“Oh, you would have kept it. What? Gotten married at sixteen to another sixteen-year-old? That would probably have worked out better.”
“Who knows?” Her voice takes on a dangerous darkness. “Who knows? Because everybody made choices for me. Not even my very best friend was there for me in that moment.”
Acute, wild guilt scalds my heart, and my anger pours away. “You’re right,” I cry. “I’m so sorry.”
“Do you have any idea what you cost me? I counted on you, loved you so much, and all you ever do is undermine me and—” She breaks off. “You’re exhausting, Phoebe,” she says. “It’s completely impossible to please you.”
“That’s not entirely fair. You know I try to take care of you.”
“No. You hold me to this ridiculous standard, but not yourself and not anybody else. I have been in your corner since we were twelve, and you’re only in mine when it’s convenient.”
“That’s bullshit!” I cry. “I’m always here for you. Who sat in your hospital room for weeks? Who takes care of the house you love so much—a house I had planned to buy myself, actually, until you swooped in and stole it out from under me.” I wish I could take the words back the minute they’re out of my mouth, but they’ve already spilled. “Never mind—”
“You never told me that.” Tears well up in her aquamarine eyes, making them even more ridiculously beautiful. “Why didn’t you just say something? I thought I was doing the right thing!”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from.”
Her voice is raw with exhaustion. “I can’t do this.”
She slams the door, and as if the sound has broken me, I bend over, barely able to breathe. The aftermath of terror, the sorrow over not listening to Jasmine, the mistakes I’ve made for so many years, the terrible cost for my beloved, beloved friend.
I collapse on the floor and cover my face. Shame burns through me. “Oh, Amma, I am so sorry.”
Jasmine is sleeping next to me when I wake up. It’s an overcast morning, so I have no idea what time it is, but it doesn’t matter. I turn in to her body without touching her and inhale the scent of her hair. Her cheek is as smooth as an egg, pale and faintly touched with pink. Her lashes spill in an arch below her eyelids. Her mouth is wide and full, and will one day be very pretty.
It’s so hard to love people, knowing they might die, knowing they might not always be there for a million reasons. I have always worried about people being taken from me, long before they were. I worried about my grandmother, and she lived to be ninety-four. I worried about my dad, and he did end up dying too young, of a random soft tissue cancer when he was only fifty-one. Younger than I am now. I was a nervous wreck as Stephanie’s mother, terrified she’d slip through some safety protocol I’d failed to set and be grievously injured or killed.
Somehow, she survived.
I turn over and stare at the ceiling, thinking of the fight with Suze. There’s something I have to do.
Quietly, I get up and open one of the low drawers in my dresser. It holds diaries and letters from those days when we were young. The collection can still send up tiny puffs of stationery perfume, a scent I would recognize apart from any other stimulus. It swerves right past my rational brain, and my limbic system offers me a vision of opening the mailbox and finding a letter or package from Suze. How it lit up my day!
I pull out a handful of letters, pierced by our youthful handwriting, and open one at random. Seventh grade, classes, Suze excited about meeting Joel. I remember how jealous I was, that she had a friend and I didn’t. It was the way I always reacted to everything she did.
Why was I like that? It seems so small and mean spirited now. I genuinely loved her and wanted to keep her for myself. I didn’t want her to have Joel or my grandmother or Mary. I wanted her all to myself—her beautiful eyes and her kind nature and her curious mind.
At the very bottom of the letters, I find the one with Joel’s handwriting on the front. It’s sealed because I never opened it. On the front, it says, Suze. As I hold it in my hands, shame burns through me, shame and a resolution to finally put this right.
From downstairs, I hear a voice. “Hello?”
It’s Stephanie. I texted her as soon as Jasmine showed up, but she was already on a plane. I go to the bedroom door and call, “Up here.”
After a big reunion, with tears and then some coffee and pancakes, Stephanie and Jasmine sit on the couch. I’ve built a fire to offset the cold wet of the day. “Jasmine,” Stephanie says, “you can never ever scare us like that again, do you understand me? It was very dangerous for you and terrifying for us.”