The three mothers who narrate The Best of Friends have been best friends since elementary school and have carefully managed their adult lives to remain as close as possible, living within walking distance of each other in the same small town where they grew up. In junior high, their teachers, alarmed by their unusual closeness, actually called a conference with their parents to complain that the three girls “touched too much, spent too much time doing each other’s hair” (70). Despite (or because of) this intimacy, however, small resentments and betrayals festered: Dani, for instance, often felt like a “third wheel,” frequently “shoved aside” by her two friends whenever they were together. This continues into adulthood: After the shooting, Dani, aware that Kendra and Lindsey have been sitting together for half an hour without texting her, worries that they are talking about her, and frets that their “fourth-grade girl drama” (68) has followed them into middle age. Ironically, Kendra has also felt excluded by the other two as a matter of course, believing that “Lindsey will tell [Dani] things that she won’t tell me” (156). Berry uses this pattern of exclusion to show how unresolved childhood dynamics continue to play out in adult relationships, especially under the pressure of crisis.

The closer the bond between friends, the worse a perceived slight can rankle, and as the three friends entered high school, the potential for hurt feelings only increased. At junior prom, Kendra committed some unspecified offense against Lindsey—one so serious that the women have a tacit agreement never to discuss it. The adult Dani, too, harbors some adolescent bitterness against Kendra, owing to the latter’s marriage to Paul; she still remembers, with chagrin, how she gave her friend permission to date him in 10th grade. Dani also resents Lindsey for giving birth to a third child, Sutton, since it violated the three friends’ “perfect” strategy to have children around the same age. These emotional undercurrents—jealousy, competition, and a longing for equilibrium—highlight how friendship, especially when long-standing, can be as emotionally charged and fragile as romantic relationships.

The tragic shooting of two of their teenage sons reopens many of these wounds, as well as creating fractious new breaches of trust. In the shooting’s aftermath, Dani and her husband, Bryan, enrage the other couples by retaining a lawyer, which Kendra and Lindsey see as a ploy to shift potential blame away from themselves and Caleb and onto their own kids. Before this action, the three friends had agreed to view the shooting as an “accident”; now, as Kendra and Lindsey see it, the one who has lost the least seeks to violate this pact by “lawyering up” and pointing fingers. This betrayal of the pact reflects a turning point, illustrating how maternal instinct to protect one’s child overrides even the oldest and most intimate friendships. Soon, it emerges that Kendra and Lindsey have distrusted Dani for some time, mostly owing to her marriage to Bryan, a selfish bully who easily bends her to his will. Her inability to leave him or even stand up for herself makes her a loose cannon in their view: If, in her marriage, she’s incapable of protecting her own children, she’s unlikely to defend theirs. Dani, aware of their distrust, suspects that her friends will now be careful what they say to her out of fear that it’ll be passed on to Bryan and thence to his lawyer friend.

As the novel unfolds, each mother, determined to guard the reputation of her own son, works to undermine the others, demonstrating the primacy of maternal bonds over friendship, however old or strong. Kendra, who cherishes her reputation as a “cool mom,” questions Dani’s daughter Luna about the shooting without her mother’s knowledge, sparking Lindsey’s realization that “Luna’s trust is more important to [Kendra] than Dani’s” (95). Later, stung by Lindsey’s casual dismissal of her theory about Sawyer and Jacob’s sexual affair, Kendra “throws” the boys’ intimate texts in Lindsey’s face as “proof” that Jacob fired the fatal shot. Lindsey, meanwhile, blames the whole tragedy on Caleb’s “vicious temper.” These scenes expose the delicate balancing act the women perform between grief and blame, each instinctively redirecting suspicion away from their own child, even at the expense of their friends. The fragility of adult friendship is laid bare when loyalty to children comes into direct conflict with loyalty to peers.

Finally, Caleb, devastated by the sight of the once-close friends turning on each other, confesses tearfully to shooting Sawyer. His deadly act, it turns out, was the culmination of years of feeling “shoved aside” and lied to by his two best friends, a betrayal that Dani—and perhaps the others, too—knows all too well. The theme of betrayal thus ripples outward: from parents to teens, from teens to friends, and from past to present, revealing how easily pain can echo across generations and relationships when truth is buried beneath politeness and denial.