“Because she looks like me,” I explain. Chrissie and I have always joked about this.
“I do,” she says with a tentative smile—which dies altogether when her focus moves past us.
Turning my head to follow, I see Lina approaching. She wears a dowdy navy dress and clutches a small purse, neither of which is out of character for a woman who works in the shadows. But the look on her face? It is light years removed from the who-are-you stare she gave me in the kitchen Saturday morning. The one she is giving Chrissie is… what? Hurt? Shocked?Angry?
Chrissie’s eyes remain hidden, but I sense a silent panic. Sheseems frozen, barely breathing, like she has no idea what to do. I slip an arm through hers to let Lina know that she’s mine, but it helps neither of them. Chrissie opens her mouth to speak, closes it, and swallows.
There are several beats of ominous silence before Chrissie capitulates. Seeming to realize she has no other option, she takes a shaky breath and says, “Hi, Mom.”
Chapter 24
Mom?What the…
I look from Chrissie to Lina for explanation, but neither seems to know what to say to the other, much less to me, and the silence doesn’t bode well. Chrissiealwaysknows what to say. She is the ultimate diplomat, the ultimate mediator, the ultimate friend. She has never once in our seven-year friendship told me anything that wasn’t the truth.
But…Mom?A tiny window of betrayal cracks open, just enough for appalling thoughts to snake under and in.
My Chrissie’s full name is Christina, which can also be shortened to Tina, which is the nickname by which Lina’s daughter was known.
My Chrissie’s last name is Perez. I don’t know her maiden name, because it never mattered. We relate to each other in the present, and in the present, I know that my Chrissie’s father is dead and that she is estranged from her mother, who refuses to accept her biracial husband.
My Chrissie is three years younger than me, as was the little sister of my friend Danny Aiello. My Chrissie has a brother Dan. Margo would point to her husband and remind me that Daniel is a common name. But that common?
“Why are you here?” Lina scolds with the hushed intimacy only a mother and daughter would share, which rattles me even more.
I catch Jack’s eye, looking for something he knows that I don’t. He may remember Tina Aiello better than I do. He may have seen Tina in recent years and see no resemblance at all between that woman and this. But he is no help to me here. His twitch of a headshake says he’s as confused as I am.
Chrissie isn’t confused. This is the kicker. I can’t see her eyes. They are hidden behind her sunglasses—hidden—like mine were when I climbed from the car at the square last Friday afternoon and wanted to stay anonymous. Chrissie wanted that, too, but she has been found out. To judge from the sudden flush on her cheeks, she is mortified.
Turning her back on Lina, she clutches my arms and says in a desperate whisper, “I’m sorry, Mal. I never dreamed she’d be here. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come. I wanted to be at the funeral for you, but the last thing I wanted was to make things worse. You don’t need this right now. I’m going to leave, just drive back—”
“You are not,” I cut in. Staring into her barely-outlined eyes, I see my own reflection. The blend of the two is as freaky as anything else. “The damage is done. What’s goingon?”
“Not now,” she begs softly. “Not here.” In the next instant, though, her attention shifts. Focusing past me, she gives the tiniest shiver before breaking into an uneasy smile.
“Hey,” Margo says, coming up by my side. She isn’t suspicious, just curious.
“Margo, this is my friend Chrissie, from New York,” I say as casually as possible, but here is another thought. These two never met in the city, and through no fault of mine. When my sisters werecoming to town, I repeatedly invited Chrissie to join us. I even appealed to her therapist-other by saying that if she met Margo and Anne, she could understand me better. But either she had to work or Kian was sick or Dante wanted to spend the weekend at the Jersey shore.
Now I see why she was evasive. She feared Margo would recognize her, which lends credence to the fact that she’s known for a while that she was hiding a very, very important fact from me. I want to know why, and I want to know now.
To Margo, I say, “Can Joy ride back to the house with you, so Chrissie and I can talk?”
“But I want to stay,” Joy argues. She senses something is up. Of course, she does.
Margo puts a possessive arm around her shoulders, gutting the protest, and gives Chrissie a warm smile. “Mal has mentioned you so often I feel like I know you. Thank you for coming.”
I feel like I know you.How ironic is that, and Margo not even connecting Chrissie to Tina? Not that the lack of recognition is surprising. Margo is two years older than me, meaning five years older than Chrissie, which is a huge span in school, and Chrissie has changed a lot—at least, I think she has.
My memories of Tina Aiello are vague. I recall a girl who was dark-haired and pudgy, who was smart but shy and wore tee shirts and jeans to fit into the crowd. My Chrissie struggles with body image issues. We’ve discussed it many times. She still carries extra weight on her hips, but you’d never know it from her chic way with tunics and long blazers. As for being shy, the woman who struck up a conversation with me seven years ago on an adjacent stair climber at the gym wasn’t shy. She was confident—and friendly and interesting and fun, all of which raises the horrendous thought that it was all a carefully-conceived plot—that she’d known exactly who I was—that she had deliberately chosen that particular stair climber—that she had beenstalkingme.
No. Not stalking. Or maybe, in a watered-down sense of theword. But a pathological stalker? No. If Chrissie Perez was that, I’d have seen other elements of psychosis in her, and I’ve never seen a one. We’re that close. Still, if this brilliant woman, this sensitive woman, thislovingwoman hid such a crucial fact from me all this time, what does that say about our friendship?
I need answers, but not with Joy listening. This is between Chrissie and me. And while Margo can’t possibly know what’s going on here, she has taken my daughter in hand. Again. And I’m grateful. Again.
So I remind Joy, “Your cousins are here, babe. They wantyou.”
Joy wants them, too, which is why her leaving doesn’t take any more convincing than that. But she doesn’t go before asking Chrissie, “Will I see you at the house?”
