Page 105 of Before We Fell

“Well get moving faster!” came a shout from the other side of the door. I slid on my sock-covered feet and dropped my head. Brooke. Her voice was unmistakeable even through a storm glass door and my front door.

I moved the rest of the way, opened the door, and was promptly pushed back by her barreling into my house with the force of a rhinoceros.

“Geez,” I groaned, closing the door. “Come in, come in, how lovely to see you, make yourself at home, please.”

Behind her, Kelly skipped in, looking as fakely happy as I’d ever seen her. “Thanks, we will.” She swung two bottles of wine in the air. “Come and join us.”

Brooke sniffed, scrunching her nose in an exaggerated way. “Or wait. Shower first then wine. It reeks in here. And you look like shit.”

“Yeah well, life feels pretty shitty.”

“We hear that, sister,” Kelly said, moving to my kitchen like she’d been in it every day of her life. To my recollection, she’d never actually been in my house. But whatever. Kelly and Brooke were bulldozers of the most loving kind.

Friends. Good friends. They were just nutty. And obviously Kelly knew everything considering Ryan had been the responding officer that night.

Brooke walked to me, placed two hands on my shoulders and turned me toward my bedroom. She walked me toward my room, singing all the way. Literally. “Come on, come on, let’s wash the grime right off of you, and then we’ll drink and talk about what’s going on with you.”

I gave her a look over my shoulder.

“So I sing to get my students to do what I want them to. Sue me.”

“God you’re weird,” I muttered, yet I was letting her push me forward. Perhaps her singing worked.

I found myself unable to resist her in some oddly comforting hypnotic way.

She shoved me into the bathroom and grinned from the doorway. “Go on. I’ll get you some clean clothes while you’re in there. Take your time.” She pretended to sniff something foul in the air. “Please. Take all the time you need.”

I grabbed a washcloth from my counter and chucked it at her face. “Go away.”

I slammed the door shut. That’d be the end of her cheerfulness.

“Only as far as the kitchen. We need to talk, woman!”

Never mind.

The shower was divine.Squeaky clean and with my hair thrown up into a bun at the top of my head, I slathered on some lotion when I got out, and pulled on the flannel pants and soft, henley pajama top Brooke had left for me.

I appreciated that she knew I’d crave comfort. They were both in the living room when I shuffled into the kitchen area, two different bottles of wine opened on my counter, and an empty glass next to them.

They weren’t even my wineglasses. These were sea glass green, so pretty and dainty. Kelly must have brought them with her.

Pouring myself some of the white, I put it in the fridge when I was done and went to the couch, curling into a corner of my blue chaise, pulling a blanket over my lap with me.

“So, what’s with the intervention?”

“It’s not an intervention,” Kelly said. “We’re worried about you and wanted to check on you. Friends do that, you know? And you’ve gone radio silent.”

“Having the news broadcasted around town of my brother and what extreme trash he is isn’t exactly anything I wanted anyone to know. Not even my friends.”

“We get that,” Brooke said. She sat forward on the couch, her brown eyes as kind and happy as always. Her hair danced across her shoulders as she spoke, head bobbing and shoulders wiggling. Brooke was someone who could never sit still. Even when she spoke it always seemed like she was so full of life, her entire body had to get into whatever she was saying. “But who your brother is, or what he’s done, well that doesn’t say anything about you, you know?”

I shot her a baleful look. Right. In theory.

When you learn he killed the town’s beloved farmer’s daughter, it became a different story.

But because I couldn’t resist, and because curiosity was going to kill me eventually, I took a sip of mine and asked, “What’s everyone saying?”

Kelly’s eyes slid toward Brooke. Back to her glass before slowly lifting to mine.

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