Neighborly(91)

Then there are the other AV threats: Andie and openness. I’m upset with Doug for lying to me about where he was when he should have been at work, but I realize I haven’t yet given him the chance to explain himself. It’s not like I haven’t kept secrets from him, after all. The reality is, people have affairs. They get caught up in things they shouldn’t. It doesn’t mean the relationship is irreparable. In Europe, they keep the family together and turn a blind eye.

No, I don’t think I could do that. But we could go to therapy. All the love we’ve had for each other doesn’t just vanish in a puff of smoke. Marriage is not a magic trick. It’s about putting in the time and the effort when things are hard. It’s about tough conversations and forgiveness. Isn’t it?

I want a drink so badly right now.

Yet I have to be stone-cold sober if there’s going to be any chance of turning the tables on them tonight.

It’s a smaller group than the last time. Yolanda won’t be here. Andie’s running late. June is dealing with some Hope-related emergency but will arrive shortly.

Now that I’ve met Hope, I wonder if all the stories about her are exaggerated or even made up entirely, if June just likes to have a ready-made excuse to rush off, maybe to be with her sugar daddy. I mean, obviously lying is in June’s wheelhouse. Even her own daughter thinks so.

That leaves Raquel, Gina, Tennyson, and me. None of them questioned my decision to stick with club soda, and they’ve suspended the ban on talking about kids, just for tonight, for me.

“It must be hard for you to be away from Sadie,” Raquel says. “I remember Meadow got really sick one time—not sick enough to need the hospital, but we were on the fence about that; we almost took her to the ER—and when it was all over, I just wanted to hold her tight. Like, for days and days.”

“You think how it can all vanish in an instant,” Gina says, succinctly, unemotionally. She wants to get on to the next conversation, you can tell. Back to the fun. Even fun has to keep to a strict timetable.

I tell them I don’t mean to be a killjoy, and I’m sorry that I’m not myself, not that they actually know me. They assure me it’s absolutely fine. “You can’t always be the life of the party,” Tennyson says.

Then June/Ellen breezes in. She says, “It’s always so dark in here; it took me forever to find you guys!” She kisses everyone on the cheek, including me. She takes the farthest seat and avoids looking at me.

Her energy is off. She’s already got a drink—a rum and Coke, from the looks of it—and as she sits down, she knocks it over. She’s a bundle of nerves, clearly.

I study her face for the first time since learning who she really is. It’s amazing that I could ever have missed it. The changes now seem shockingly superficial—just her nose and chin and a thinner face and auburn hair instead of dark brown and bright-blue contact lenses over her nutmeg irises. No one could blame her for wanting a new face and a new name. But once you really look, she’s so fundamentally Ellen.

Now I can see it in her mannerisms. It’s unmistakable. And watching her, even knowing all I know, all she’s capable of, something inside me gives way. This is Ellen, my best friend. I loved her deeply. She loved me, too. I know she did. Her father is the one who ruined everything. He brainwashed her, got her to think I was a liar, that all the kids were, and she thought I’d betrayed her family after they took me in and treated me like one of their own.

Of all the awful parts—having to share every terrible detail on the stand chief among them—losing her was the worst. I didn’t have a confidante through it all. But more than that, I didn’t have anyone to take my mind off things and make me laugh. I didn’t have anyone to just plain get me.

But it never occurred to me that she’d become my enemy. A small part of me thought that one day, she’d have to realize who her father really was: a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the worst bogeyman of all because he was disguised as everyone’s favorite teacher. But he also disguised himself as the best father. He stole my best friend from me, and he stole me from his own daughter.

He told me he loved me. And I believed him. I didn’t even think the things he was doing were wrong, not for the longest time, but I knew that it was a secret I was supposed to keep from everyone, including Ellen. “She’d be jealous,” he said.

I’m hit by a wave of nausea. Layton brought us here, pitted us against each other. We were just children. Damaged children who became damaged adults. We both feel like we have to fight for what’s ours, fight for the families we’ve created. He made us loyal to him over each other. Now we’re adversaries when we should be best friends. When we understand each other better than anyone. We’re both victims.

When she talked to me at the hospital, did she feel it, too? That I’m still me, Katrina. Did she feel a connection? Did she ever waver in what she was trying to do? I feel like she had to.

I want to believe her brother is her accomplice, and that he’s the one who poisoned Sadie, and that Ellen didn’t know, not until it was too late. There’s just no way she’s a good enough actress to have pulled off those tears at the hospital. She hated seeing Sadie in that state. I know she did.

Or had Ellen actually tried to poison me? Could she really be her father’s daughter, after all?

The conversation has been flowing all around us, bubbles on a champagne sea, but Ellen and I aren’t a part of it. She’s nursing her new drink, stirring it slowly. Her eyes are faraway and full of pain. I’m probably her mirror image.