Amanda squinted at the menu as if they didn’t order the same exact thing every time they stopped here after school. My treat, she kept repeating, as though Madison could no longer afford to buy her own coffee. She knew this wasn’t what Amanda meant, but still. It was insulting that her best friend, after months of seeming like she’d wanted slowly to extract herself from Madison’s clutches so that she’d be gone before Madison noticed, thought that a free cup of coffee would be an enticing lure. That Madison would so easily be tricked into baring her soul over Frappuccinos. When she knew that all Amanda really cared about was cementing her own role in this drama, establishing herself as the keeper of the information. Because at the moment, like it or not, Madison had information that Amanda didn’t.
They drifted over to the counter to wait for their frothy iced drinks—no one, in the end, had been bold enough to order hot chocolate. When they were finally seated at a small, grimy table, Madison felt a pang for her friend’s open, unguarded expression, for the wholly unnatural cheer with which Amanda seemed to feel it was best to treat the whole situation.
“I just feel like we haven’t gotten much time to talk,” Amanda said. “Not for, like, two weeks. And I do want to be here for you. And I actually went into the city last Friday, and—”
“That’s really sweet of you,” Madison interrupted, “but I don’t really feel like I need someone to, you know, ‘be there’ for me right now. Things are fine.”
“Really? How’s Isabel?”
“She’s fine. You know her.”
“And how are the boys?”
“They’re fine, Amanda. They’re not worried. Things can be stressful for my father at work without it being this tragic drama everyone seems to want it to be.”
“Good,” Amanda said. “I actually have something I want to talk to you about. And I’m so glad everyone’s doing well. I just don’t want the other things going on to get in the way of us, you know—”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Mad,” Amanda began. “Whatever else happens, I’m here. You know that, right?”
“Oh, of course. You’re the only one I can trust, right? You and”—and here she couldn’t deny it, even to herself, it was pleasant knowing what was about to come out of her mouth—“you and your parents, right? The Levins family.”
Amanda was staring down at the table, folding her straw wrapper into smaller and smaller rectangles. “Okay, just, logically. When has my father ever consulted me about one of his columns?”
“Am I supposed to be grateful that you didn’t specifically request that your father go after my family for no reason?”
“Madison—I mean, yes, my father has his flaws, you know that I’m well aware of them, but at least—”
“But at least his flaws only hurt you? Right?”
Amanda looked up, finally, and fixed her eyes on Madison’s face.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“To you? To you?”
“Yeah, Madison, I am experiencing you being a cold bitch to me right now as something that’s happening to me. Is that allowed?”
Madison laughed.
“Well,” she said. “None of it’s really surprising. Like father, like daughter.”
Amanda gazed up at her, her lips parted. This was not, Madison realized, the conversation her friend had expected.
Madison felt sympathy for the hurt she was causing, but no real regret. One thing her father’s world had taught her was this. If there was some future point at which people might need you, might need even just a moment of your attention, your gaze, then you could offend them with impunity. The wounds would heal, however superficially. There was a reason, beyond just gruff, performed affection, that his lieutenants called him Silverback, after all.
“It’s not my fault,” Amanda said.
“It’s funny how much everyone’s loving saying that,” Madison returned. “There’s only one person at fault, right?”
Amanda was actually sputtering now.
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Probably nothing. But is it so impossible for you to understand the fact that I, just. You are literally the last person I want to talk to about this. I’m sorry. But this is how I feel.”
What Madison had learned, in the space of three short weeks, was that there were as many strains of sympathy as there were of the more celebrated emotions, love or hatred or longing. Everyone’s sympathy hit her in a different spot, from a different direction, some strains closer to condescending pity and others smelling like selfish fear. When you became untouchable, you were radioactive. Your presence called up the memories of ways they’d wronged you in the past, or the ways you might have wronged them, the recalled injustices transmitted to them as if through your skin. She knew Amanda would be so much less showy now with her support if it hadn’t been months, really, since they’d been close, comfortable with each other.
Amanda began vigorously to slide her green straw into and out of its slot in the plastic cup, producing a squeak that scratched the back of Madison’s neck.
“You didn’t seem all that worried about being there for me over the summer,” Madison said. “Now that my problems are suddenly famous, you want to be best friends again? You want to know all my secrets?”
“I don’t believe that’s actually what you think of me. Not really.”
“You can believe whatever you want, Amanda.”
Then they both stopped talking for a while.
“You know you can call me at any time,” Amanda said eventually. “My house is always open to you. Three o’clock in the morning or not.”
“Amanda,” Madison said, thinking of the way her mother would admonish her when she reached for a second éclair from the Payard box Mina Dawes had brought back from the city, the perfect Isabel blend of disinterest and authority, “I can’t go over there right now. I need to be with my family, and your father doesn’t approve of us. We’re evil, right? We’re oblivious?”
Amanda stood, shouldered her bag, and left her Frappuccino sitting on the table. She seemed to be weighing some invisible options before she finally spoke again.
“Why don’t you just ask your father,” she said, finally, with such steel in her voice that Madison couldn’t help but be impressed. “If he’s such a martyr, if it’s so unfair that everyone’s blaming him, why don’t you just ask him to explain?”
Madison kept her gaze neutral, careful not to glare.
“Oh,” Amanda said, “let me guess. He still hasn’t come home. He still hasn’t even thought to check in with his children.”
“No, not everyone can be as hands on as your father, Amanda.”
“Fine. So why don’t you go find him? You’re not kept on lockdown, Mad. Why don’t you take the train in and ask him?”
“Amanda,” Madison said, digging her fingernails into the skin of her upper thigh, ready to tear right through her jeans, “do you think that if I went to go talk to my father, it would be because of your advice? Do you think I need your advice?”
“Nope,” Amanda said, “wrong. It’s because you’re afraid of what you’ll find. So if I were you, I’d wait, Madison. I’d wait before I started calling everyone else a coward.”
MADISON REMAINED AT THE TABLE after Amanda left; she wasn’t sure how conspicuous she’d become to the other Starbucks patrons. Surely if she lifted her head, if she looked away from her fingernails and her drink, she’d see the telltale signs. The nervous eyes hastily averted, the mothers’ hands firm on the backs of necks to make sure no one turned around, craned to get a better look. She’d been that child. It had been her neck, Isabel’s hand.
And then he slid into the chair across from her.
“Hey,” Chip said. He twirled a set of keys on his left index finger. She looked at his finger, watched the tendons in his hand jump each time the keys whirled through the air.