The Graduation Trap novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Just How You Like It

Daphne arrives at the motel with food and tea and begs Joanna to go back for the house, until a message from Cynthia says the note is called.

The Pinewood Motor Lodge gave me room nine and did not charge me anything.

The man at the desk said Sullivan's name before I said it.

I sat on the edge of a bedspread the color of old tea and held my phone in both hands.

At half past two there was a knock.

Daphne stood in the doorway with a paper bag, a thermos and her coat over her hospital scrubs.

"I came straight from the car," she said. "I've been circling for an hour. Oh, Jo."

She dropped everything on the dresser and pulled me into her arms.

She smelled of lavender hand soap, the way she had since we were roommates, and I held on to her longer than I meant to.

"I'm so sorry," she said into my hair. "I'm so sorry. I should have been at the table."

"It's not your fault."

"It feels like it is."

She sat me down on the bed and unpacked the bag.

There was soup, a roll, and the little orange cookies from the bakery on Elm that I liked.

She had remembered all of it.

She poured tea from the thermos into the motel's paper cup and put it in my hands.

"Drink. You're shaking."

I drank.

It was too sweet, the way she always made it, and I didn't say so.

"Tell me what you heard," she said.

I told her.

I told her the corner, the phone, the promise about the house.

She listened with her hand pressed flat against her mouth.

When I finished, she let out a long, shaky breath.

"That was me," she said.

"What?"

"On the phone. It was me, Jo." Her eyes filled. "I had a panic attack in the cab. The traffic, the rain, tonight. You know how I get. I couldn't breathe, and I called Braden to talk me down."

"At the table you said you weren't even there."

"I couldn't say it in front of Cynthia. She'd have made it about me."

"He told you not to cry. I heard him."

"I was."

"He said he'd keep me in that house until we were both old."

"I begged him to say something like that." She pressed her fingers to her eyelids. "I was so scared you'd leave him and I'd lose both of you. I told him to promise you'd stay. I didn't think he'd say it out loud like that. I didn't think you'd be standing there."

It was smooth.

It was so smooth that I wanted to believe it, because believing it meant I hadn't just thrown away five years over a misunderstanding about my best friend's nerves.

"You told him to promise I'd stay in the marriage," I said.

"I told him I couldn't stand to lose you." She took my free hand. "Please don't hate me."

"I don't hate you."

"Then come home with me, just for tonight. Or go back to the house and let Cynthia cool off. He'll apologize. I'll make him."

"I'm not going back."

She looked at me for a moment longer than I expected.

"You don't have the house without him," she said gently. "You know that."

"I know."

"Then why not give it a week? Let it settle. Let him say sorry in private, where it's easier."

"Daphne, I dropped my ring in a glass of champagne in front of his mother."

A small laugh broke out of her, wet and surprised.

"You did. Honestly, Jo, I've never been so proud of you."

She wiped her face and sat back.

Then, in the same warm voice, she said, "Did you see anyone tonight? After you left?"

I held the paper cup.

"No," I said.

I didn't know why I said it.

"Good. Because Sullivan Brennan is back in Hollis." She said his name as though it cost her something. "He bought that bar across from the Larkspur. Braden didn't want you to know."

"Why not?"

"He didn't want you scared. You were always so anxious about that night." She squeezed my fingers. "If you ever see him, you walk the other way. Promise me."

"I promise."

It was the second lie I had told her in five minutes.

She picked up my phone from the bedspread and plugged it into the wall by the door, across the room.

"Sleep," she said. "Don't look at it. I'll stay until you're out."

She turned off the lamp and lay down beside me in her coat, the way she had when my mother died.

I lay with my eyes open in the dark.

She was warm, and her breathing evened out almost at once.

I thought about Sullivan's voice saying that he had never touched her.

I thought about the corner and the rain.

Neither version fit, and I was too tired to make them.

I slept.

When I woke, the room was gray, and the bed beside me was empty, with the thermos gone from the dresser.

My phone was buzzing across the room on its cord.

I crossed the carpet in my bare feet.

It was an email, sent at six in the morning from the Archibald family attorney, copied to Cynthia.

Pursuant to the note on 41 Alder Street, the lender has called the full balance. The property must be vacated within thirty days.

Under it, in my mother-in-law's own typing, was a single line.

You should have sat down.

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