Chapter One
Nothing is wrong.
My life is full in all the ways women are taught to measure it.
A beautiful house. A good marriage. Children upstairs while friends drink wine in the kitchen below them.
If you stand in my kitchen this afternoon, you would think we are lucky.
We are.
A horn sounds from the driveway.
I know it is Sloane before I reach the window because no one else announces herself in a neighborhood where people apologize for closing car doors too loudly.
She is halfway out of the passenger side of the SUV by the time I open the front door. Sunglasses are pushed into her hair. One strap of her bag has twisted beneath the other, and she is trying to fix it while walking.
Ben is at the back of the SUV pulling out overnight bags. Maisie is already across the lawn, running toward Hallie. Otto follows several steps behind, furious that his legs have failed to understand the urgency.
Sloane reaches me at the bottom of the steps and folds herself around me.
Her sunglasses catch in my hair. We separate just enough to free them, laughing, and then she hugs me again.
Sixteen years have made this body familiar. The small bones beneath her shoulders. The perfume she has worn since we were teenagers. The way she holds on one second longer when she has missed me and does not intend to say it first.
Something hits the floor upstairs.
Ben looks toward the ceiling.
Sloane does not let go. “They will figure it out.”
“That confidence is why no one lets you supervise anything breakable.”
She pulls back. “I supervise children.”
“Exactly.”
By the time we carry the bags inside, all four children have disappeared. Shoes lie beside the stairs. Fingerprints cover the glass doors. The kitchen is clean because people are coming over. The rest of the house has refused to participate.
Sloane stops at the island and lays both palms on the counter.
“This is disgusting.”
“Thank you.”
“No one needs this much counter space.”
“You would fill it in a day.”
“Two hours.” She drags one hand over the stone. “Your house even smells expensive.”
“It is a candle.”
“Let me have this.”
I pour two glasses of wine. She takes mine before I finish hers.
“That one was for me.”
“You can have the other one. You live here.”
“You are a terrible guest.”
“I am not a guest.”
She says it lightly. I hear the truth beneath it anyway.
There were years when she did not need an invitation to anything in my life. She had a toothbrush in my bathroom before she had one that stayed at her own house. She had a drawer in my first apartment and a key to the second. She drove forty minutes to bring me shoes after I broke a heel before a college formal, then sat on a bathroom floor while I cried over something that had nothing to do with the shoe. She never asked me to admit that.
Marriage, children, work, and distance did not end the friendship. They made it less visible. We still knew the important things. We had simply stopped witnessing most of the ordinary ones.
The ordinary things used to be the whole friendship.
I knew which professor would make her cry before she admitted the class was difficult. She knew when I had argued with my mother from the way I closed a cabinet. I could tell whether she had slept by how much eyeliner she wore. She could tell whether I liked a man by how carefully I insisted I did not.
We met when we were thirteen. Seventh grade. Sloane sat down at my lunch table without asking whose seat it was, took a fry, and said her name like I should already know it. I did not. She kept coming back until I did. She borrowed a hoodie in October and never returned it. I kept her anyway.
By Halloween she was sleeping at my house on school nights. Tuesday. Thursday. Then whole weeks if her house was loud. Her backpack lived by my door. Her alarm went off in my room. My mother packed two lunches and did not ask questions. We got on the bus from my driveway. A teacher called us sisters once. Neither of us corrected her.
That is the trench. Not one disaster. Years of the same bed, the same bus, the same girl in my doorway who did not wait to be invited.
High school was her mouth on my cheek for every picture. Pink paint on our faces at Friday night games. Birthday dinners on a suburban sidewalk in heels we could barely walk in. The two of us in the front seat with the visor mirrors down, putting on eyeliner like the night could not start until we were both finished. She posted us like a claim. Love bug. Best friend. Mine. I let her. It was love. It was also how she stood in a room: on me, with her hand already there.
When Kith came out we turned on location sharing the way we did everything else. As a joke. Then as a habit. Then as the kind of closeness that does not require asking. For years her pin found me in parking lots and airports and once, drunk, on a street we no longer go to. It felt like being known.
