The Good Sister Read online

  Jen didn’t agree with all her choices, to be sure, but still . . .

  “Don’t blame yourself. Please.”

  Debbie says nothing.

  “Have you thought about talking to someone about all this?”

  “You mean a shrink?”

  “A therapist, or . . . I don’t know, Father Peter?”

  Now Debbie looks up at her, eyes flashing. “Father Peter? Nicki committed suicide, Jen. You know how the Catholic church views that. Or didn’t you pay attention in theology class back at Sisters?”

  “The church has modified its stance since then.”

  “Really? Good for the church.”

  Me and my big mouth, Jen thinks glumly, wishing she had stuck to what she’d told herself on the drive over: that she was coming here to listen, not to talk or ask questions.

  Guilt can be a dangerous burden; she can’t bear to think of Debbie blaming herself for what happened. It isn’t her fault. No matter what. She and Nicki have always been close, sometimes treating each other more like sisters or friends.

  Back when she and Jen were teenagers, Debbie would swear that she’d never treat her future children the way her mother had treated her. Rosemary Quattrone could be stodgy and strict—even Jen’s mother thought so.

  “You’re so lucky,” Debbie would tell Jen, “that your mom isn’t breathing down your neck every second of every day.”

  “That’s because I’m the fifth kid. She’s too exhausted to breathe down anyone’s neck.”

  But Debbie was an only child. As a teenager, she rebelled against her mother’s hypervigilance with reckless behavior and sneaking around. And now . . .

  Had her own permissive parenting backfired on her?

  Jen hasn’t seen much of Debbie since their daughters went their separate ways. She has no idea what their mother-daughter relationship was like these days; no idea what Nicki was like, whether she’d gotten into drinking and drugs or something . . .

  Something, anything at all, that might explain how she could kill herself out of the blue.

  Something that might set her apart from Carley and Emma, thus reassuring Jen that the tragedy that struck the Oliveras could never in a million years strike the Archers.

  Mr. Sterne waits until the other girls have left the classroom, most of them tossing backward glances at Carley as they go. Some, especially Melissa Kovacs, are still smirking, a few just wear inquisitive expressions, and one—Kendra Hyde—seems to trail behind.

  Carley only glimpses the sympathy in her eyes—or imagines it—for a split second before Kendra disappears into the hall, leaving her alone with Mr. Sterne.

  He closes the door, snuffing the chatter and locker doors slamming out in the hall. The room is suddenly frightfully still. Carley listens to his dress shoes tapping on the tile floor as he walks over to his desk, to her own shallow breathing, and to the distinct click of the minute hand on the big black and white wall clock jumping ahead to the next number.

  Mr. Sterne seems to be taking his time ruffling through papers. She’s going to be late for social studies. Though that’s the least of her worries right now.

  Finally, after removing a set of stapled sheets from a folder, he walks over to her desk. Without a word, he places her math test in front of her.

  An enormous zero is scrawled at the top in angry red ink.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  She tries to swallow past the aching lump in her throat, shaking her head mutely.

  Not waiting for her to find her voice, he says, “Your answers were copied verbatim from one of the students sitting in the row ahead, Miss Archer. Unfortunately, she is not one of the better students in this class, which always makes it easy for me to spot a cheater.”

  No! she wants to protest. That isn’t how it happened! I didn’t copy off Wanda!

  She knows that’s whom he’s talking about: Wanda Durphy, a lump of a girl who plods dismally through academics—and life itself.

  Mr. Sterne goes on, not naming names, “Every mistake that student made was reflected on your own test. She failed miserably with a 58. You failed with a zero because you blatantly violated the academic honesty policy.”

  “But . . .”

  It’s true, of course. She doesn’t dare tell him that she had no intention of cheating, that she didn’t copy off anyone sitting in front of her, that the incorrect answers were fed to her as a malicious prank.

  Does that somehow make what she did less wrong?

  She deserves the zero.

