“Oh, honey.” Nadia’s voice was soft.
“I sat across from this perfectly lovely woman, and all I could think about was how she wasn't Astoria, how no one is ever going to be Astoria.” Miller wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “I went for a run tonight, and I ended up sobbing on a trail in the dark like some kind of disaster.”
“That doesn’t make you a disaster,” Harper said. “That makes you human.”
“I’m in love with her.” The words spilled out of her before Miller could censor them. “I’m completely in love with her, and I walked away, and I don't know how to make that stop hurting.”
On the screen, Miller watched Harper reach for Nadia's hand, their fingers intertwining naturally.
“You don’t,” Nadia said finally. “You don’t make it stop hurting, I mean. You just feel it and let yourself grieve. Eventually, it’ll become something you can carry instead of something that crushes you.”
“How long does that take?”
“As long as it takes.” Nadia’s smile was tinged with sadness. “There’s no shortcut for grief, sweetheart. I wish there was.”
Miller nodded, even though the answer wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
“For what it’s worth,” Harper said, “I’m so proud of you.”
“For falling apart?”
“For doing the hard thing and protecting someone you love, even when it cost you your heart.” Harper’s gaze was steady. “That takes a kind of courage most people don't have.”
She felt more hollowed out than courageous, but she held onto the words anyway, tucking them somewhere she could find them later.
“Come to dinner this weekend,” Nadia said. “I’ll make that chicken paprikash dish you like. You can sit on the couch and let us take care of you for a few hours.”
“That sounds good.” Miller managed a small smile. “I’d like that.”
They talked for a few more minutes about easier, lighter things. After she hung up, Miller sat in the dark for a long time and thought about what Harper had said about doing the hard thing.
She’d done the right thing. She had to believe that because the alternative—that she’d thrown away something real for nothing—was unbearable.
She couldn’t do anything for Astoria now. The trial was in two weeks, and all she could do was trust that Rachel would usethe work Miller had done before recusing herself. Trust and wait and keep living in the meantime.
A stack of case files sat on her desk—her actual cases, the ones she'd been neglecting for weeks. Her clients deserved better than a lawyer who was falling apart. Miller pulled the first file toward her and opened it.
It wasn't enough. It would never be enough. But it was what she had.
23
Chapter 23: Astoria
The wine glass slipped from her fingers. Astoria watched it fall in what felt like slow motion—the stem rotating, the bowl catching the last gray light from the windows—and then it hit the kitchen tile and shattered. Dark red wine splashed across the white floor, pooling between the shards like something wounded.
She should clean it up. Get the broom and some paper towels, then wipe away the evidence of her carelessness before it stained the grout. That's what she would normally do. That's what the controlled, competent Astoria Shepry would do.
Instead, she stood there.
The house was silent around her. It had been four weeks of holding herself together at work, in meetings, in front of Gloria and the board and everyone who watched her for signs of weakness.
She was so tired of holding herself together.
The wine crept slowly across the tile, finding the spaces between the broken pieces. Astoria stared at it and feltsomething crack open in her chest, a quiet fracture that spread through her like the wine spreading across her floor.
She lowered herself to the ground with none of the poise she'd spent a lifetime perfecting. She just sat down, right there on the kitchen floor, her back against the cabinet and her legs folded beneath her, broken glass three feet away.
The tears didn't come. They never came anymore. But something worse happened instead: she felt the weight of every single day she'd spent pretending she was fine, and she couldn't make herself get up.