At twenty, we could lose an entire night to the same conversation. At twenty four, our lives began requiring calendars. By thirty, friendship became photographs of children, hurried calls between appointments, and promises to plan something soon.
Soon became a year.
Then another.
Nothing dramatic happened. That is the part people do not explain about distance. It rarely announces itself. It collects in missed dinners and calls answered with can I call you back. It turns a person who once knew what was in your refrigerator into someone who asks whether your children still eat pasta.
Sloane never became a stranger.
She became someone I loved without always knowing what her Tuesday looked like.
Hallie calls our names from upstairs.
Sloane answers before I do.
“Coming.”
She leaves the cheese open on the island and climbs the stairs as if she still remembers which step creaks.
She does.
The girls have emptied Hallie’s closet onto the bed. Shirts, dance clothes, and two dresses I thought no longer fit form a bright pile between them.
“We are switching rooms,” Hallie says.
“You are not,” I tell her.
Maisie holds up a yellow sweater. “Can I have this?”
“It is Hallie’s.”
“She does not like it.”
Hallie says, “I hate yellow.”
Sloane looks at me. “That is difficult news for the sweater.”
“Put everything back.”
Both girls begin explaining why the pile exists.
Sloane sits on the floor and starts folding while they talk. Not because I ask. Because a mess is present and her hands prefer a task.
I sit beside her.
“You fold wrong,” I say.
“There are no wrong folds.”
“That is why your drawers are chaos.”
“My drawers are creative.”
She hands me a shirt folded into a shape that cannot survive being lifted.
“Your turn.”
We sort while the girls negotiate ownership. Hallie keeps the yellow sweater because Maisie wants it. Maisie takes a blue dress after announcing she never liked yellow either.
Connor enters with Otto behind him.
“We need tape.”
“For what?”
“A thing.”
“What thing?”
“A secret thing.”
Otto is holding two paper towel tubes and a pillowcase.
Sloane gives me a look.
“Garage drawer,” I tell them. “Ask Wyatt.”
They leave at a run.
“You gave directions toward the tools,” Sloane says.
“I gave directions toward an adult.”
“Excellent distinction.”
Hallie holds up the blue dress. “Can Maisie sleep here tonight?”
“That was already the plan.”
“Can she sleep here every weekend?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because she lives somewhere else.”
Maisie says, “Not very far.”
“Far enough that her parents would notice.”
Sloane folds a pair of leggings.
“Maybe we should move closer.”
The sentence is casual.
I look at her.
“You have said that before.”
“I meant it before too.”
“Ben works across the county.”
“He drives all day. Another twenty minutes will not injure him.”
“The children have school.”
“Children survive new hallways.”
Hallie and Maisie stop talking.
They understand the shape of possibility before either of us has offered it.
“Are you moving here?” Hallie asks.
“No,” I say.
“Maybe,” Sloane says at the same time.
The girls scream.
I cover one ear.
Sloane laughs and lets them climb over her.
“Nothing is decided,” I tell everyone.
“Everything starts that way,” Sloane says.
The girls begin arguing over which street Sloane should choose.
Now she sits at my island eating shredded cheese from the bag and telling me about a woman in her medical sales course who corrects everyone while being wrong.
“Being condescending should require accuracy,” she says.
“Put that on a pillow.”
“Buy it for me.”
“No.”
Wyatt comes in through the garage carrying a screwdriver.
“Do we have plumber’s tape?”
“I do not know what that is.”
“You used it last month.”
“I have never used anything called plumber’s tape.”
He opens the drawer beside the refrigerator. Sloane leans over to inspect the contents.
“That is batteries,” she tells him.
“It is supposed to be tape.” Wyatt moves three loose screws and a pen that stopped working long enough ago to become permanent.
“I like that you believe every drawer has a purpose.”
“It did before everybody started putting things in them.”
I throw a dish towel at him. He catches it against his chest without looking up.
“Helpful,” he says.
“I try.”
Ben appears in the doorway. “Are you coming?”
