Read Online When We Were Friends by Elizabeth Arnold - Free Book Online

sat at the kitchen table silently, watching Molly shovel fistfuls of carrots into her mouth. That shecould look so happy despite everything twisted at my insides, made me feel somehow deceitful like I should remind her of what she’d been through.
    Sydney had been telling the truth. And of course I’d known nobody would make up a story like that about their own baby, but knowing the truth and
knowing
it were two totally different things. A father stabbing a cylinder of burning ash on his daughter’s skin … and then again as she screamed and then again, realizing what he’d just done, but then doing it again. I couldn’t stand this, couldn’t comprehend it. It was too much.
    As Star cleaned up the mess in the kitchen, traces of strained peas that had wedged in linoleum cracks, I carried Molly to the sofa and flicked on the TV, not watching, not listening, just needing the color and noise of it. Molly looked up at me and stretched a yawn that took up half her face. I touched her cheek. “I love you,” I whispered, soft enough that my mother wouldn’t hear. “I’ll take care of you better than she did, I swear.” I leaned back on the sofa, the baby’s weight against my chest, and closed my eyes. She was safe now. I repeated it like a mantra,
she’s safe, she’s safe …
    “Lainey!” Star’s voice was frantic.
    My eyes snapped open and I struggled through a haze of sleep trying to interpret the heat on my chest, its faint urine smell. I’d squished the baby! I jumped up with a cry, nearly dropped her.
    But Star was staring not at the baby, but at the TV. She walked toward it and sank down onto her knees. I turned up the volume, head still woozy, trying to make sense of the picture that swam in front of my eyes. Because on the screen was Sydney, her bruised face red and chin quivering. She shook her head and gripped the hand of the man beside her, crying out as he pulled her against his chest.
    The man beside her was David McGrath. He looked more stern than disconsolate, a well-cut sports coat over tailored jeans, his brown hair perfectly trimmed and falling boyishly over his forehead.
    “Please don’t hurt her,” Sydney whimpered to the microphone. “She’s only a baby, hardly a year old.”
    An 800 number flashed onto the screen along with Molly’s picture, my Molly, her orange hair combed into an odd cowlick, wearing a fluffy pink dress that made her look like iced confectionary. “If you have any information on the whereabouts of twelve-month-old Jacqueline McGrath,” the announcer said, “please call the number listed on your screen. All calls will be kept confidential.”
    I looked down at Molly and then pulled her closer, turning back to Star who stared openmouthed at the TV. The clutch in my chest wasn’t from shock at seeing Sydney, I realized, or Molly’s face on the screen. The clutch was from guilt, plain and simple guilt because it was true, in the past few hours I had stolen Molly away. And pain at the realization that of course she’d never really been mine.

How much can your life change in one day? Well let me tell you.
    Molly-Jacqueline disappeared from the TV screen, replaced by a Tampax commercial. A young girl spoke earnestly to her older sister, and I actually started to listen to the words. Of a tampon commercial. That’s what a state my brain was in.
    “But I’ve never—”
    Smugly charmed chuckle
. “That’s no big deal. I started using Tampax when I was your age. Just wait’ll you see how much more comfortable they are than bulky pads.”
    I couldn’t listen to my mother, that heavy breathing she got before an attack, like she’d just run up a ten-mile hill. I knew the pattern. The first month or two after things got really bad, when she’d decided she’d be best off not leaving her room, I’d dragged her by the elbow each day for just a walk around the block. Two steps out the door and the panting had started. If we were lucky she’d make it to the street