Chapter 58
Joni stepped away from the edge. As she turned, she saw Liz was coming toward her, cheeks pink, hair loose around her face, her expression tight with worry.
Liz stopped, not placing a foot on the rock. She reached out a hand. “You’re too close to the edge!”
Yes, Joni thought. She stared at Liz’s proffered hand, aware of the empty drop at her back and Liz there in front of her. Her heart squeezed tight. Liz. Liz. Liz. Always coming after her.
She stepped away from the edge, taking Liz’s hand, letting herself be drawn into the warmth of her embrace.
“Are you okay?” Liz asked, holding Joni by the tops of her arms and looking right at her.
Liz’s skin was so fresh, her eyes sparkling.
Joni wondered what it’d be like to live in her world.
To have two children who orbit you. To have a husband who grows the vegetables he serves you for dinner.
To have a job where you make a difference in people’s lives.
To have a home to return to, filled with people you love.
Liz’s life had been built on level, fertile ground, and all good things would grow.
Into Joni’s silence, Liz said, “Please, talk to me.”
Oh, Liz, she thought. She could picture her in the GP clinic, hands on the desk, listening so intently, a V of concentration squeezed between her brows as she searched for a solution.
Liz wanted to solve everyone’s problems—but some people couldn’t be fixed.
“I want you to know,” Joni said, “that I love you. I know I can be a shit friend and that my life is chaotic, and I don’t manage things well, but I do love you.”
Liz held her tight. “I know you do.”
“I took the cocaine from your pocket,” Joni said quietly.
She nodded. “It’s okay—”
“But I didn’t snort it. Look,” Joni said, turning and pointing.
She’d thrown the coke off the edge in what was meant to be a symbolic gesture of her starting fresh, getting clean.
Disappointingly, the bag had caught on a ledge about twenty meters down, but still, it was the gesture that was important.
Liz’s face broke into a smile. “Well done!”
She loved Liz for that—her honest, open praise. It would always feel an impossible feat for Joni to juggle two worlds—the band and music and touring and drugs, and Liz, Maggie, and Helena’s settled, full lives. But all Joni knew was that she wanted to try.
“I want to sort myself out. Get clean. Get clearheaded again. Have some time out. Start making good decisions, y’know?”
Liz nodded. “You’ve just started.”
She smiled, the gloom lifting a fraction.
Liz turned toward the view. “We’re at our spot. The geography project.”
“I know!” Joni said, hooking an arm around Liz’s waist.
“The hike might not have worked out as we’d hoped. But we are here. I’m proud of that.”
“Me too.”
Together, they absorbed the soaring view. The mist had started drawing in closer, thick bands of it partially obscuring the river below. It seemed to rise, cold and dense, curling over the mountain face.
Joni realized that—in the time she’d been up here—the visibility had decreased rapidly. “I don’t like the look of that mist. It’s thickening into fog. What’s our plan for getting down the mountain? You think Maggie can hike out of here?”
“Unless we find a phone signal, she hasn’t got a choice,” Liz said.
“Could Erik help? Do we trust him?”
Liz shrugged her shoulders uncertainly.
Joni slipped her phone from her pocket, but when she turned it on, the battery symbol flashed to red. One percent remaining—and still not a bar of signal.
“Let’s check the map quickly. See how far the lodge is,” Liz said.
She passed the phone to Liz, who went to open the map, but her thumb knocked the icon beside it: messages.
Liz went to swipe back—but hesitated.
“Patrick?” she said.
Joni’s attention snapped to the screen. “What?”
“What was Patrick messaging you about”—she peered at the screen, eyeing the time stamp—“three days ago?”
Her blood ran cool. “Oh. He was . . . just saying he’d heard I’d joined the hike.”
Liz was watching her, a small crease between her brows deepening. “But I’ve not spoken to him. He doesn’t know that.”
Joni’s mouth turned dry.
She could see Liz about to click on the message.
“Don’t!”
“Don’t?” Liz said, bemused. “Don’t look at a message my husband sent you?”
“It’s . . . just . . .”
Liz was staring at her, head tipped to one side.
“Please, Liz. Don’t.”
It was too late. Liz had already opened the message and begun to read.
—
Joni felt the blood drain from her face. She went completely still, frozen with dread. She watched Liz reading the messages on her phone, a dozen tiny missives that should’ve been deleted, but that she’d wanted to keep—to give her what? Proof it had happened?
Now she saw how stupid she’d been.
Patrick Wallace. Her first crush at school, with his easy, slow smile that took over his face. A laugh that tipped his head back when it rumbled out. A way of listening, really listening, with his whole body.
She had seen the way Patrick looked at her—but Liz was besotted with him. Liz had spent so many hours talking about Patrick that when Joni finally talked to him herself, she already knew that his favorite band was Green Day, that he liked to run and skate, that he was happiest outdoors.
The summer she and Liz turned eighteen, Liz’s older brother threw a party—and Patrick was there.
He’d been searching for Joni all evening and found her in the garden, smoking alone.
They’d hung out and she remembered he had smelled so clean and fresh—of toothpaste and soap and good laundry detergent.
She knew that you don’t poach your best friend’s crush.
She knew it. But when he leaned toward her, his hand so light on the base of her spine, all her reservation melted beneath the heat of her desire.
Afterward, Maggie had found Joni in tears.
When Joni explained, saying she didn’t know what to do, Maggie had squeezed her hand and said, “You’re going traveling next month. There’ll be hundreds of guys.”
Maggie was right. There were. Patrick was just a boy—and there were so many more out there. It shamed her that she’d needed someone else to tell her to do the right thing.
So she had left, gone traveling.
And when she’d returned, two years later, Liz and Patrick were a couple.
She used to watch the two of them together and think: This is right. They fit. Patrick with his toothpaste smile, and Liz with her good sleep habits and focus and work.
But occasionally, when she and Patrick were alone, there was something there—an energy that she didn’t want to name.
She pretended to herself there wasn’t. And for years it was fine.
He and Liz married and had the twins, and she could see the pride and adoration in his face when he looked at their family.
He loved Liz with every fiber of his being, and so Joni snuffed out that flame with other men, her music, the bright lights of fame.
Until, one day, she realized it was still burning.
Liz had finished reading the messages. She looked up.
Her expression wasn’t steely or furious. She looked scared.