  Yet something spurs her to make a feeble attempt to defend herself. “How do you know I’m the one who copied the answers? How do you know it wasn’t Wa— the other person?”

  “Because that student sits in front of you, Miss Archer. Do you think I wouldn’t have noticed someone facing in the wrong direction long enough to copy the test of the person sitting behind her?”

  She shakes her head numbly.

  “Do you think I didn’t notice your demeanor during the test? You weren’t focused on your work. Every time I looked in your direction, you were sitting straight up, looking around.”

  Silence as he allows her to digest that.

  Then he asks her again what she has to say for herself.

  “Nothing,” she whispers. “Just . . . I’m sorry.”

  In Debbie’s kitchen—easily twice the size of Jen’s large kitchen, with a restaurant-grade six-burner stove, two built-in custom wood-paneled refrigerators, and two dishwashers—Jen stirs a kettle filled with the chicken soup she brought over.

  She insisted on heating up some for Debbie, who keeps shivering and probably hasn’t eaten in a week.

  Staring out the window at swaying bare tree branches against a dismal sky, she finds herself thinking, once again, of Mike Morino. He wasn’t just at the wake on Monday afternoon; he was at the funeral the next day, too. He came alone, wearing a dark suit, and slipped into a pew a few rows ahead of the one where Jen was sitting with Thad and the girls.

  Naturally Thad didn’t give Mike a second glance—why would he? He wouldn’t recognize him; they’d never met. For that, Jen was grateful. The day was trying enough without having to make awkward introductions, or reintroductions.

  She wasn’t going to spend the entire Mass thinking about Mike, about their past, about how badly things had ended between them—or worrying about running into him at Sisters now that she knows his daughter also attends the school.

  Her main focus was the service, from the moment that shiny white coffin came down the aisle, trailed by a shattered Debbie and Andrew barely able to hold each other up.

  But Jen didn’t miss the look Debbie threw over her shoulder when she rose shakily for the first prayer; a look that sought, and then settled on, Mike.

  Jen could see only the back of his head, but she had a clear vantage of the expression in Debbie’s mascara-smeared eyes when they connected. Mingling with the traumatic grief was a fleeting mixture of relief and longing—as though she had found a measure of comfort just knowing Mike was there.

  It was in that disconcerting moment that Jen first suspected something might be going on between the two of them. The more she’s thought about it over the last forty-eight hours, the more certain she’s become.

  Mike wears a wedding band, but he always was a cad—he’d proven that years ago. And Debbie’s marriage is anything but rock-solid.

  Does it honestly matter, in the grand scheme of things, if they’re having an affair?

  Debbie lost a child. Now isn’t the time to judge her. She’s bearing more than enough guilt over her daughter’s death.

  Jen supposes that’s only natural, and yet . . .

  There’s something else.

  Staring down at the pot of bubbling soup, she thinks back to Monday.

  Mike mentioned, at the wake,
that Nicki hadn’t left a suicide note. When she pressed him for more information, he stammered and acted cagey.

  Then, a short time ago in the living room, when Jen asked Debbie about a note, she, too, suddenly seemed evasive.

  What—if anything—does that mean?

  It means it’s none of your business, she reminds herself, and turns down the flame on the burner. It means that as usual, you’re tempted to overstep your bounds. If there’s more to the story, and Debbie wanted you to know, she would have told you.

  With a sigh, she opens a drawer to get a spoon and finds herself staring at an assortment of kitchen knives. This, she knows, is where Nicki found the blade she used to slit her wrists. She grabs a spoon, slams the drawer shut, and opens a cupboard door to get a bowl.

  On one shelf is a bottle of ear infection drops prescribed to Nicole Olivera; on another, the familiar refillable bright pink water bottle Nicki carried back and forth to day camp every day a few summers ago. Carley went to the same camp; they carpooled together. Jen would sit behind the wheel and smile to herself as the girls talked about how they’d be counselors together when they got to high school.

