Eventually Lily comes back. She was gone so long that I was just starting to think I should check on her.
“What were we talking about?” she asks as she lowers herself into the seat across from me, avoiding my eye. She reaches again for her glass of water.
I say, “My mother.”
“Oh. Right,” she says, and I can see Lily trying to remember what we were even saying about my mother.
I say, “How she’s staying with me.” I reach for my fork and take a bite of my omelet. Lily isn’t eating. I ask, “Are you feeling okay, Lily?”
“Fine. Why?” she asks, but her face is pale and I can see that she’s not fine.
“You don’t seem fine.”
“I am fine. I promise.” She sips again from her water.
“You’re not eating.”
“I’m just not hungry. I’m sorry. Christian made breakfast this morning. He forgot about me meeting you.”
“You were in the bathroom a long time. Are you sure you’re really okay?”
“Yes,” she says. “I’m sure.”
I don’t know that I believe her. It seems like she’s holding something back. I stare at her, worried about her, as she tries to force a bite of scrambled eggs into her mouth to prove a point. It doesn’t go well. She winds up chewing the eggs a long time until eventually she swallows. But even then, she has to take another sip of her water to force the bite down.
She scoops more eggs onto her fork, sizes them up, but then gives up. Her shoulders go suddenly slack, she drops her fork and confesses, “I’m pregnant, Nina,” and everything that’s been happening this week with Lily makes perfect sense. The way she disappeared so quickly the other day after school, to a doctor appointment maybe. Lily’s forgetfulness and her absentmindedness. The color of her skin. The extended time she spent in the bathroom, being sick probably. The fact that she’s only pushing the food around her plate and not eating, though breakfast was her idea. Lily has always been disposed to morning sickness and I can see in her face, now that I know, that she feels sick. Her left hand is on her abdomen and she keeps sipping from that glass of water, as if trying to squelch a bout of nausea.
“Congratulations,” I say, but it’s less than enthusiastic because Lily and Christian have had rotten luck when it comes to getting pregnant. Actually, getting pregnant hasn’t been difficult for them, it’s keeping the baby alive that has been. It’s not my place to say, but I don’t know why she and Christian keep trying, why they keep setting themselves up for heartbreak.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, my voice softening.
“You know why,” she says, and I do. Because the odds that she will lose this baby are high. “Besides, you have so much going on right now, with your mother and Jake. I didn’t want to burden you.”
I reach my hand across the table for hers. Hers is wet and icy cold from holding on to the water glass. I’ve been a shitty friend. I’ve been going through something hard, but Lily has too. “You’re never a burden, Lily. You can always tell me anything. How far along are you?”
“Nine weeks.”
I breathe in deeply. Lily has never made it to the second trimester. This is a precarious time for her, Christian and the baby. Life is precious but fragile.
“What is the doctor saying?”
“That everything seems to be fine. So far. But then again, it always is.”
It’s like with Jake. Things are fine, until suddenly they’re not.
In an instant, your world can turn upside down when you’re least expecting it.
CHRISTIAN
I go rigid. I hold my breath. I don’t breathe.
Above me, things go silent. The water stops running down to the septic tank in the basement. The pipes become quiet and still. I expect to hear the sound of footsteps or a sink running. I prepare myself for it, waiting, but there’s nothing, only silence, so that then I start to second-guess what I heard. Maybe it wasn’t a toilet flush. Maybe it was something else, like air in the water pipes. Maybe it wasn’t caused by something human.
I’d believe it, if it weren’t for Lily’s text. Thai tonight?
Someone is here.
I slide an open drawer closed without hurrying. It takes everything in me not to slam it shut. I push the chair that I was sitting in back under the desk. I won’t make it to the file cabinet or have a chance to look for a safe.
I find my exits. I could use the front door. It’s closer, but visible, and I wouldn’t be able to lock the door behind myself if I went that way. The office sits less than ten feet from the base of the stairs. I see the wrought iron balusters through the open office doors. There is a window in the office, but to go out that way, I’d have to remove the screen. I couldn’t replace it from outside either, meaning it would be impossible to go that way without leaving evidence that I was here.
I have no choice but to go back out through the garage door, the same way I came.
I drag myself across the room. The floors are wood. I wear shoes. It’s practically futile to try to be silent. My shoes are anything but light on the wooden floors.
I step hesitantly from the office into the foyer. It’s the kind of space that’s two stories tall with a coffered ceiling and a giant chandelier. A quarter-turn staircase leads down into the foyer. There’s a loftlike space with a railing at the top of the stairs, so that the second floor overlooks the first.
From just outside the open office door, I see a wall-mounted mail holder by the front door. It feels like just the thing I was looking for. The problem is that the mail holder is in direct view of the stairs and the loft. I hesitate, calculating the risk. It’s high, but the mail holder is the perfect place for the key. That’s exactly where Lily and I would leave it, and I’ve already come this far. I can’t go home empty-handed because without this key, there is no way to move the car. And if we don’t move Jake’s car, it puts him and Lily together at the same place, on the same day he died. It makes Lily look guilty.
I let my gaze go up the stairs and to the loft. It’s still quiet, for now. If I didn’t know better, I’d think no one was upstairs.
I pull my way across the foyer floor, feeling completely and utterly exposed. I’ve done my fair share of disorderly things in my life. I was an insubordinate teenager. I had more groundings, detentions and suspensions than I can count. My mother used to tell me that my behavior was taking years off her life and was going to be the death of her.
But now I’m an adult, and this is breaking and entering. It comes with serious consequences, like jail.
There are slots for mail and bills on the mail holder, but also hooks for keys. I slip my hand into one of the slots, striking gold. The key fob. I pinch the key fob between my fingertips and pull it out. Something else comes too, slipping from my hand and, this time, my reaction time isn’t fast enough to catch whatever it is. The object falls to the floor, making noise.
A door upstairs rasps open. “Nina? Is that you?”
The voice belongs to a woman.
I spin around. I don’t risk looking up the stairs. I leave whatever fell on the floor. I make my way back toward the garage, as footsteps pad across the hall and a silhouette appears in my range of view.