Good Girl Bad (47)

Put it all behind them.

For a price.

Now, she looks down at Freddy’s face, and her own face is soft, loving. Freddy’s eyes are closed, but she’s not sleeping. They’ve been spending evenings together ever since Fred moved out. Sometimes they watch a movie. Sometimes they talk. They always sit close together on the couch.

“Do you want to talk about what happened on the bridge?” Nancy says now, and she feels Freddy stiffen under her fingers. “You don’t have to,” Nancy adds, her voice gentle. “Just if you want to. Sometimes it helps to talk about the things that hurt us the most.”

Freddy doesn’t respond. They sit in silence for a while.

“It was me, in Tabby’s room that night,” Freddy says, eventually. She opens her eyes, but they’re unfocused. “Gen said there was a sketch. I wanted to find it. Hide it. Burn it. Something.” She lapses into silence, and Nancy just keeps stroking her hair, her fingers light.

“Don’t you hate her?” she whispers eventually, and Nancy shakes her head.

“No. She’s still a child, Freddy. I know you think you’re nearly an adult. But she was in a very vulnerable place. I don’t think we can really know what was going on with her mother. But it sounds like it was far worse than any of us realized. Remember you told me a few months ago, that Tabby asked you why you even wanted to be her friend? And you were so confused, it was such a weird thing to ask after you’ve been friends for so long, and it’s so clear that you loved her—”

“Loved,” Freddy agrees, emphasizing the past tense, her voice hard.

“Loved,” Nancy repeats. “Or maybe love. Maybe feeling so hurt is because it’s the people we love the most who can hurt us the most.” She pauses, fighting the tears that well in her own eyes, and takes a couple of deep breaths, then goes on, “But it shows how Tabby was feeling about herself, don’t you think? She didn’t feel secure and loved. And it’s hard to make good choices about our relationships from that place. Maybe she was just desperate for someone to love her, and she mistook sex for love with your dad.” Something gets stuck in Nancy’s throat at those words, “your dad,” but she pushes on. “A lot of people do that. A lot of girls, and women, especially.”

Nancy is silent for a while. She doesn’t want to share her worst thoughts with Freddy about her father. She knows Freddy is going to be confused for long enough about her dad, without having the burden of Nancy’s anger, too. But she does feel anger. Anger about the betrayal. But also anger that her husband, who she thought was so good and strong and fair, had preyed on a damaged child for sex. The thought makes her blood boil. It makes her want to kill someone.

Underneath the anger, she knows the pain lies waiting.

However hurt and angry she is, though, what really gets to her is that Fred ignored Tabby when she asked him for help. When her mother had just killed her dog in front of her eyes.

Who was this man she married?

Maybe she didn’t want him to have an affair with a barely legal child, but she also didn’t want him to be the jerk who was in it only for the sex, and who bailed when anything real was needed of him. The duplicity of her thoughts about this will confuse her for a very long time. If it was just sex, was it better, or worse?

“You know,” she goes on, thoughtful, “you said Tabby had been so moody lately. I wonder if she found it hard to be with you because she felt guilty about the affair. Sometimes, we just don’t have the resources to cope well. I think Tabby does love you. I think she dealt with a shitty situation in the best way she knew how. And it’s still a shit way. And I’m not excusing her. But I feel a bit sad for her, you know? That she didn’t have her mom to love and guide her. That in fact her mother’s problems might have really pushed her in the wrong direction. And you don’t have to ever see her again if you don’t want to. But you don’t have to decide now. You can take as long as you need. And it would make me really happy if when you ask, ‘How could she do that to me?’ if you really think deeply about the answer. Because I don’t believe she’s a mean girl who was trying to hurt you. I think she was coping imperfectly with some pretty sad things in her own life. And they may mean that she can never be the friend to you that you want her to be, and that’s okay. And it’s totally okay to be angry and sad. But whatever Tabby did, it’s not about you, okay, Freddy? It’s not a reflection on you, and your value as a friend. It’s a reflection on her and how she feels about herself. And you get to decide what happens now. Sometimes, people just don’t stay in our lives forever, and that’s okay too.”

In private, Nancy won’t be so reasonable. She’ll rage and scream and hate Tabby, too, for a time. She’ll call her own friends and cry and rant, over and over. But for Freddy, she can put herself aside.

For Freddy, she can be exactly who Freddy needs her to be to get through this.

She knows that nothing has ever mattered so much.

And she knows they wouldn’t be having this conversation now if Rebecca had been able to do that for her own daughter. So she puts her pain aside in front of Freddy, and strokes her daughter’s hair with all the love and calmness that she can muster.





Across town, another parent sits on another couch with another girl.

“Thank you for telling me.” Nate has one arm around Genevieve. He’s holding Tabby’s hand with his other arm.