Chapter 21
Valerie Harbour had a nervous mannerism.She kept her chin angled high and kept shaking her hair behind her shoulders as she took the stand. She repeated the gesture half a dozen times while she was being sworn in. She refused to look Katy’s way. She never looked at the jury or Addison Quick either. She kept her gaze fixed on a point in the center of the wall in front of her.
“Ms. Harbour,” Quick began. “Can you explain to the jury how you know the defendant, Katy Loomis?”
“Um … we are … we were friends. Our daughters, that is, my daughter and her stepdaughter, became fast friends when they started kindergarten together. Lola and Emma were pretty inseparable all the way through grade school. My friendship with Katy grew from there.”
“How would you describe the nature of that friendship? In the sense of how close you were. How often did you communicate?”
“Oh, good lord,” she said. “Honestly, though it started with Lola and Emma, Katy and I got even closer. We started having coffeeafter dropping the girls off at school. Then my husband Keegan and her husband Joe hit it off. They’re both pretty outdoorsy. They went on some fishing trips together. It used to be an annual thing. But the four of us used to go on vacation together. You know, it’s really hard to find couples’ friends. Where the husbands get along as well as the wives do. But that’s what it was like for us for a number of years.”
“What kinds of things did you share?” Addison asked.
“Everything. At least, I thought so. I mean, we borrowed each other’s clothes if that tells you anything. We talked about the girls. Worries and struggles they had. We asked each other for advice about our husbands. Katy was always somebody I felt I could tell anything to and she wouldn’t judge me. Now, don’t get me wrong, we sure did judge other people. There was no harm in it. We weren’t mean girls. But we shared a similar sense of humor. I’d say for a long time, I considered Katy my ride or die.”
Beside me, Katy leaned over and whispered in my ear. “We weren’tthatclose, for Pete’s sake. Valerie talked about other people to me behind their backs. Which means you know she was talking about me to them behindmyback.”
I patted her arm gently to get her to settle. The last thing I needed was for Quick, Valerie, or the jury to overhear her remarks.
“You speak in the past tense,” Quick said. “Am I to understand that your relationship with Katy changed at some point?”
“Well, friendships evolve, you know? I’d say we were closest during those first ten years when our girls were younger. By the time they were moving out of middle school, Emma and Lola had a falling out. And it was nothing serious. Not to me anyway.Just typical teenage girl stuff. Emma said something about Lola, or the other way around. One got jealous of the other; I don’t know. Anyway, I’m sure I didn’t handle it very well if you asked Katy. But, of course, we each had to support our own girls. It just got awkward for a bit.”
“I see,” Quick said. “So how did your relationship change?”
“We didn’t hang out as couples so much anymore. We didn’t vacation together. And part of that was just schedules. I’ve got two younger sons after Lola. One’s involved in travel baseball, or was. They’re all out of high school now. So we were never available. But Katy and I always kept in touch by text. She was one of those friends that even if we didn’t talk every day or went weeks or months without hanging out, we could pick right back up. And actually, once the girls graduated and went their separate ways, Katy and I got closer again.”
“In recent years, how often did you talk or see each other?”
Valerie did that thing again, tossing her hair over her shoulders. “We got together for lunch or coffee maybe once a month. We didn’t text every day, but certainly every week.”
“Did that ever stop?”
“Yes,” Valerie said sharply. “Katy went through some stuff. I don’t know what you’d call it. Like a midlife crisis. I found out kind of by accident that she was cheating on Joe with Tom Loomis. And look, it’s not my place to judge, but that made things really awkward for me because Joe and my Keegan were still friends. Not as close as before, but it’s different with guys. There’s no bull crap. When I told Keegan I saw Katy and Tom out together at this little coffee shop in Brooklyn … and it was just by sheer bad luck. I was shopping with another friend and there they were at this little booth. Kissing.”
“Did you confront Katy about that?”
“Of course I did. She was embarrassed, but I’ll give her credit for being honest. You know, not try to cover it up or gaslight me. Now, her business is her business. And you never know what’s going on inside a marriage, right? But I always liked Joe and I thought he was good to her. And you take a vow. I wouldn’t call myself super religious. But I do abide by the Ten Commandments.”
“Okay. Let’s fast forward a bit,” Addison said. “Did you remain friends with Katy after her divorce from Joe Leary?”
“I did. Yes. It’s not that I condone what she did. But I can respect that her life is her life. Even though I might not make the same decisions, friendship shouldn’t be conditional like that.”
Big of you, I thought.
“You remained friends after Katy divorced Joe and married Tom Loomis?”
“Yes. But I’ll be honest. It got hard to stay that way. Katy just seemed bound and determined to destroy her own life.”
“In what way?”
“She was barely married to Tom before she started seeing Joe again. I tried to talk her out of divorcing Joe. I felt sure she’d end up regretting it. Joe’s a good man. He didn’t deserve how things ended between them.”
“Did you at some point become aware that Katy and Joe had begun seeing each other again?”
“Yes.”
“How did you become aware of this?”
