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“Take as long as you like. I’ll be here. I’m glad you decided to come,” Rhiannon says with a small smile.
After she’s gone, Lenna carefully places Jacob in the new crib. Amazingly, he doesn’t stir. Then she flops down on the bed with exhaustion. She needs to squeeze her fists again. It’s unthinkable she actually did this. What would her mother think of her bizarre decision? Up and leaving her husband without explanation…and for what? A friend who walked out of her life? She thinks of what Gillian used to say:Why does she have such a hold over you? It’s like you’re obsessed.
Gillian.
The room grows quiet, then.Tooquiet. The rushing sound starts in Lenna’s ears. She presses her fingers to her temples.It’s okay,she tells herself. She’s gotten better at controlling it. But here it comes, regardless. The memories.The two of them, standing on that ravine, the gray morning drizzle. Her twisted smile. Her sneering laugh. The pebbles, scuttling beneath Lenna’s feet. And then, her scream.
“No,” Lenna whispers, holding the sides of her head.“No.”
She rifles through her bag for headphones. Shakily jams them into her phone jack. She needs noise. White noise, brown noise,radio,anything.A different kind of whooshing fills her ears. Lenna jams the heels of her fists into her eye sockets until she sees stars. Eventually, the visions fade, turning gray, then translucent.
But they’re still there. Always lurking, a constant reminder of what she did. This land reveals the truth, Marjorie said—what if it’s true?
4
Lenna
May
Two years before
Rhiannon’s office was in Hollywood on a busy, touristy block. Inside the office building, a portable A/C rattled, and a female security guard with a name tag that readHoneysat behind a high desk, readingVariety.Lenna gave Honey her name, and Honey called Rhiannon’s office to tell her that she’d arrived. When the guard hung up, Lenna moved to hit the button on the elevator, but Honey said, “Actually, darling, she said she’s coming down.”
Lenna stood in the corner to wait. This all felt like a dream. She and Rhiannon had talked constantly since their first serendipitous meeting. Rhiannon sent Lenna jokes and recipes, book recommendations, songs to listen to, and even a funny opinion piece. Articles for how to make ginger bugs. Fake news fromThe Onion.Screenshots from their favorite Twitter account, @BestOfNextdoor.They found the same things funny. They discovered they had the same taste in modern literary fiction. Neither of them had been to Will Rogers State Beach yet, or the Santa Monica Pier, or eaten atGracias Madre, and they both agreed that these were LA staples that they would tackle together.
They’d built up a rapport, so it seemed incredible that this was only the second time they were meeting. Rhiannon was bringing Lenna into her office, hoping that she could get her a job. “You could totally be a gossip writer,” Rhiannon had said to her on the phone.
“Icould?” Lenna was incredulous.
“Yep. You’ve got this. I can tell.”
What can you tell about me?Lenna wanted to ask. No one had made these sorts of pronouncements about her before, not even her most encouraging teachers, not even her mother. Certainly not a friend.
Friendships were tricky for Lenna, always had been. She was more comfortable reading books than actually talking to people, probably because she had spent so many hours at the public library with her mom, where she had worked. Her mother would bring her stacks of fiction that she’d read and loved, and Lenna would devour the books, and after she was done, she and her mom would discuss them together. Characters felt like friends. She didn’t need real people.
In high school, she was friendly with a few other bookish girls who also helped out at her mother’s library. She was content enough, but she lost touch with those girls upon graduation, and when she saw them at her mother’s funeral, they felt like strangers. In college, she made a concerted effort to socialize, joining the school paper, signing up for a running group, even rushing a sorority. But she quit the paper after the first staff meeting, which had been a harrowing experience where everyone was supposed to “pitch” ideas for stories—everyone else was so loud, so full of thoughts. She trained for a half marathon for exactly four days with a group of girls, trying her hardest to fit herself into theirmold. She heard rumors about brutal sorority hazing so ditched that idea, too. There was a group of girls in her dorm that she ended up hanging around with, characters who weren’t particularly memorable; by senior year, she did most things alone.
“You’re just like me,” her mother always sighed good-naturedly. “We’re more suited to being by ourselves. I like to think we’re just more independent than most people. But you need people, too, Len. You needsomeone.”
Still, Lenna’s independence—or loneliness—never truly mattered when her mom was alive;shewas Lenna’s someone. Without her, Lenna felt like an astronaut whose tether had been disconnected from the shuttle. She was just hurtling through blackness. She had no idea when she’d stop.
The elevator dinged, and Rhiannon walked out, her long peasant skirt swinging. She waved to Honey. Her face lit up when she saw Lenna waiting in the corner.
“Hey!” Rhiannon chirped, beaming. “Get here okay?”
“Easy,” Lenna said, then gestured to the elevator. “Should we go up?” Someone named Rich was interviewing her at noon. It was five minutes till.
Rhiannon’s face clouded. “Actually, Rich had to move some things around. Your interview isn’t for another hour. Wanna grab lunch?”
Lenna had taken the afternoon off from her current job, so she had time to linger in the warm sunshine. Rhiannon led Lenna to a little taco place wedged in between a junk store that sold Los Angeles souvenirs and an ungainly CVS. They took their fish tacos to a bench across from the building. Lenna brought out a mini bottle of sunscreen and rubbed some into her part—and then the tops of her hands, for good measure. Rhiannon looked at her fondly. “You’re always prepared, aren’t you?”
“Pretty much,” Lenna said. “I got it from my mom. She used tobe so organized, too.” Then she cocked her head. “What’s your mom like? I’m sorry, I hardly know a thing about your family.”
Rhiannon’s mouth twisted. “Actually, I haven’t seen my mom in years.”
Lenna slowly chewed. It was hard to imagine someone having a living mother and not seeing her. She thought, again, of the tears in Rhiannon’s eyes at H&M. Rhiannon had never explained what brought them on. Lenna kept waiting.
Then Rhiannon reached into her purse and pulled out a prescription bottle with an orange top. Lenna tried not to stare as she shook a pill into her palm. They were small, round, pale yellow. Lenna knew those pills. She’d taken them after her mom died, in order to sleep.
