I pull up to my high-rise and toss my keys to the valet, ignoring his confusion. I run toward the elevators and take the longest ride of my life. I feel like I’m running toward my younger self, trying to save her. But I worry that I’m too late to help Audrey too. I throw open the front door of my apartment and Audrey looks up, her eyes swollen from crying, looking like a shell of the girl she was just a few hours earlier. I run toward her and she throws her arms around me and weeps.
Rachel looks at me, her eyes rimmed with red. I can tell she’s trying to hold it together now, the tears daring to leap over her eyelashes. Is she hurt because Audrey went to my house instead of her own? “She called me just a little while ago. I picked her up. She wasn’t far from where the formal took place. At a hotel . . .” Her voice trails off.
“Audrey, what happened?” I brace myself. Please tell me he didn’t strip her of who she is. That he didn’t take everything from her. Mark’s face is clear in my mind and I’m shocked by how much detail I can remember about that night. The feel of his stubble on my cheek, the smell of his cheap cologne. The taste of the whiskey on his breath. Now I hold my own breath and wait for her to answer.
CHAPTER 30
* * *
rachel
Audrey grips the edge of the sofa, her body trembling. I put my hand over hers, shocked by how cold it still feels. Slumped down in the sofa, wearing one of Casey’s oversized sorority sweatshirts from college, her face stripped of the heavy makeup she’d been wearing, she looks like my little girl again. My eye strays to the backless dress heaped in a pile in the corner where I threw it earlier. I would’ve burned it if I could.
After Audrey’s frantic call earlier, I’d rushed to the hotel in Beverly Hills, pulling up to find a disheveled Audrey crying on a bench next to the valet stand. We rode in silence all the way to Casey’s apartment. She’d told me she wasn’t ready to talk about it and I’d fought my motherly instincts to push her. As soon as the front door closed behind us, she’d become hysterical and cried for me to find her something—anything else—to put on. That she hated the stupid dress. I’d obeyed, gritting my teeth, trying hard not to burst into tears, helping her out of the dress and throwing it over my shoulder while Audrey scrubbed the makeup off her face, her tears and the water mixing together.
I kneel down in front of her now and stroke her cheek, trying to wipe the tears away faster than they fall. I notice the Jimmy Choos by the front door and I’m flooded with so many feelings of regret. What had I been thinking all these weeks? I cringe, remembering how I missed the shopping trip to pick out the dress; maybe if I had been there this wouldn’t have happened. I never should have let that all fall on Casey.
I meet Casey’s eyes and know she’s thinking about what happened to her on her prom night, a night we haven’t spoken about since her mom took her to the clinic a few weeks later. Watching Casey now, as she sits beside Audrey on the couch consoling her, her eyes hollow, in a pair of John’s sweatpants, I wish I’d consoled her when she needed me, that I’d been more understanding of what she’d gone through. Instead, I was furious with her and didn’t speak to her for weeks. I said awful things about people who terminated their pregnancies. At the time, I thought I was being a good friend, ignoring the terrified look in her eyes as I stood over her slumped silhouette and gave her the speech I had memorized on the way over about why adoption was the answer. And when she confessed she was going to terminate her pregnancy anyway, I refused to go with her, telling her I couldn’t support her decision. I’ve wondered countless times if Casey’s life would have turned out differently had her best friend comforted rather than chastised her. If only I could’ve known then that you don’t have to agree with your friends’ choices to still be there for them.
The fact that she chose to forgive me at all still amazes me. I think she was just ready to pretend the whole thing had never happened and forgiving me was the fastest way to do that. She let me off the hook too easily and I selfishly took the cowardly way out, also pretending as if the whole thing had never happened. I start to cry harder thinking of how I had abandoned her then and how I’d abandoned my own daughter all these years later. How could I still be making the same mistakes?
“I’m just stupid. So stupid.” Audrey pulls back from Casey’s grip, tears still spilling down her face. “I know I should’ve called you first, Mom, but I, I don’t know, I thought you’d be mad that I went to the hotel with him.”
I start to tell her I wouldn’t have been mad, but remember I’m not her mom right now, Casey is. But then I wonder, is she right? Would the old me have been fixated on the fact that she disobeyed me? I shudder, knowing the answer.