“How about I let Gloria know you’re here? Then no one will worry, okay?”
She reached for the tea and cupped it in her cold hands. “Okay. Please tell her that I’ll talk to her later when I’m ... ready.”
“You take all the time you need. You’re welcome here for as long as you want to stay.”
Harper’s eyes welled with tears. “Thank you, Joni,” she whispered.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
After three days, Harper vowed that she was done crying. She wasn’t done hurting, but her body had wrung out every drop of water through her eyes and was now barely functioning on dehydration.
It was time to get up.
She dragged herself out of the sunny cocoon of Karen’s bedroom and into the bathroom where she did her best to shower off the grief.
She wiped a hand through the steam in the mirror and stared into hollow gray eyes. “Just keep moving,” she whispered.
Back in the room, she rummaged through her bag and pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt before padding barefoot downstairs. Sophie and Gloria had visited her the day before and brought her more clothes. Harper didn’t even want to imagine how Sophie’s conversation with Luke went.
Her head ached, as did her heart. But she was on her feet. She would survive this. Somehow.
She found a note from Joni on the counter.
Running errands. If you’re reading this please eat! Sandwich fixings in fridge. Ice cream in freezer.
She ignored the suggestion of food and instead grabbed a glass of water before sitting down at the dining table with her phone. Time to rejoin the world.
Her voicemail was full and a scan of the numbers in her call log indicated that Sophie had done most of the blowing up.
Another handful from Gloria, several from work, and a few from Aldo, Beth, James, Claire, and Hannah, who likely had no idea what was happening. There were even two from Angry Frank.
She added a layer of guilt to everything else she was feeling. It had been selfish of her to shut down and shut out. She had worried her friends needlessly and owed them better than that.
She would make up for it.
Starting with the night she left, there were two messages a day fromhim. She wasn’t ready to hear his voice or his “I’m sorry, but this is the way it has to be” reasoning, so she archived them and listened to the rest.
Next, she tackled the texts and then moved on to emails. There was a lot of work to catch up on and handling it from Joni’s house on her phone wasn’t going to cut it.
Harper checked the time. 5 p.m. on a Sunday. The office should be empty. She’d go in and see what kind of progress she could make. Alone. She didn’t owe it to him. She owed it to the rest of the team there. She’d get them back on track before moving on.
Joni’s house was farther from the office than she was used to, and she made the trip unnecessarily longer by taking a less direct route that didn’t pass his house. She may be ready to crawl out of her bed cocoon, but that didn’t mean she was interested in pouring salt in fresh wounds.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she found the office dark and locked. Safe.
She locked herself inside and leaned against the door. Refusing to look into his office, Harper immediately decided to shift the position of her desk. There would be a new focus for her remaining days here.
Satisfied with her new view through the window — her back to the empty office — she got to work.
There were a few new invoices to enter and payroll to do for next week’s checks. She was working her way through staff and client emails when her phone signaled a text.
Luke.
Frank says you emailed. Are you at the office? Can we talk?
Her stomach churned and she shoved her phone in a drawer. How would she ever be able to look at him when she could barely read the words he wrote?
She had to leave Benevolence. There was no way around it. There couldn’t be any running into him at Remo’s or on the jogging trails. She wouldn’t survive it.