Wyatt finds the tape beneath a packet of birthday candles and holds it up.
Ben studies the drawer. “Was that not supposed to be in the garage?”
“Depends how broadly you define garage.”
Ben decides the answer does not deserve more of his life and walks away. Wyatt follows him.
Sloane watches them go.
“He still does that.”
“What?”
“Acts like every loose object in your house personally disappointed him.”
“He likes systems.”
“Yeah.”
I take the cheese from her and close the bag.
“You came here to insult my house?”
“I came here because I missed you.”
The answer is so direct I look at her.
She lifts my wine to her mouth.
“Also your house.”
“There she is.”
By evening, pizza boxes cover one end of the island. The children have dragged blankets into the living room and turned the sectional into a ship with rules that change each time an adult tries to sit down.
We eat on the patio because Sloane says the weather is too good to waste inside and because Ben has already carried the pizza boxes through the back door before anyone votes.
The children take the table. Sloane sets plates down in front of Hallie and Connor, then Maisie and Otto. The adults sit around them in patio chairs with paper plates balanced on our knees.
Hallie and Maisie are old enough to have secrets and young enough to whisper them at a volume everyone can hear. Connor keeps taking the pepperoni from Otto’s slices and replacing it with pieces of crust. Otto notices the missing pepperoni but not the exchange.
“He is robbing him,” Sloane says.
“Otto keeps eating the crust.”
“That does not make it legal.”
Ben looks at her. “You stole three fries from my plate.”
“Marriage creates shared assets.”
“Not food.”
“Especially food.”
Wyatt passes me a napkin before I ask.
Sloane sees it.
“That,” she says.
“What?”
“He knows you need a napkin.”
“There is sauce on my hand.”
“Ben would watch me wipe it on my pants.”
Ben nods. “Experience has taught me she will.”
Sloane points at Wyatt. “How long did it take you to learn her?”
Wyatt considers the question.
“I am still learning her.”
The answer is good.
He knows it is good only after Sloane makes a sound of approval.
“That was disgusting,” Ben says.
“You could try saying something kind about your wife.”
Ben looks at Sloane.
“You have excellent balance when stealing food.”
She throws a napkin at him.
It lands in his drink.
The children laugh hard enough that Otto finally notices Connor has taken the pepperoni.
The argument that follows requires three adults, both pizza boxes, and a demonstration of how toppings work.
I watch Sloane kneel between the boys.
She does not tell Connor he is bad. She tells him the joke stopped being funny when Otto did not understand it. She does not tell Otto to stop crying. She puts the missing pepperoni back on his plate and waits.
Connor apologizes because Sloane gives him enough silence to find the word himself.
She has always known how to make space feel like direction.
That is one of the things I forgot while we were apart.
After dinner, the children go inside and the four of us remain on the patio.
The sky turns the flat blue that comes before dark. Sprinklers begin somewhere beyond the fence. A dog barks twice, then gives up.
Ben tells Wyatt about a leak beneath their kitchen sink. Wyatt asks questions with enough seriousness that Sloane looks at me and rolls her eyes.
“They met six hours ago,” she says.
“They have met before.”
“Not like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like men who have discovered they both own wrenches.”
Ben hears her.
“I own several.”
“Thank you for proving my point.”
Wyatt says, “The number matters.”
Sloane turns to me. “We made terrible choices.”
I make a sound that is not a joke. I do not have one.
Ben says, “You followed me into a bathroom once.”
“I needed to wash my hands.”
Nobody picks it up. The sink story dies in the dark.
Wyatt looks at me.
For a moment, his face has the same expression it had on our second date when I laughed so hard at something stupid that I snorted into my drink. Surprise first. Then pleasure at being the person close enough to see it.
He reaches over and rests his hand on my knee.
Nothing about the gesture is unusual.
That is why I love it.
Sloane follows my eyes and looks down at Wyatt’s hand.
Then she looks at Ben.
He is still arguing about the sink.
She smiles anyway.
Later, while the men take the trash out and the children argue over sleeping arrangements they will not use, Sloane stands beside me at the sink.
