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The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship

5 Spot

chapter one

When the rumbling Cessna heaved into the sky, Kate Jansen completely lost her nerve.

She seized the strap of her seat belt as the whole plane shuddered. Through the dirty window she glimpsed Jo and Sarah—her two best friends in the world—standing on the tarmac and shrinking swiftly into the distance.

“Now don’t you mind all the rattling, Miz Jansen,” Bubba shouted, patting the metal sides of the plane. “This old girl has brought me safely up and down again a hundred times or more.”

Kate glared at her skydiving instructor. He sat facing her, dressed in his black-and-blue jumpsuit, looking like a giant mutant housefly. He’d just spent two hours shoving her off ever-higher platforms onto thick mats, to teach her the proper falling techniques in the airport’s single hangar. He’d promised her that the jump would conquer her fear of heights, her fear of flying, her fear of everything. He promised her that the experience would completely change her life.

What the hell am I doing?

Breathe. Breathe. It had to be all right. Her friend Rachel Braun had done this a thousand and thirty-six times. Solo. But Kate would be diving with Bubba strapped to her back, hooked to him at six points. Each hook could carry two hundred pounds, he’d told her, and so if four of them snapped off while they were tumbling toward earth, well, a little thing like her shouldn’t worry.

The plane banked. Kate let go of the chokehold she had on her seat belt. She seized the ragged edge of the plywood she sat upon. A thousand little splinters pierced her palms.

She was going to kill Rachel Braun for this. And she would—if Rachel wasn’t dead already.

The plane jerked in sudden ascent, and she cast about wildly, seeking escape—an exit, an out that didn’t involve tumbling through the sky. Her gaze fixed upon a silver cross dangling from the rosary beads clutched in the other skydiver’s hands. His name was Frank, Bubba had told her, a Franciscan monk who jumped a few times a year.

She wondered, in a panic, if a monk could take confession.

But what did she have to confess? She loved her life. She was a thirty-nine-year-old mother of three who had a comfortable home with a cranky heater and flaking plaster walls. Her life overflowed with PTA meetings and Christmas-craft fund-raisers. She baked bread on Sundays, slapping the dough with floured hands. Every other year or so, she’d do a twenty-mile walk for one of Sarah’s charities.

She loved, most of all, her kids, whose faces she could summon up like spirits. Tess, trying to be cool while sucking on a hank of hair, her cropped hoodie clinging to her rib cage; Michael, moody and dark and brooding like Heathcliff; and Anna, little Anna, who gave small wet kisses like sparks.

Only a few hours ago, she’d signed fifteen pages of a contract that absolved the entire universe of any responsibility for loss of property, loss of limb, loss of life. It prevented anyone from even asking about her death—the death that would affect her three little beneficiaries, and her husband, too—who didn’t know that she was currently approaching a cumulus cloud hovering a mile above the earth.

Suddenly the photographer stood up. He grasped the handle of the door just opposite the pilot’s seat and yanked it open to a blast of sunlight and freezing air.

Ohmygod. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod—

“Don’t go cold on me now, Miz Jansen,” Bubba yelled over the roar. “Let’s go over procedures one more time.”

I can’t do this.

“Remember, breathe through your nose.”

I’ve got three kids to pick up from school this afternoon.

“We’ll hook up, walk to the ledge, and somersault out.” Bubba leaned in closer, so she could better hear the bellow of his voice. “Then get into the arch position right away.”

The Franciscan stood up, palming the sides of the open door. He yelled something over his shoulder, and then made the sign of the cross. Papers on the pilot’s clipboard rattled—two tore off and reeled into the wind.

Frank was gone.

Holy shit.

“C’mon, Miz Jansen.” Bubba grinned as he reached over and unbuckled her seat belt. “Let’s do this.”

“No…” The wind sucked the word from her mouth. “No…”

But Bubba didn’t hear her. He hauled her up with those ham-sized fists and then twisted her around like he was going to take her by the backside. She struggled to speak as she stood there with her knees buckling, bracing herself against the back of the plane, while he pressed his long, hard body against her and hooked her up to him—six little hooks.

She forced air past her throat. “I’ve changed… my mind.”

“Ten minutes.” He moved against her. “Ten minutes, and we’ll be on the ground.”

Kate’s foot slipped off the plywood into a gully where the seats should have been. Something imploded inside her, shooting sparks to her extremities, making her cramp into a curled ball of terror, held up by six little hooks. She seized a beam of molded metal above a window, shouting, “You said… I could change my mind.”

“You’re not going to chicken out on me, are you, Miz Jansen?”

“I’m just… a housewife!”

“Right now you’re a sassy thirty-nine-year-old woman,” he bellowed, “with a big country boy strapped to your back.”

“I’ve got three kids—”

“Congratulations. You must be a heck of an athlete, keeping those abs of yours.”

“—I’ve got responsibilities.” She couldn’t breathe, and all the yelling hurt her throat. “I’ve got obligations. But Rachel died—she’s dead.”

Rachel, Rachel, why did you ask me to do this?

“Hey,” the pilot barked. “We’re over the drop zone! Get out!”

“Miz Jansen, you’ve got to make a decision now.”

“Rachel… Rachel died,” Kate stuttered, her whole body shaking. “That letter should have had instructions for her funeral. Dirty songs to sing over her grave. Not… not this.”

Bubba yelled, “You opting out?”

“Yes!”

“You sure?”

“Yes!!”

Bubba sighed. She rose and fell upon the weight of it.

“Okay,” he said. “We’re done.”

Kate stilled. She kept her grip on the molding, slippery now with sweat. She heard her breathing, felt the slight banking of the plane. “Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Really.” Bubba worked the hooks. He spoke close to her ear so he could make himself heard without yelling. “You think you’re the first to give up, honey? Hell, no. Happens all the time.” He slipped the first hook free. “ ’Specially with women like you. The ones staring...