Keep Your Friends Close

by Lucinda Berry

Women bond over secrets. That’s what female friendships are made of—shared secrets. It doesn’t matter if they’re yours or somebody else’s. You want to know the hidden parts of a woman’s life? The things she keeps tucked away from the outside world? Ask her best friend. She knows all her secrets.

Denial was a lovely place. Pretend something didn’t exist, and it didn’t.

All their secrets. And I hoped their secrets destroyed all their lives the same way they’d destroyed mine.

Vile women with disgusting secrets while they cast judgment on others. While they destroyed my life as if it meant nothing.

The sacrifices that I had to make. Every mother had to make them. We always had to choose. Men didn’t have the same burden, so how could he know? How could I expect him to understand? No man really could. They got points just for sticking around and not leaving. Their bar for parenthood was set so low, you could step over it. Ours was impossible to reach, and there was no way to win no matter what you did.

This was exactly how Brooke had felt when she lost Abby. Losing someone you loved turned you into a crazy person, but you didn’t know that unless you’d actually experienced it. She’d been here. She knew. And I’d been a horrible friend about it. Absolutely terrible to her. I didn’t have a clue what it felt like to have your world ripped away from you in an instant. My insides swirled. Karma was indeed a bitch.

just wanted it to happen. Slice the wound open, and let it bleed. We could bleed the poison out of our marriage. We had to.

Every word felt like another blow to the face, like he was physically assaulting me. Smack. Smack. Smack. How long had this been going on? How many years had it been buried inside him? All his counselors. They were always searching for his hidden trauma. The big thing. His core issue. You know the one that makes drug addicts have to get high in the first place? People didn’t need to run away unless there was something to run away from. What if the thing he’d been running away from all these years was me?

We might have similar experiences and interests, but we haven’t walked through life the same way. Not at all. You’ve always been the girl everyone wants. The one everyone’s vying for their attention and their affection. Probably since elementary school. You’re just one of those. I’m not.”

“Oh, I’m sure it was,” she said, her eyes flashing with anger again. “Do you know how much men like to be the hero? To swoop in and save the day? You brought meaning to his miserable failing life. It probably took him two seconds to say yes.”

Don’t ever piss off Whitney. That was one of the first things Kiersten told me when I joined the moms’ club. Step on her toe, and she’ll break your leg.

That’s how she looked now. Like a wrecking ball intent on destroying every person that’d been a part of this pain.

Sometimes it died slowly like a battery draining over time, and other times it happened in an instant. He’d unplugged himself from me. Probably the moment he heard the news. I felt his absence as hard as if we’d been together for ten years instead of ten weeks.

This was when people with faith prayed. I had nothing. Nothing except a cold ball of fear in my gut.

Like God gave me this beautiful person to have a relationship with—someone tailor made specifically for me—and I screwed all that up by lying to her. The lie had set in motion all the other lies, until eventually it all became a house of cards.