“I want this,” she says.
“A sink full of cups?”
“This part.”
She gestures toward the house.
The children overhead.
Wyatt laughing in the garage.
Ben asking where the extra bags belong even though he is already carrying them toward the wrong cabinet.
“You have this.”
“Not like this.”
“What is different?”
She rinses one cup, then another.
“Everything in my life feels separated. School is one place. Clients are another. The children have three different schedules. Ben works when everyone else sleeps and sleeps when everyone else wants him awake. I spend all week moving between things.”
“That is adulthood.”
“I know.”
“You hate when I say that.”
“I hate when you make adulthood sound like a condition I need to accept.”
I hand her a towel.
“What do you want?”
She looks toward the doorway.
“I want the pieces closer together.”
The answer sounds simple enough that I believe it is.
Ben and Wyatt stand beside the patio doors discussing an irrigation problem neither of them has been asked to solve. Ben points through the glass. Wyatt crouches to examine the frame, although it has nothing to do with irrigation.
Sloane and I stay in the kitchen.
She tells me she is thinking about finishing the medical sales course sooner than she planned. I tell her the promotion at work is more responsibility wearing the costume of praise. She asks whether Wyatt and I are good. I say yes. She waits until the silence makes me tell her we have been fighting about how often I answer email from bed.
“So you are good,” she says.
“That was my first answer.”
“Your first answers are for strangers.”
Connor comes through the kitchen with a red juice pouch held above his head. He is looking behind him when he runs directly into Sloane.
Juice spills down the front of her shirt.
Connor freezes.
Sloane looks at him, then at herself. She gasps and covers her chest with one hand.
“You killed me.”
His mouth opens. No sound comes out.
I hit her arm with the dish towel. “He thinks you are serious.”
The joke leaves her face.
“Oh, Con. No.” She drops to his height. “I was kidding. Look at me.”
He does not.
Sloane takes his hand and presses it against her forearm. “Still warm.”
Connor looks at his palm, then at her shirt.
“It is juice,” she says. “And this shirt was already having a bad day.”
His shoulders loosen. He throws both arms around her neck with enough force to rock her forward.
She settles onto one knee and holds him until he lets go first.
I take the empty pouch from the floor and wipe the cabinet. Behind me, Ben asks if the shirt can be saved. Sloane tells him to respect the dead.
I soak it in the laundry room sink and give her one of my sweatshirts.
She comes downstairs with the sleeves pulled over her hands.
“I am keeping this.”
“You say that every time you borrow something.”
“And yet you keep lending me things.”
“It cost twelve dollars.”
“Then you will not miss it.”
Connor lifts one side of the blanket ship so she can sit beside him. She climbs inside without asking what role she has been assigned. Otto is asleep across her lap before the next movie starts.
I carry napkins no one requested into the living room and find the last open section of couch occupied by a plastic grocery basket, two stuffed animals, and one shoe no child claims.
Sloane pats the floor beside her.
“I saved you a seat.”
“That is the floor.”
“Do not embarrass me in front of the crew.”
I sit.
Hallie announces that the ship is sinking. Connor says it cannot sink because it is inside. Maisie objects to both conclusions. For several minutes, no one asks an adult to decide who is right.
The night goes later than we plan. The children collapse in different rooms. Ben carries Otto toward the car while Wyatt searches upstairs for a missing shoe and calls down descriptions that become less useful each time.
“Small,” Wyatt says. “Probably belongs to a child.”
“Excellent work.”
He comes down holding a shoe.
Sloane looks at it. “That is Otto’s.”
Wyatt looks toward the front door, where Ben is waiting with Otto against his shoulder.
“I was not given enough information.”
“You were given the word shoe,” I say.
“And I found one.”
Sloane laughs and walks toward the door with my sweatshirt still on.
“You forgot your shirt,” I call after her.
She glances back. “I will get it next time.”
At the threshold, she stops.
“I forgot how much this house feels like home.”
I think she means me.
End of Chapter One from The Things We Can’t See by Fai Vandy