I nod, though of course she can’t see me. It’s all I can manage.
“Edward, I’ve been trying to reach you for over a month.”
She’s beenawakefor over amonth?
“They told me—my parents said—that you didn’t want to hear from me. They said you changed your number. They changedmynumber.”
She thinksIdon’t want to talk toher?
“I know you must be furious with me. I understand if you don’t want to talk to me. The other night, you hung up as soon as you heard my voice.”
The other night?The night I almost OD’d. Before Amelia got to me, I picked up the phone. But at the sound of Harper’s voice, all I heard wasscreaming, crying, sounds from the moment the car spun out of control and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“Please give me a few minutes. Let me apologize, and then you can go back to hating me for the rest of your life.”
The shock of her words shakes the lump from my throat.Shewants to apologize tome? I feel as though she’s speaking a language I don’t understand.
“Why did you take the fall for me?” she asks. “Why didn’t you tell them the truth?”
The truth?
The truth.
I can see it, hear it, feel it: our argument over my family; my weight in the driver’s seat; Harper yelling that she wouldn’t get in the car with me, I wasn’t okay to drive; my slamming the car door shut and stomping to the passenger side, my final steps on two feet; later, reaching for the steering wheel and slamming on the brake only to find that there was no wheel in front of me, no pedals beneath me.
Relief makes my entire body shake.
“My parents assumed you were the one driving,” she explains. “After I told them what really happened—I thought the police would question me, but they never did. I waited for your family to launch a lawsuit or something. Eventually, my mom let something slip about a deal they’d made. She said it was better this way, insisted your family had resources to protect you that we didn’t have. I couldn’t reach you, but I finally spoke to Anne. She said cutting off contact was your idea.”
Anne knew I wasn’t the one driving.
Instead of telling me, she sent me here.
“You saved my life,” Harper says. “Dragging me from the car. How did you do that with your leg injured like it was?”
It had to have been Anne who told Harper about my leg.
“I needed to talk to you one last time, to tell you how sorry I am.”
I sink onto the bed. I feel like a little kid who’s run around in circles and abruptly stopped. It’s as though, for months, the world has been spinning and now it’s finally set itself to right.
“I don’t hate you,” I manage finally.
“You don’t?”
I look at my hands. I can still feel the silkiness of Harper’s blond hair between my fingers. I can see her dancing in her underwear across the kitchen of my Tribeca apartment, her bare feet slapping against the hardwood.
“Would you let me visit you?” Harper asks. It sounds like she’s crying. “I’ll fly to London, Scotland, wherever you are. I need to see for myself that you’re okay.”
I pause. “I’m not in the UK.”
“Where are you?”
I could lie. Let her think we’re thousands of miles apart. That’s certainly what Anne would want me to do.
“New York.”
“New York?” Harper echoes. “Where? I’ll get in a cab now.”
