Chapter 3 - The Name Amanda Had Left Out
Rachel arrived at Daniel’s house before sunset.
Sophie was asleep upstairs with Daniel’s mother sitting nearby.
Amanda had called eleven times.
Daniel had answered none of them.
Rachel placed the pendant on the kitchen table and stared at it for several seconds before touching it.
“I haven’t seen this since we were twenty-three.”
Daniel sat opposite her.
“You knew Amanda?”
Rachel gave him a tired look.
“I knew of Amanda.”
That distinction mattered.
Laura and Amanda Hale had met during their sophomore year at Hollis College in Massachusetts.
They had lived across the hall from each other.
Within months they were inseparable.
They spent holidays together when Amanda avoided going home.
Laura attended Amanda’s grandmother’s funeral.
Amanda helped Laura move into her first Boston apartment.
The pendant had been a birthday gift.
Laura had ordered two.
One contained Amanda’s photograph.
The other contained Laura’s.
“They wore them for about a year,” Rachel said.
Daniel felt sick.
“Amanda told me she’d never met her.”
Rachel nodded.
“I figured.”
“Why?”
“Because if she’d told you the truth, you would’ve asked what happened between them.”
Daniel waited.
Rachel folded her hands.
The friendship had ended badly.
Not because of a man.
Not because of money.
Because Amanda had always compared herself to Laura.
Laura got the internship Amanda wanted.
Laura became engaged first.
Laura seemed to make friends easily.
Amanda’s resentment gradually became cruel.
At a graduation dinner, she repeated something private Laura had told her about their parents’ divorce in front of a table full of people.
Laura walked out.
They barely spoke afterward.
Years passed.
Laura met Daniel.
Married him.
Had Sophie.
Amanda disappeared from the story completely.
Or so Rachel had believed.
Daniel asked the obvious question.
“Did Laura ever reconnect with her?”
Rachel hesitated.
“I don’t know.”
Daniel noticed the hesitation.
“You do know something.”
“I know Laura asked me for Amanda’s email address about two months before her surgery.”
Daniel stared at her.
Laura had undergone corrective heart surgery six weeks after Sophie was born.
A complication had caused a stroke.
She died three days later.
Daniel remembered every hour of that week.
He did not remember Amanda’s name appearing once.
“Why did she want Amanda’s email?”
Rachel shook her head.
“She never told me.”
Daniel looked toward the stairs.
He remembered the first time Amanda met Sophie.
Sophie had been eleven months old.
Amanda had knelt in front of her and started humming a little tune.
Sophie immediately reached toward her.
Daniel had thought it was charming.
Laura used to hum the same tune.
A nonsense melody she claimed her grandmother invented.
May you like
At the time, Daniel had never wondered how Amanda knew it.
He had been too relieved that someone finally made Sophie smile.
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