A Good Marriage(44)
In their early days, when they didn’t have two quarters to rub together, people had assumed countless things about Zach because Amanda was his wife. After all, if a guy who looked like him and who wasn’t wealthy could keep a woman like her, he must be truly special. Now that Zach was rich and successful, the explanations for their uneven union were more often at Amanda’s expense—what a gold digger she must be. But that was okay. People could think what they wanted. Amanda knew the truth.
For her part, Carolyn would have been happy for Amanda to leave Zach altogether. She’d long complained, among other things, that Amanda and Case were nothing more than props for Zach. But if you thought about it, props were useful things, and there were worse things than being useful. Besides, everything was always so mercilessly black-and-white to Carolyn—she could afford that luxury. She’d been able to live her life without worrying about how to survive.
“Case is fine. Better than fine,” Amanda said, getting Carolyn a cup of coffee—light and sweet, the way she always had it. It was comforting, knowing by heart those little details about her friend. “He couldn’t miss me less, in fact, which smarts a little. But I know it’s a good thing.” Amanda set the coffee down.
Carolyn lifted it and took a big sip, eyeing Amanda over the top of her mug. “So what is it, then?”
“I guess I miss him and I haven’t been sleeping well, that’s all.”
“Don’t tell me—your wacko dreams again?” Carolyn rolled her eyes this time. “Let me guess, a monster squid.”
Once Amanda had dreamed she was trapped in a giant lobster’s claw while sleeping over at Carolyn’s house. Thrashing about, she’d whacked Carolyn so hard in the mouth, her lip had bled.
“No squids. But I do keep having this dream I’m running barefoot through the woods in the dark. I’m looking for Case. Frantic, really. It’s ridiculous,” Amanda said. She hoped confessing the details might make them stop running over and over in her head: the cold wetness of the dress against her skin, standing in Norma’s diner and looking down at her bloodstained hands. A scream. “There are sirens, and I have blood on me. It’s horrific.”
“Yeah, horrifically literal.” Carolyn laughed, then focused on Amanda, her eyes softening.
“What do you mean?” Amanda asked. She already felt better that Carolyn had laughed.
“Come on, you’re running after Case in the woods, covered in blood?” Carolyn shook her head and held her arms out wide for dramatic effect. “Your subconscious has obviously come to the same conclusion I have: that camp on the other side of the country was a dumb idea.”
“Well, you’re in the dream, too,” Amanda jabbed back lamely.
“Me?” Carolyn batted her eyes innocently.
“At the beginning. You’re in this puffy seafoam dress, like for a bridesmaid. And I’m in a peach one. We’re eating pizza on a bed.”
Carolyn smirked. “Ah, see where ignoring my advice and sending Case to that camp has gotten you? It’s spawned revenge of the junior prom.”
“Junior prom?”
“Those definitely sound like our junior prom dresses. But you swapped them in your dream. Yours was the seafoam one, remember? I lent it to you.”
Amanda shook her head a little, as though hoping to shake the memory back into place. Yes, that was right. That was where that piece of the dream had come from. Carolyn had lent her a seafoam dress. Amanda had dropped out of school by the time the junior prom came around, but she’d gone with a boy who was friends with Carolyn’s boyfriend. She couldn’t remember much more than that.
But the dance itself had been magical, hadn’t it? She’d felt like a regular teenager for once. Even without the details there was a feeling. It was sad that she couldn’t remember more. That was the problem with closing off so much of her past—sometimes the good memories went with the bad. This wasn’t the first time Carolyn had reminded her of some detail from their shared history that Amanda couldn’t quite drag all the way to the surface.
“Junior prom, I know,” Amanda lied. “That’s why the whole thing is so weird.”
“Let’s at least agree that Zach is to blame?” Carolyn smirked. “For everything?”
Amanda ignored Carolyn’s baiting. She knew it came from a place of love; besides, there were times when Amanda felt a little bit of that resentment herself. It was kind of comforting to have Carolyn actually say it.
“The dream isn’t the real problem anyway,” Amanda said.
“Then what is?”
That stupid burn had returned to the back of her throat. “He’s calling again.”
“No.” Carolyn dropped hard onto a kitchen barstool. She knew instantly what Amanda meant, even after all this time. “That fucker.” She sounded angry, but not worried, which was a comfort. Carolyn took a deep breath and then another big swallow of coffee. Then another. She stared down at the counter, considering. “I guess he was bound to slither back out of his hole eventually. Did he say anything this time?”
“Not a word,” Amanda said. “Like last time. Just that breathing.”
Carolyn knew about the last time, too, back when they’d been in California. Carolyn knew everything. All the ugliness. All the shame. She was the only person in the world who did.