  “I’d want us to be assigned to the elementary school boys,” Nicki would say, “because they’d want to play kickball all day long and we’d get a lot of exercise so we wouldn’t get fat.”

  “No way, Nicks! I hate kickball! I’d rather have the kindergarten girls. We could sit on the picnic tables and teach them how to braid friendship bracelets the way we did when we were little.”

  So many plans will never come to fruition . . .

  So many memories pop up at every turn . . .

  Eyes brimming with tears, Jen takes a bowl from the cupboard and a ladle from a drawer.

  “Debbie,” she calls, “come on in here and have some soup.”

  No reply from the next room.

  “Deb?”

  After a few more moments of silence, Jen turns down the flame and goes to investigate.

  The living room, where she left Debbie, is empty. There’s no sign of her on the first floor. Jen goes to the stairs. “Debbie?”

  Reassured by a muffled response from upstairs, she hesitates, staring at the framed gallery of Nicki’s eight-by-ten school photos diagonally lining the wall above the steps. Should she go up? Or does Debbie want to be alone right now?

  Maybe I should just leave.

  But what if she wants me to stay?

  “Deb, are you all right?”

  Stupid question.

  Shaking her head, Jen pushes aside her uncertainty and goes up the stairs.

  In the upstairs hall, the door to the master suite is ajar. Peeking inside, she takes in the rumpled bed, drawn shades, strewn clothing. Carelessly draped over one of the bedposts is the black crepe dress Debbie wore to her daughter’s funeral. The room is empty.

  Down the hall Jen goes, remembering the sunny May Saturday when she was last upstairs in the Oliveras’ house. She’d come to pick up Carley, who’d slept over and summoned her up to Nicki’s bedroom to see her new furniture.

  “Be quiet,” she whispered in the upstairs hall as they passed the master bedroom door. “Mrs. Olivera is still sleeping.”

  Jen had to grin at that. Debbie was always claiming that she never got out of bed before noon on a Saturday. “I tell Nicki to get herself some cereal and turn on the cartoons,” she told Jen when the girls were preschoolers. “I don’t want to be disturbed for anything less than fire or blood.”

  Now, remembering what happened last Saturday morning, Jen shudders. That sunny May morning seems to have unfolded in a long-ago century, in a distant universe.

  “Look, Mom, isn’t it great?” Carley asked as she showed Jen around Nicki’s spacious bedroom, completely redone in honor of Nicki’s transition from parochial school to high school. Carley, Nicki, and Debbie had kept Jen apprised of every detail of the months-long makeover project. “Don’t you love the colors?”

  The bold hot pink and splashy lime green accents were straight out of Pottery Barn Teen catalog and so was the decor, complete with state-of-the-art electronics, a dorm fridge, boxy lounge seating, and a study nook.

  “And look, this is my bed, right, Nicks?” Carley giddily pulled a trundle from beneath the queen-sized bed. “It’s super comfortable. I wish I could sleep over again tonight.”

  “You can!” Nicki said.

  “Can I, Mom?”

  “Carley, you can’t sleep here every night.”

  “I wish I could.”

  “So do I.” Nicki looked wistful.

  “Well, you guys can be roommates when you get to college.”

  “But Mom, that’s not going to happen until, like, forever!”

  Now, as she peeks into Nicki’s beautiful bedroom, Carley’s words come back to haunt Jen.

  It’s not going to happen, ever.

  Debbie is sitting on the bed hugging a fuchsia throw pillow between her knees and her chest. She looks up, and the ravaged expression in her eyes triggers more tears in Jen’s.

  “I heated up the soup . . .”

  Debbie just gives a little shake of her head as though she doesn’t have the strength to speak. She sits silently stroking the fringe on the pillow, staring off into space again.

  Jen lingers despite feeling as though she’s violating a private moment, not wanting to leave her friend alone unless she requests it.

