson that Macie had grinned at me when she said this, like a possum eatin’ briars, and at that moment, that voice I hear when I listen on my insides was hollering that this Macie Merrick was trouble, but I didn’t listen. I wanted to be Miss Washington Teen, and I was going to meet this Leslie girl and become her friend if it killed me.

“But it didn’t kill me,” I said softly. “It killed Leslie.”

As I said this, something broke inside me, and I guess Patrick saw I was about to tip my hand, ’cause he jumped up and objected and sputtered and choked and tried to have all sorts of things stricken from the record. Kellan matched him yell for yell, and in all the fuss, I looked up and caught the eye of Lauren Wolinsky, who was sitting real still across that big, white lacquered conference table. As the men hollered like someone had set fire to their suit pants, she fixed me with the softest, gentlest, kindest smile—a real smile, not a pageant grin for the cameras, but a beautiful, genuine smile. It was an Aunt Liza smile, a smile that silently whispered, I can hear you, and you’re telling the truth.

Then Lauren Wolinsky stood up, smacked a legal pad against that big, shiny table with the force of an Old Testament prophet, and bellowed the words “Cool it” like she was a linebacker possessed by Satan himself. Both of those men stopped dead in their tracks and looked at her, slack-jawed and wide-eyed.

Once it was quiet, Ms. Wolinsky took her seat, flipped a golden curtain of hair over her shoulder, and crossed her legs. “Gentlemen, I think we should listen to what Katherine has to say. A girl committed suicide, and Katherine has been kind enough to come here and tell us the truth.”

Patrick was quiet. Kellan was quiet. Both of them sat.

“Now, then, Katherine, please continue,” said Lauren.

I nodded. I wiped my eyes, and then I looked at Lauren Wolinsky, and I explained how I had thought it would be hard to be friends with Leslie, but that it was easier than anything I had ever done. I’d sat next to her at the lab tables in chemistry and we became partners. The next step was studying at her house, and then letting it slide in the kitchen that I was the reigning Miss Atlanta Teen, and at that point, Denise Gatlin had tripped around the corner with her ever-present glass of pinot grigio and exclaimed, “Katherine! We have got a lot to talk about!”

And we did. Turns out Mrs. Gatlin was a board member for the Miss Washington Teen USA Pageant circuit. She knew every judge, coach, talent consultant, makeup artist, and hair stylist that mattered. She knew who would judge what when. She knew how to make sure her daughter’s best friend met them before the regional competitions.

Turns out she knew every bartender at the events too, and the night I won Miss Seattle Teen my junior year, she was supposed to welcome the audience with a word about the pageant organization before she introduced the host. Instead, she was backstage in my dressing room with a bottle of Veuve and the hunky bartender I’d tipped to take it to her.

“So you purposefully set her up?” Kellan asked. “Why? What happened?”

“I ran to get the stage manager and told him what was going on in my dressing room,” I said. “He got the chairman of the board. They both found her in there together.”

Kellan was silent for a moment. “Due respect, Katherine, but . . . who cares?”

“I don’t understand the question,” I said.

“So a board member for a pageant gets tanked and makes out with a bartender in a contestant’s dressing room. So what? Big deal. Who cares?”

I looked down at my hands, folded on the table in front of me. “Leslie,” I said quietly. “Leslie cared.”

“Yeah, but who would know about this?” Kellan was driving at something.

“Everyone,” I said. “Macie was backstage with me that night. She snapped a picture of Mrs. Gatlin and the bartender in my dressing room when the board chairman opened the door. By the time I got to school the next morning, she’d posted it all over Facebook. She uploaded the picture of Mrs. Gatlin hunkered down on this boy, with the words, ‘Now we know where Leslie learned to be a whore.’”

“What did Leslie do?” Kellan asked quietly.

“She actually tried to apologize to me,” I said. “She came up to me in the hall the next morning and said, ‘Congratulations, Katherine.’ Before I could turn around from my locker, Macie was flappin’ her mouth.”

“What did Macie say?”

I swallowed hard and glanced up at Lauren Wolinsky. She was looking directly into my eyes, and when I met her gaze, she nodded at me, just once.

“I don’t remember all of it,” I said. “But I remember how it ended. She just looked at Leslie and said, ‘Kill yourself.’”

“What happened?” asked Kellan.

“Leslie teared up,” I said.

“And what did you say?”

“Nothing,” I whispered.

“I thought you were friends with Leslie,” said Kellan. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I was afraid,” I said. “Macie’s voice was louder than the one inside me. The one I should have listened to instead.”

The room was quiet for a moment. Patrick looked at Kellan. “Are we done here?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Kellan. “I believe we are.”