“I interrupted your dinner,” I said, feeling worse and worse about my invasion. “I’m sorry.”
Lavinia shrugged as if to say, You’re here now, and offered me some soup. “Chicken barley,” she said. “A family recipe.”
“It smells delicious,” I said, accepting.
Limping into the galley-style kitchen, she ladled soup into an eggplant-colored bowl and handed it to me. “Wine?”
“I’m driving.”
Without asking, she poured me a glass of water, carried it to the table, and seated herself. “I assume you’re not here to talk about dresses?” she said with a hint of asperity. She sounded more like the usual Lavinia, and I relaxed a tad.
“No. I wanted to talk about Corinne.”
Lavinia nodded. “There’s something about a funeral that brings out the need to tell stories, isn’t there?”
That wasn’t exactly it, but I nodded. “You were best friends.”
Lavinia spooned up soup and didn’t reply.
“It’s amazing what she did for you after your accident.”
“I wouldn’t call it an ‘accident.’”
“The attack.” I let the words sit, trying to prod her into saying something. No joy. We ate for a moment in silence, and I glugged some water, beginning to wish I’d accepted the wine. Finally, I said, “I read Corinne’s manuscript.”
That brought Lavinia’s head up. She observed me through narrowed eyes. “I heard she never finished it.”
“Oh, she did,” I said. “Her housekeeper-Mrs. Laughlin-took it over after Corinne’s death.”
“Stole it?” Lavinia wasn’t one to pussyfoot around with euphemisms.
“I guess so. She finished it up, added a bit, and sent it off to the publisher. I guess the book’ll come out in time for the holidays.”
“Merry Christmas,” Lavinia said in an unjolly voice.
“She’s got a whole chapter about the trip to London,” I prodded.
Lavinia downed the rest of her wine and rose to fetch the bottle, her limp more pronounced than earlier. “What does she have to say about it?”
“I think you know.” There. I said it. I kept my eyes fastened on Lavinia; her gaze flitted to my face and then refocused on the wine bottle as she poured the last of the straw-colored liquid into her glass.
“I suppose I do know,” she said, and I felt a brief flare of triumph before she continued. “I was there, after all.” Did her steady gaze hold a hint of mockery?
I expressed my frustration by dropping my spoon into my bowl with a clatter. “She admits to paying some thug to attack you.”
Lavinia drew her breath in sharply and said, “Oh, my.”
“‘Oh, my’? You learn your best friend was responsible for an attack that cost you your foot, your ability to dance, and you say, ‘Oh, my’?” Scraping my chair back, I got to my feet. “I think you knew. I think she told you.”
Lavinia faced me calmly, only her whitened knuckles around the wine bottle’s neck betraying tension. “I’m just surprised that she confessed to it in writing,” she said. “I’ve known for years.”
“I don’t believe you.” I knew I sounded like an eight-year-old on the playground, but I couldn’t help it. She was skillfully, deftly, cutting the ground from under my feet. By saying she’d known for years, she was building a defense based on Lissy’s logic: Why would she seek revenge all these years after the fact? “I think she told you not long ago, like she told everyone else about what she was writing. I think you felt angry, stunned, betrayed. I think you went off the deep end, that you…” I found I couldn’t utter the accusation out loud.
“That I killed her?”
I nodded, taken aback by the grief in her voice.
“We buried my best friend today, and you show up here accusing me of causing her death. I didn’t think you were so callous, Stacy.” Before I could respond, she asked, “Have you ever experienced betrayal?”
An image of Rafe in bed with Solange, of her red hair splayed across my pillows, of pale skin, gasps, and the scent of sex, overpowered my mind. I nodded.
As if reading my thoughts, she said, “Oh, men. Men don’t count.” Finally putting down the wine bottle, she walked to the table and gathered up our bowls and spoons, transporting them to the sink. The sound of rushing water played over her next words. “I mean betrayed by a friend. By someone you trusted, someone you shared secrets and dreams with, someone you thought believed in you, supported you, loved you.”
I thought of Danielle, my mom, my good friends from high school and beyond. There’d been the usual sniping and making up, the waxing and wanings of friendship, but no scar-making betrayals. Unless you counted my mom deciding she would rather hang out with her horses than with us. “No.”
She nodded, as if I’d confirmed something. “No. So you can’t possibly hope to understand how I felt when Corinne told… When I discovered that she paid someone to hurt me.”
“No, I can’t.”
“No one could understand who hasn’t been through it,” she half whispered, and I wondered whether she was thinking of juries.
Part of me wanted to comfort her, and part of me wanted to snap, Get over it already. We all have to deal with betrayals of one kind or another, with disappointment, with tragedy. So I stood there like a dolt, not knowing what to do or say.
“Corinne helped me come to terms with the loss of my foot. She set me up in business. She held me while I cried, got me to AA when I took to drinking to deal with the disappointment of never dancing again.” She saw me glance at the wine bottle, and half laughed. “I don’t think I was really an alcoholic-just headed that way. I’ve drunk socially for decades now with no problem. So it was like finding out that my whole life was built on quicksand when she told me. I knew how old-time explorers must have felt upon learning the world was round; their whole worldview was called into question, everything they believed turned overnight into a lie, a falsehood.”
She slid a cutting board and knife into the soapy water, and her hair swung forward as she scrubbed them, hiding her face. “I think I could have forgiven the attack,” she said, her voice little more than the rasp of an autumn leaf against a window. “It was the lying. The years and years of lying. The friendship I believed in, counted on, was a big pile of lies, no more substantial than clouds seen from an airplane window, seemingly so thick and soft they look like they’d cushion you when you jump into them. But when you make the leap, you fall straight through them. To the ground. To death.”
The intensity in her voice creeped me out a bit. “So you ground up some cold tablets and put them in her heart medicine. You were her friend-you knew what kinds of meds she was on. I’m sure it wasn’t hard to find an opportunity to slip the bottle out of her purse and doctor a few pills. Or maybe you did it on a visit to her house, sneaking the bottle out of the medicine cabinet.”
“There was no guarantee it would kill her.”
That sounded perilously close to an admission of guilt. My brief flash of elation was cut short when she turned to face me, a large chopping knife in her hand. My gaze froze to it and I stumbled back a step. Lavinia looked confused for a moment, then startled. “I’m not a murderer! I wouldn’t hurt you.” She laid the knife on the counter and I breathed again, conscious of my heart still going thumpity-thump against my ribs.
I needed to get out of here. I’d pushed as much as I could push, and Lavinia hadn’t cracked. I was completely convinced she’d killed Corinne, but I didn’t have any more solid evidence to offer Lissy than I’d had when I walked in here. “Maurice shouldn’t have to pay for what you did, Lavinia. He’s going to trial, and there’s a good chance he’ll be convicted.”