  If I left and she—if anything happened, I would never forgive myself.

  Does she really think Debbie, sitting here in her dead daughter’s room, is going to do what Nicki did?

  Her gaze drifts around the room, from the bed with the trundle—Carley’s trundle—tucked out of sight to the desk cluttered with open texts, notebooks, and an open laptop as though Nicki might show up any second to finish her homework.

  Following Jen’s gaze, Debbie says dully, “She was supposed to be doing her homework. She was failing earth science and I made her promise she wouldn’t wait until Sunday night to study for the test she had Monday morning.”

  Jen nods, knowing Debbie is talking again about Friday night, perhaps remembering the very last conversation she had with her daughter.

  Spying a book lying on the hutch shelf above the desk, Jen can’t help but recoil when she reads the title on the binding.

  The Virgin Suicides.

  Her old book club read the novel years ago, and she dimly recalls that it was about five teenage sisters who killed themselves.

  Before she can digest the perhaps noncoincidental irony of its presence here, her cell phone rings in the back pocket of her jeans.

  She apologizes to Debbie, pulling it out and checking the caller ID.

  The area code is local, but she doesn’t recognize the number.

  “Deb, I’ll be right back. I’ll just . . .”

  Her friend doesn’t even glance in her direction as she slips out into the hallway with the phone, walking toward the stairs so that her conversation won’t disturb Debbie’s mournful reverie.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Archer?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Kirk Newcomb, the principal at Sacred Sisters. I’m afraid we need you to come right over here.”

  Her heart stops.

  Carley.

  Something’s happened to Carley.

  A grim realization takes hold: this is why Jen hasn’t been able to stop envisioning herself in Debbie’s shoes; why her imagined grief has seemed so real—not as if it were a memory after all, but some kind of premonition.

  Dear God.

  Her liquid legs give out and she sinks down onto the top step.

  “Is Carley . . . ?”

  “She’s been suspended, Mrs. Archer.”

  Swept by intense relief that the message isn’t the one she was dreading, Jen fai
ls to grasp the one that’s been delivered.

  All she can think is that Carley is alive.

  She crosses herself. Thank you, God.

  “Mrs. Archer?”

  “I’m sorry . . . I was just . . . you’re sure she’s all right?”

  Kirk Newcomb clears his throat. “She most definitely is not all right. I think you’ve misunderstood. Your daughter has received a mandatory suspension for violating school policy.”

  Suspended . . .

  Carley?

  “There must be some mistake. Are you talking about Emma?”

  There’s a pause. “Emma?”

  Wait—of course he isn’t talking about Emma. Emma doesn’t go to Sacred Sisters; she goes to Saint Paul’s.

  But . . .

  “I’m sorry,” she tells the principal. “Emma is her sister. I was just . . . I mean, Carley couldn’t have been suspended. She’s not—”

  “Mrs. Archer.” His voice is firm, cutting her off. “We need you to come over here right away. Carley has been suspended. She’s in serious trouble.”

  Serious trouble.

  Suspended.

  And yet, she’s alive. Whatever has happened to her at school, whatever she’s done—no, whatever they mistakenly think she’s done—Jen is certain can be easily cleared up.

  “What happened, exactly, Mr. Newcomb?”

  “Carley breached the school’s code of ethics. We take that very seriously here.”

  The idea of conscientious, rule-follower Carley breaching the code of ethics is so preposterous that she wonders if the principal has her mixed up with another student.

  But before she can ask, she hears a phone line ringing in the background, and Kirk Newcomb abruptly informs her that he has to take another call.

  “All right, I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she tells him, and hangs up, thoughts spinning.

  There’s no way, absolutely no way that—

  “Is everything okay?”

  Startled, she looks up to see Debbie in the hallway behind her. Struck anew by her haggard appearance and the anguish that radiates from her, Jen nods.

  “Everything is okay.”

  Everything that matters, anyway, she thinks as she gets to her feet.