“Really?”
“I don’t think he knows what he feels for you or how deep he feels it. But there’s a reason he asked you to stay. And it wasn’t to take care of his house or run the office. He looks at you with this ... softness. He needs you.”
Harper poured more soda in her glass. She wanted it to be true. But craving the security of being loved made her so vulnerable.
“It breaks my heart to know that he believes he’s responsible for Karen’s death,” she said, changing the subject.
Sophie nodded and drank deeply. “It was an accident. Karen didn’t cross the centerline on purpose. The other driver didn’t hit her on purpose. It was just a horrible accident. You can’t take ownership of it. You can’t place blame for it.”
“But Luke did. Joni did.”
“Some people just handle loss like that. How about you? How do you handle not having parents?”
Harper shrugged. “That’s different. I was seven. And after a long time of not understanding you’re just kind of forced to accept and move forward.”
“I’d think a seven-year-old learning to cope is harder than an adult. An adult has reason and logic. They can understand the concept of never seeing someone again.”
“There’s no logic behind death and loss,” Harper argued. “Trying to reason it out can take you to some pretty dark places. Guilt. Blame. Hiding from your pain by distracting yourself with work, booze, sex, shopping.”
“You’re right. Being an adult sucks.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Harper raised her glass to Sophie.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
She was just curious, Harper told herself. That’s why she was detouring to the cemetery instead of going straight home. Her talk with Sophie still hung heavy in her heart.
She glanced down at the tiny bouquet of wildflowers she had picked up at the farmer’s market. They were a summery impulse buy while she waited in line to pay for her strawberries. After all, you couldn’t go empty-handed to meet the woman who still had Luke’s heart.
The cemetery was a grassy stretch of park a few blocks back from the center of town. She thought back to all the times she and Luke must have driven past and wondered if she had missed him gazing out the window for his wife.
His wife. The mother of his child.
To be starting a new life, a family, only to have it all taken from you. Harper’s heart ached.
She put the car in park and climbed out. She knew the general direction of the grave thanks to a morbid but helpful website dedicated to mapping cemeteries. While summer had blanketed Benevolence in a dry heat, the grass here stayed vibrantly green.
Harper wandered down the skinny asphalt path that wound its way through the park. She hung a left at the winged angel statue and found a pocket of graves on a gentle slope.
The headstone caught her eye immediately. She recognized the carving before she saw the name. It was Luke’s tattoo. The phoenix he had over his heart.
She heard the far off sounds of a lawn mower and an airplane in flight, but all she saw was the phoenix.
Holding her breath, she approached the glossy black stone.
––––––––
Karen Garrison
Loving wife and daughter.
––––––––
There was no mention of the loving mother she would have been. In a tragic way, she had taken their secret to the grave.
Harper let her breath out and knelt down gingerly on the grass. She sat back on her heels. It was a beautiful spot. The tree line at her back cast its shade over the dozen graves decorating the copse.
There was already a pretty arrangement of colorful blooms that was starting to dry out tucked in the metal urn behind the stone.
