Catch Me (Detective D.D. Warren, #6)(64)

Her grandmother’s pearls, gifted to her on her sixteenth birthday by her parents. Jackie and I had oohed and ahhed over them. We weren’t pearl people, but we understood how much Randi loved them. We knew that she’d wear them every day, whether entertaining or gardening or grocery shopping, and look perfect doing so. And if Jackie was jealous her best friend had received such an extravagant necklace, she didn’t show it. And if I was jealous my best friend had inherited a family piece from a grandmother who’d known and loved her, I didn’t show it. We were happy she was happy.

Randi had glowed that day. She’d opened that box, and her normally quiet face lit up until she appeared even more lustrous than the pearls.

I couldn’t help it. I reached out. Touched the image on the flat monitor, as if I could still feel the warmth of my friend’s skin, feel the indent of her dimple, hear her call my name.

Charlie, Charlie, Charlie! Look at this! Can you believe it? My grandmother’s pearls. Oh, Charlie. Aren’t they beautiful?

The words came out before I could stop them. “I failed her.”

D. D. Warren was watching me. Looking and seeing. “Why do you say that?”

“I was the glue. That was my job. Jackie organized us, Randi energized us, and I…I held us together. Through petty fights and minor squabbles and all the ways three girls can become two against one. We were better together. I appreciated that. So it was my job to keep us on track, reminding us even when it was difficult that three was better than two which was better than one. Except then we turned eighteen and drifted apart.”

“Why?” D.D. asked the question flatly. As if she already understood the answer mattered, was the real reason I now couldn’t let my friends go.

I took my eyes off my friend’s picture. I studied the detective and I started to understand the real meaning of being tough. The trait shared by Detective Warren and my firearms instructor J.T. and his wife, Tess.

They looked at life without blinders. They had the confidence to not dodge the blow, but stand there and take the hit.

“I was embarrassed,” I told the detective quietly. “I let us fall apart, because I didn’t just love Jackie and Randi, I knew that I loved them more than they loved me. So I never told them about my mother. If I had, then maybe Randi would’ve told us about her abusive husband. And Jackie and I would’ve helped her and we would’ve stood together, instead of scattering and dying apart. But I couldn’t tell them about my mom. I loved them so much, I couldn’t risk them thinking less of me.”

Detective Warren leaned forward, peered at me intently. “What should you have told them about your mother, Charlene?”

I held up my left hand. The fresh boxing bruises stood out starkly, bright purple kisses on the webbing between some of my fingers. But there were other markings as well, a patchwork of thin white scars zigzagging across my skin. They became more obvious in the summer, when I had a tan, than during the winter when, like most New Englanders, my skin was bone white. But I knew D.D. would spot the pale, spidery lines.

I murmured, “I think other people’s mothers don’t break bottles over the back of their little girls’ hands, so they can take their children to the emergency room and have the cute male intern tweeze out the broken glass. I think other people’s mothers don’t hold a hot iron to their daughters’ fingertips, so they can return to the same ER three days later, when the cute male intern said he’d be working again.”

“How old were you?”

“Young enough to go along, old enough to know better.”

“And this was in New Hampshire?”

“Upstate New York. That’s where I lived before my mother died. At which time, Social Services tracked down my aunt and asked her to take me. That’s how I met Jackie and Randi, first day of school. We sat side by side. And just like that, we were best friends. We did everything together—played, studied, worked, rebelled. Except then we turned eighteen, and they had dreams and I didn’t. So I let them go. And I didn’t call or check up or be the kind of friend I should’ve been, because I didn’t want them to know just how much I missed them. I was embarrassed, that all these years later I still loved them more than they loved me. And now…And now…”

I couldn’t get the words out. I just sat there and touched the digital image of my best friend who I’d never see again.

I should’ve told Randi everything. I should’ve told Jackie. I’d hoarded my secrets as a child, then Jackie and Randi had hoarded their secrets as adults. Randi had never told us about her abusive husband. And Jackie never confided in us that she was gay. I only learned that during the police investigation, when Pierce Quincy, the profiler Jackie had hired, let it drop, and I’d sat there stone-faced, willing no expression to show, because of course I would know such a thing about my best friend. Of course one best friend would feel comfortable enough to share such a personal revelation with another best friend.

The thin white scars on the back of my hand were the least of my concerns. It was the internal wounds that hurt me. My world had always been too small, first just me and my mother, then me and my aunt, then Randi Jackie Charlie. I’d always had too little. I’d always loved too hard. And I’d always lost too much.

Baby, crying down the hall.

I guess I’d had her, too, a baby I’d known I needed to protect. But I hadn’t, and now, I couldn’t even remember her name. So much for life without blinders. Twenty-eight years old and still taking daily dips in denial.