“Good enough that I’m moving back to my place this weekend. The doc cleared it.”
“Aren’t you going to miss your mom?” Harper teased.
“Me moving out is the only way we’ll both live.”
“Are you sleeping better? Is the pain still keeping you up?”
He shrugged and the pause was so long Harper thought he wasn’t going to answer her.
“Sometimes it’s like my mind can’t tell the difference between what’s happening and what’s happened. It’s like this blur between history and present, and sometimes the only thing that clears it is pain,” Aldo said.
“Maybe that’s why you push your therapy so hard?”
“Maybe that’s why I push everything so hard.”
***
Summer was in full swing in Benevolence. Harper’s weekends were filled with cookouts and dog walks and running, which was getting marginally less painful. After she hit her first full mile, Aldo bought her a sleeve for her cellphone and downloaded a 5k training program on it for her.
She still wasn’t getting the blissful happy brain from running yet, but the relief she felt when each run was over was enough to keep her lacing up her running shoes almost every day.
Her latest project was sprucing up the outside of Luke’s house. She had repainted the banister and railing on the wraparound porch and was slowly adding flowers around the existing greenery.
Today she was going to tackle the overgrown groundcover on the side of the house that was starting to climb up the siding.
She dressed in gym shorts and one of Luke’s old paint-splattered t-shirts, grabbed a baseball hat, and went to work.
The groundcover proved a formidable opponent with deep roots and long runners, but Harper enjoyed the physical labor.
The summer sun teased a trickle of sweat down her back and Harper sat back on her heels to take a water break. She had cleared more than half of the long bed already. If she could keep on pace, tomorrow she could mulch.
She wondered if Luke would be proud of the care she was taking with his home. She wanted him to come home to a smoothly running office and household.
At work she had finished converting all their client and jobs data to a new system that integrated with their accounting software, cutting the paperwork down for everyone. She also convinced Frank and Charlie to host a monthly staff meeting where everyone from foremen to high school interns participated in discussing project updates and roadblocks.
At home, the porch was painted and offset by colorful planters overflowing with summer flowers. With Claire and Sophie’s help, the vegetable garden in the back yard was really taking shape. Inside, the staircase had shed its skin of dingy age and now shone like new.
Last week, she had cleaned all of the windows inside and out. She had nearly given James a heart attack when he came over to mow the lawn and caught her on the extension ladder she found in the garage, busily wiping away the winter’s grime from the second floor glass.
He proceeded to show her that replacement windows hinged open inside for easy, ladder-free cleaning and then buried the ladder in the back of the garage under a canoe and several bags of potting soil.
“You’re not a klutz,” Luke had once told her. “But you invite trouble.” He must have relayed that message to his brother.
The only windows still to clean were the basement level. Harper swiped her fingers through the grime on the glass closest to her. It looked like several years’ worth of dirt. On the other side of the glass, was a plastic tote at window level that she could just make out.
Harper frowned. She didn’t remember any window height shelving on this wall in the basement.
Unless ...
She found a window to Luke’s secret room.
She hastily wiped away more grime and peered through the glass. The room was empty except for a set of metal shelves with boxes and totes.
Harper sat back on her heels. Whatever Luke had in that room under lock and key was important. Maybe a better woman would have let it go and respected his space and secrets, but a better woman wasn’t here. Harper was.
The basement window wouldn’t open from the outside, so she hurried inside to examine the lock on the door.
Where would Luke keep the key? Harper paced the floor.
