The Mothers(69)

“Maybe she worried about her friend,” Flora said.

“What she got to worry about? They married. Married folk got problems.”

“Y’all heard Aubrey moved out?”

“Oh, who hadn’t done that once or twice?” Agnes said.

“Y’all know how many times I packed me a suitcase and left Ernest?” Betty said. “Went running to my mama’s house and after a few days, I was right back. That ain’t nothin’. That’s what married folk do.”

“I heard that Sheppard boy got a wandering eye.”

“He a man, ain’t he?” Hattie said. “What these girls expect?”

Agnes said, “See, that’s the problem with colored girls these days. They too hard. Soft things can take a beating. But you push somethin’ hard a little bit and it shatters. You gotta be a soft thing in love. Hard love don’t last.”

“I still don’t see what none of this got to do with Nadia Turner.” Betty shook her head, staring back out the window. “Don’t say hello to nobody, don’t speak. And why she always walking back and forth like that? Like she got so many other places to be?”

What we didn’t understand then was that when Nadia dropped us off at Upper Room, she paced in front of her daddy’s truck so she could watch cars pass on the road. Sometimes she sat on the steps in front of the church for an hour or two, hoping that she might see a green Jeep pull into the parking lot. She never did. No one had seen Aubrey Evans for weeks.

—

FOR MONTHS, Nadia replayed in her mind the day her lies had collapsed into one another. A normal day, a day so unremarkable that she wouldn’t appreciate, until weeks later, those early nondescript hours when her life had been intact. Those hours had passed quickly and then it was evening and she was stepping out of the shower, towel-drying her hair, when she saw a light flash outside the house. She’d gone to the door and when she’d switched on the porch light and stood on her tiptoes to look out the peephole, she’d found Aubrey sitting on the porch.

“Why’re you sitting out here in the dark?” she’d asked, stepping outside. “Why didn’t you ring the doorbell?”

She hadn’t been puzzled by Aubrey’s unexpected visit—they were long past the point of calling before they stopped by—but she hadn’t understood why Aubrey was sitting unannounced in front of her house. What if Nadia hadn’t noticed her headlights from the shower window? Was she just going to sit there forever without letting Nadia know she’d come by? Aubrey hadn’t turned around, and for weeks, when Nadia thought about her, she remembered staring at her back, the delicate curve of her neck. Maybe, if Aubrey had never turned around, they would’ve remained suspended in that moment forever, between knowing and not knowing, that final strained pull of a friendship fraying at the seams.

“How?” Aubrey said.

She knew the what. She could guess the why. But the how of it all had been what eluded her. The how of any betrayal was the hardest part to justify, how the lies could be assembled and stacked and maintained until the truth was completely hidden behind them. Nadia had frozen, her mind numb and slow, like she was trying to form words in a different language. Then Aubrey had pushed herself up from the steps and started down the driveway, Nadia stumbling after her.

“Aubrey,” she said. “I’m so fucking sorry—”

“Funny how sorry you both are now.”

“I swear to God, I was sorry as soon as it happened—”

“Well, that’s nice of you.”

“Please. Please. Just talk to me.”

She had banged on Aubrey’s car door, tugging at the handle. She would wake the neighbors soon, her father peeking out the window and wondering why she was crying and pleading, why she’d hung on to the door even after Aubrey had started her engine.

“Move,” Aubrey had said. Her voice was cold, metallic. “I don’t want to run over your foot.”

For months, Nadia tried everything she could think. She texted, e-mailed, left voice mails, and called, each layer of technology becoming more antiquated until she finally sent a letter in the mail. Three handwritten pages of begging, each request diminishing as if they were in some unspoken negotiation: first, for her forgiveness; then for a moment to explain; until she was only asking that Aubrey read her e-mails or listen to her voice mails, even if she never spoke to her again. The three-page letter returned unopened. She began driving by Monique’s house in the afternoon, crawling up the street and peering out the window, but she never saw Aubrey come or go. She knew she should stop—someone might notice her car circling the block and call the cops, thinking she was a deranged stalker or a crazy ex-girlfriend—but she drove by every day for three weeks. In a final act of desperation, she parked one evening and rang the doorbell.

“You can’t come by here no more,” Kasey said, “you know that.”

She leaned against the doorframe, her arms folded across her chest. She didn’t look angry, just annoyed, as if she were staring at a cat she kept tossing out the back door who’d managed to claw his way back inside.

“Is Aubrey here?” Nadia asked softly, staring down at the welcome mat.

“Can’t you understand that she don’t want to talk to you? Jesus, between you and him . . .”