“So that’s it, right? We haven’t had a real conversation since Ginny . . . since Ginny . . .” She couldn’t get the words out. She stopped and started again. “I haven’t spoken to you for more than thirty seconds since Ginny died, and this is how it’s going to be,” said Betsy, refusing to stop until they were outside the door and she could enjoy watching Caroline freeze some more. She’d thought of Caroline so many times when she was back at home in Venice with her mom, and in the early months, even years, in New York, when she felt so alone and nearly ached for Ginny.
“Oh, are you talking about Ginny’s funeral? When you hid in the back like a big, fat baby? Please spare me your sanctimonious bullshit, Betsy. Our best friend died and you stood in the back of Nana Jean’s dining room propped against the wall like you were the corpse. And then you took off,” Caroline said. “You just left town! Totally bailed. You couldn’t be bothered with the sun-dried idiots back home anymore, right?” said Caroline, eyes flashing, more the Caroline she knew in that moment than at any other during the night. Betsy searched those eyes for recognition, for softness, but they were hard and glassy and cold and filled with years of spite.
“I had to! I had to get out of Gainesville, Caroline. I couldn’t deal,” she said, fighting her tears. Caroline was not going to see her cry. “Ginny was gone and I didn’t know how I was going to go on.”
For a split second, Caroline’s body looked like it was starting to relax with forgiveness, with understanding. Then her shoulders crept closer to her ears and she steeled herself against the wind.
“It’s all about you, right? Ginny’s fucking murder didn’t affect me at all, did it? I was the one who found her body. You didn’t stop to think that you weren’t the only one in pain, did you? You don’t even realize what a joke you are. You and Gavin playing house, and now you’re married? You married the guy I bought pot from in college. Well played, Elizabeth. Even your name is a joke.”
“Oh, I’m the joke? It’s twenty degrees. You’re wearing a fourteen-inch dress, coked out of your head with a fat, old, beet-faced man you don’t even know,” said Betsy, tears falling despite her efforts. “And the saddest part is that in the morning I’m the only one who will remember the shit you’re spewing. Why don’t you go back to Miami and get fired a few more times? Prove that you’re the one who isn’t the joke. Or I guess Mommy can’t shit-can her only child, right? How’s that for job security?”
“We’re done, Betsy,” began the last words Caroline shouted while Betsy scrambled across the ice for a cab. “And if it weren’t for Ginny defending you and your self-righteous bullshit, we’d have been done a long time ago.” Betsy watched through the back window of the cab as Caroline stood there, shaking in the cold, defiant, her hair suddenly wild in a gust of wind as the driver pulled away.
CHAPTER 19
THE FOLDER
February 17, 1998