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Those who remained demanded that Marjorie leave, and Marjorie did; Lenna has no idea where she went. From what Lenna’s heard, Halcyon is a little shaky without her—they hadn’t realized,apparently, how handy Marjorie was. They’re limping along for now. There’s still a magic to the desert, a value in that kind of community. For some, anyway.
Rhiannon shakes her head. “I can’t go back.” She looks up, tears in her eyes, too. “It’ll remind me too much of how I thought we could be there together. And change and grow.”
“That’s the thing, though. Were we ever really going to change? Our friendship, or even justus?” Lenna puts the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “We were all looking for this big transformation at that place, but I’m not sure it comes by simply living in the desert and, like, eating organic food. We were all still…us.” Lenna goes on. “It’s like this conversation I had with Gia, before we both left. I never really figured out what Gia’s deal was, except that I don’t think she was very good at interacting with people. Maybe that’sallit was. But she said that everyone she met at Halcyon, every single person, was damaged. And also, that every single person she met wasn’treallygetting better. Oh sure, Matilda might feel healthier, so maybe she’s the exception, but for most people, they needed to look at who theywerebefore they came, in order to heal. And no one was actually doing that.”
Rhiannon presses the heels of her hands to her face, letting out a long, defeated sigh. “So I guess Gia’s not a murderer, then? Like that post said?”
“I don’t think so. Carina wasn’t right about everyone, I guess.”
“I got a look at Gia’s closet once. She hadtonsof clothes. All beautiful. I get the feeling that she didn’t wear a lot of stuff twice. Even in that place.”
Lenna laughs. “But what about the one-bag-of-garbage-a-day policy?”
“Oh right.” Rhiannon groans. “That was impossible. Ann would literally watch me like a hawk if I so much as tried to throw away an orange peel.”
Lenna feels a twinge. She’s going to miss Rhiannon. Rhiannon seems to read her thoughts, because she looks up as a tear rolls down her cheek. But she doesn’t say anything. Her chin wobbles.
Someone comes through the front door, distracting them. It’s a young woman, not that much older than Coral. She wears a gray hoodie pulled over her head, and she’s studying something on her phone, a half smile on her face. Lenna watches as she wanders to the back and ties on an apron.
This could have been Coral’s path. Lenna had actually spoken to Coral’s parents after the explosion, as they’d called to apologize for their daughter’s actions, especially when they found out Coral held Lenna’s baby hostage. They were good people, Coral’s parents. They really did give her everything they could. Maybetoomuch of everything, without many rules. Still, they couldn’t fathom that their daughter had plotted such a bizarre sequence of events. They didn’t even know she’d found out her biological mother’s name—she wasn’t supposed to know it until later. As for her escape to Halcyon, she’d always wanted to travel. She graduated high school a year early; they thought she was just taking a “gap year” before college. “We thought she was farming, finding herself, making crafts,” said Coral’s mother, Jana, a small, fine-featured woman with diamond studs in her ears. “Could we have brought this on? Simply by not sharing with her the details about her birth mother? We didn’t think she was old enough yet. We didn’t think she was ready to know.” As for how Coral paid for her and Rhiannon’s Halcyon fees, Jana admitted they let her have a teenager-friendly credit card with a high line of credit, and they’d been lax that summer about monitoring her charges. “I wanted her to be independent,” Jana said. “She was old enough.”And yet she wasn’t old enough to know her birth mother’s name?Lenna wondered. But maybe she wasn’t one to judge. Motherhood and all its decisions were so complicated.
Now, Lenna stands, shaking herself from her thoughts. “Ishould go,” she says. As an afterthought, she places her hand on top of Teddy’s little head. The boy glances up at her placidly, and their eyes meet for a moment.Take care of your mommy,Lenna tries to telegraph to him. “Bye, Rhiannon.”
Rhiannon looks at her emptily. “Bye,” she whispers.
Lenna turns and takes a few steps toward the door, and then she is outside. She walks to the end of the block before the expected call comes. Lenna had said it would take about ten minutes or so; it surprises her how on the mark she was.
When Lenna answers, the normal recorded message that a prisoner from Chino State Correctional Facility is looking to contact her, and does she accept the call, blares forth. Hastily, Lenna presses a number on the keypad, and Sarah’s voice floods in.
“So?” she asks. “Did it go okay?”
“Yeah,” Lenna breathes out. “I think so.”
But then she bursts into tears.
“Oh, Len.” Sarah sighs. “It’s hard.”
What’s harder is that Sarah is locked away and can’t be here with her. After they left Halcyon, despite the pact the women made to keep Coral’s motives quiet, Sarah hadn’t been able to live with herself. Finally, she said she had to confess. She’d pushed Gillian, after all. A death that affected so many people.
And so, Sarah called a lawyer. They came up with a plea deal, and she was serving eleven months in a women’s correctional facility in Chino. Though her attorney said it was likely she’d get out sooner, Sarah could have her baby in prison. And she wouldn’t be able to see the child until she got out—Sarah’s family agreed to take the baby for a few months. Lenna can’t imagine. She remembers those first months with Jacob. They were brutally hard, but she wouldn’t trade them for anything.
“It’s not like she’s the only one who did things wrong,” Lenna blubbers. “I was wrong, too.”
“You both lied to each other. Sometimes, friendships have too much mess to fix. You know that. And it’s okay.”
“I know,” Lenna says miserably.
She thinks of the mindset she’d been in when meeting Rhiannon in this café for the first time. How she promised herself not to utter a word about Gillian, how she vowed to stand firm and indifferent, like their friendship didn’t matter. Maybe on her side of the table, Rhiannon was reminding herself not to talk about the lies she’d told about her mother, or the fact that someone—Coral’s ambiguous voice—was more or lessforcingRhiannon to bring Lenna to the commune. What does it mean, to leave all these pieces out of a friendship, to have so many cracks? And Lenna feels guilty, too, for not instantly calling the police when Rhiannon was missing. Is it the same guilt Matilda felt when she came upon Coral in the desert and raised her gun?
It’s hard to know the boundaries and responsibilities in friendship. That last night, Gillian had told her something important, but Lenna hadn’t wanted to see it. She hadn’t wanted to make the emotional commitment; she was in her own emotional swarm. Now, she wishes she had. Now, feeling so much older and wiser, she thinks shewould.
All these missed chances, all these mistakes. It’s amazing people invest in friendship at all.
“So is your day going better than mine?” she asks Sarah, kind of as a joke.
“Hardly.” Sarah laughs. “But I’m trying to get through it. I’m reading up on alternative careers for when I get out. I’m really thinking social work. And I am selling the house—that’ll help.”
“That’s good,” Lenna says. “And I like the idea of you in social work. You have the heart for it.” Because of her conviction, Sarah said she doubted she’d be able to be a physician again. But she’d always gravitated toward psychology. And after coming up againstsomeone like Gillian, maybe the right way to give back was to help more people suffering through the same things she suffered with.
